Beyond Punctuation and Spelling: Students Learn to Rank Revision Commentary

OLU English 1 Team: Skye Marciniak and Elizabeth Salyer

Drawing on evidence from recent essays and other writing assignments across the English curriculum, our English 1 team identified the following teaching and learning problem: How do we help students revise compositions with less attention to mechanics and greater emphasis on clarity of written arguments? This was consistently a challenge for all teachers on the team and a critical aspect of our long term goal for graduating students with strong writing skills.

Lesson Elements

For our first study context we focused on a lesson in the English 1 curriculum just after students completed first drafts of a novel/movie comparison paper. The team identified two potential solutions to tackle this challenge with revision, including a sequence of modeling exercises where students were asked to study and rank specific examples of revision commentary which teachers anticipated might help students visualize the desired shift from mechanics to content. We also planned a group activity called “annotated revision” where they assigned students specific roles (reader, recorder, commentator) to help students pause and think more carefully about revision work. (See research lesson plan.)

The evidence teachers collected revealed a majority of students genuinely grappling with ranking exercises and working to identify gaps in clarity and logic. Below is a paragraph teachers used during the ranking exercise for revision commentary followed by four example revision comments they asked students to rank as a 0, 1, or 2.

The obvious theme is women’s struggle between domestic duties and personal growth. You see the stress in which the character of Jo March handles as she balances her work and family life. In the novel, it is apparent that her family duties subtract from her ability to grow personally. The problem of being a seamstress, a teacher, and a caretaker creates conflict between that and being able to grow as a young woman into a young adult and live a carefree life finding herself.

A) The citations are missing.

B) The last sentence is too long.

C) Shouldn’t say “you”.

D) What problem? What is “that”?

During the discussion of this example, one student raised his hand and said, “Letter D is a 2.” When asked to explain his answer, he replied: "You're leaving a cliffhanger." Another student elaborated further, "You can't just say there is a problem and not explain it. “

While teachers reported numerous observations of students successfully identifying similar gaps in analysis or reasoning, there was also evidence that students struggled to offer concrete suggestions for correcting these errors. During the modeling exercise for the group activity, one student commented, “The theme of the story is not explained clearly.” When asked, "How would you move this from a Level 1 to a Level 2,” he looked stumped and answered: "You state the theme more clearly."

Student Work
The results from student work corroborated what teachers recorded in their observations. The papers demonstrated students had begun to make a significant shift in revision focus from superficial mechanics to writing content. The majority of case students were able to identify missing or insufficient conclusions, the lack of connections between ideas and the main point, and broad statements lacking specific detail. A smaller number of students, but more than anticipated, began to recognize places in their writing where the reader was left to “connect the dots.” However, while error recognition improved, most students struggled to make suggestions for resolving identified writing problems.

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Reflections
As our team reflected on the lesson and student work, the conversation focused on a pivotal discovery—how important it is to teach students what “clarity of analysis” and ‘revising for clarity of analysis” actually looks like by providing examples of both and teaching students to rate the level of quality (0,1, or 2). This prepared students for monitoring their own revision work with the same mental framework and helped students move beyond superficial emphasis on punctuation and spelling. We also discovered students performed better when taught to focus on one particular aspect of the paper at a time. We concluded that the annotated revision activity was helpful and a creative way to structure peer work. We would definitely use the activity again with some modification, but by itself, without the modeling and ranking exercises, it would likely have limited impact.

One teacher summarized her thoughts about the lesson as follows:

I was surprised by how engaged they were in the ranking task. Honestly, some of those kids…I didn’t know they were capable of that focus because they are everywhere…We touched on something that touched a chord and that they understand…And that was exciting for me because I knew it was what we were teaching…It was we had created…

While we were energized by this new evidence of student progress our team was also eager to help students move beyond identification of errors and learn to make thoughtful corrections that enhance writing clarity. We discussed how the modeling exercises had mostly focused on error recognition and instructive commentary which produced some positive results, but we still needed to model and teach methods for revising and correcting these common mistakes. One of the insights from observing the lesson was that teachers needed to elicit more thinking from students during discussion of sample papers. Rather than responding or elaborating on a student comment immediately, the team agreed it was important to ask more follow-up questions and extend class discussion. “How can we make this a level 2?” What could you add to this sentence to strengthen the connection to the main point?” We also agreed it was important to introduce several concrete examples of how to improve writing in each of these critical areas. In particular, we needed to provide students with more examples of writing that does not "connect the dots" for the reader and give students opportunities to experience the lack of clarity this creates from a reader’s perspective. Finally, the team discussed how other courses should begin to incorporate this approach and explicitly teach levels of quality to help students’ with revision analysis.