37 Feedback

Start with the Positives

• Students need to hear what they are doing well in order to build on those strengths.
• It’s important for the other students in the cohort to hear each other’s successes.
• You are modeling constructive criticism practices for the whole group.

Honor Linguistic Differences

Honoring linguistic differences means acknowledging that our cultural heritage and experiences often influence the way we talk and write. It makes clear that language has been shaped by power dynamics throughout history, with those in power deciding what is “right” and “wrong.” If we honor linguistic differences, we remove this dichotomy and reframe language as based on choices.

• Honoring linguistic differences removes a giant barrier that students expect with English: RULES.
• It reframes the discussion around audience, purpose, and the rhetorical situation of the writing.
• It focuses students on macro level issues and the development of their voice as writers rather than on micro level issues of grammar and punctuation.

Empower the Students with Choices and Scenarios

Prison isn’t a place where choices are typically offered, so some students may find this difficult. We want students to build up their repertoire for experimentation and problem-solving.

Examples:

• One way of handling this would be X, while another would be Y. Do one of these options make sense to you? Can you think of another option?
• I wonder what would happen in your essay if you moved your current conclusion to the beginning of your essay.
• I really enjoyed how you used details about your life in paragraph 1. What would you think about adding more details in paragraph 3 to help readers understand more about your mother?

Receiving Student Work Through the LMS

Tutors will find that students will want to communicate with them, and this can be done through the LMS. However, it’s important to establish clear boundaries around when you will check the LMS and how you will be interacting with student writing in the LMS.

We discourage students from sending drafts to tutors with the idea that they will receive written feedback. Instead we encourage students to send drafts prior to tutoring in order to help facilitate the verbal feedback process. If you can help students to get in the habit of adding questions about areas that they would like help with, that will help expedite the feedback conversation.

We encourage you to check the LMS prior to your tutoring session. Some tutors will find it helpful to either review the draft quickly before the tutoring session or to simply have it in front of them during the session. Ideally, we want tutors to not feel pressure to provide tutoring outside of the scheduled tutoring window.

There are two ways to access student writing through the LMS.

1. You can look at their assignments (often appearing in the To Do from the home page).
2. You can also receive drafts through the LMS email function.

While it can be helpful to read what students have uploaded to the LMS under “assignments”, the situation I favor is when students say that they will or do send a draft to you via the LMS email. There is no confusion, then, about what draft they are referring to.

Providing Written Feedback

In rare circumstances when you do provide written feedback (such as when a student has been gone for an excused absence), the trick to commenting via LMS messaging is to make your comments stand out. A helpful technique is to use brackets. There’s no bolding in the message, but you can embed comments either within paragraphs or at the ends of them.

I think that my first week of middle school was when I first became aware of my passion for writing. Honestly, I hadn’t really cared much for writing prior to this point. [I like the simplicity of this introduction. We know the focus of your piece, and we also know that this was a crucial turning point.] When my aunt took me shopping for school supplies, I remember her helping me pick out notebooks and binders, pens and pencils – the kind that I would see the kids with on my favorite after-school specials. [This is great info–we have a concrete incident (shopping for school supplies) and your frame of reference (those after-school specials).] At the time I would have never been able to articulate what I was feeling, but I now understand that it was the cultural shift that so intrigued me. There were no more superhero backpacks and laminated D.A.R.E. folders. Nah, I was a young adult now. I needed to look the part, I needed to be taken seriously by my peers. No more Batman book bags, it was now Stone-Cold Steve Austin, grown up stuff. [I really like how you’ve articulated the “cultural shift” and demonstrated it.]

Embedding the comments this way works best when you are providing positive feedback. You may want to suggest revisions in a summary document where you can explain your thoughts more fully. Placing revision suggestions in a summary document is also a way to ensure that you are not overwhelming the student with too many revision suggestions. Three is a good number.