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last.updated 8.7.12

Evaluation Simulation

Purpose

All of you will reach this point of the semester with different levels of experience at evaluating student work. Yet, like death and taxes, evaluating student writing is an unavoidable practice for writing instructors. Furthermore, it is the one practice that is probably most scrutinized by your students and various institutional administrators. Therefore, you need to be comfortable with the practice and be able to justify any evaluation you give and comments you make. Furthermore, the act of evaluation helps you to reflect upon your pedagogical practices to determine their efficacy. This final assignment will give you the opportunity to practice evaluating a piece of student writing, justify your assessment practices, and reconsider "your" pedagogy.

Instructions

On December 3, 2012 at the beginning of class, the instructor will hand you an assignment sheet and sample student essay that responds to this assignment sheet. You will then be given 2 hours and 50 minutes to complete the following tasks. Treating the paper as if it is the final draft of the third paper of four in a first semester composition course, evaluate the paper providing marginal (using the MS Word or Google Docs comment function if you are using a computer or by hand if you are not) and/or end comments. Then assign a final grade for the paper.

Also you will write a 1000-1500 word justification of your evaluation and reflection of "your" pedagogy. First, this rationale should be both theoretical and administrative; you will have access to your books and notes. So use the readings you have done for the course to explain why you evaluated the paper the way that you did. You are also going to treat this assignment as if it is one you assigned students (in some contexts we are asked to assign texts that we do not necessarily believe in). Based upon what this student produced, how might you maintain many of the assignment's goals but revise the methods for getting there. Use the course readings to explain and justify your approach. Thus citing sources with just in-text references is required.

To prepare for this assignment, you should review and organize your readings and notes on evaluating student writing.

Criteria

Logistic:

• you will have 3 hours from December 3, 2012 to submit your work.
• the rationaleand revision should be 1000-1500 words
• 100 points

In addition to the general evaluation criteria, the instructor will be looking for evidence of...

• a sense of audience–The evaluated student should be able to understand your comments and the overall evaluation. Likewise the student writer should feel comfortable after reading your evaluation. An administrative audience should be able to see and understand the connection between the rationale and the marks on the student paper.
• an evaluation, rationale, and revision that is grounded in composition, rhetoric, and/or literacy theory (at least implicitly)
• cohesiveness between your evaluation and your rationale and revision
• a teacherly persona
• appropriate use of conventions, including MLA or APA citations (not included in word count)