February 9, 2009: Poetry Evaluation - with your wiki group, discuss what criteria you would use to evaluate the posted poem below, called "autumn":

 

 

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*Bizzaro, P. (1993). Responding to Student Poems: Applications of Critical Theory. Urbana, IL : National Council of Teachers of English.

**Miller, J. (1989). Evaluating Student Poetry. The English Journal, 78(2), 35-39. 

 

Sarah Tolley

 

 

 

I would have to agree with most, well all of what Sarah mentioned.  I also find it difficult to wrap my head around marking creative work, but, you are right Sarah this is going to be our jobs. So, I like to look at it in the sense that I am marking their ability to support their creativity then the actual end product itself. This is where the idea of self-assessment is an important aspect when making creative work.  So, instead of marking the actual poem (in this case), we the teacher are marking their thinking, process, and whether or not they were able to create a poem that included all their thoughts and the “message” they were trying to produce. I think this is also important when creating the rubric making the main focus of their marks on their process and their depth of thinking.  I would want to make sure their assignment was not just about the end product but the process they used to get there.

 

Cortnie Henry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I think that a good rubric is essential for marking any assignment. Yes, the work is creative, and that is great. But does it follow the criteria requested in the rubric? I think that the only way to mark fairly is by providing all of the students with a detailed rubric when assigning the task. On the rubric you should include a portion that covers the student’s creativity. Therefore, you can award marks for creative thinking without basing the entire mark on the student’s creativity.  

Adrianna Pacheco

 

 

I agree with Sarah, Cortnie and Andrianna. Like Cortnie and Sarah I agree it is a challenge to wrap your head around how you mark creativity. How does a teacher justify giving one student a higher mark than another when those two student may be working to the best of their creative ability. I struggled with this idea while I was on my last placement and here is what I ended up doing. I created a rubric, like Adrianna said. On my rubric I included elements from the Ontario Curriculum documents that the students were to demonstrate in their work in addition to a category for creativity. Essentially my rubric had 5 areas the students were being evaluated upon and creativity was one of the 5 groups each out of the 4 level categories. Students had to display all 4 curriculum expectations in addition to a creative product in order to get top marks. If they lacked anything their mark dropped accordingly. My AT said this worked for the project at hand but that I may run into difficulties for other assignments in the future that require more creative freedom.

 

I suppose that rubrics are the way to go though. If I understand one of the main points of our Core Methods class correctly it is that rubrics allow teachers to justify their marks because it ensures students are all being graded upon the same set of "guidelines." If there are any other manners I'd be happy to hear them, however, for the time being, a rubric is all I can think of.

 

Meghan Barson

 

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As Sarah noted from Miller's quote,  you still need to give student's a creative licence or else you basically stop them the creative process. I also struggled marking poetry from my first practicum. Partly it was because I was not that knowledgeable about building rubrics and the other reason is that I had a difficulty time truly picking out what I considered to be sound poetry. As Adrianna stated, a rubric is definitely required to give criteria as to whether the student demonstrated an understanding about the structure of the poetry that was taught at the time. Students can work from a structure and be creative.  The structure of the day may be haiku or e.e. cummings word text play. Then we could evaluate the students on how well they used the structure. Another level to the evaluaton could be their original topic of choice. Another component could be how they use language. Did they incorporate a rhythm? Is there a good flow or beat to the poem when you read out loud? Another component could be descriptive language. Use of metaphors? How do they further describe a concept?  These are just some examples of what can go in on rubric. This criteria could be used on peer or self evaluations as well

 

Helga DeSousa

 

 

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I completely agree with all of my colleagues.  I really like Sarah's post about the different types of assessment - as learning, of learning, and for learning.  I think assessment as learning, or self assessment, is especially important for creative works, such as a poem.  Students need to be prompted to reflect on their work critically and revise.  I think this process will aid them in editing on a regular basis in the future.  Also, as it is a creative piece, it is quite hard to evaluate, as many of my colleagues mentioned.  I think that having a conference with the student about their writing and having them write a reflection on their writing will help guide a teacher in marking the poem and completing assessment of learning.  Also, peer evaluations are quite important, because students may not be able to notice errors in their own work, but may be able to objectively evaluate a peer's work.  This exercise will help them with editing their own work, because they get a chance to practice looking for errors and referencing rubrics to judge how close they are to a level 4.

 

It is vital to include the student in the assessment process.  They must understand exactly what they are being on before starting their work, so I definitely agree that rubrics are important.  The expectations for things such a structure, spelling, rhythm, poetic techniques, and the amount of effort used could be assessed.  Like Meghan stated, rubrics are vital in case a parent or the student wishes to view exactly what was marked and where the grade came from.  By amount of effort, I mean the amount of time spent on revisions and conferencing with the teacher.  Teachers should allow work periods where they observe how the students work to get a feel for the amount of effort they are putting into their poem.  

 

Ultimately, I feel that poetry, such as this one, must be graded on many levels.  It is important to have students write poetry that will not be graded in order to get them used to the process.  They should focus on practicing their writing skills instead of worrying about grades.

 

Kristen Wallace

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Megan S: I also agree with all the above comments. I think it is really important to provide students with a rubric and allow them to practise writing poetry. Initially, I think that students should not be evaluated on their work, but given suggestions for improvement in writing skills and form in order to build their confidence as a (poetry) writer. I also think it is important to allow for a resubmission when marking poetry so a student can reassess/evaluate his/her own work.

 

I think everyone presents valid points.

 

 

http://people.moreheadstate.edu/fs/k.mincey/assesart.html

 

 

 

I found this website by Kathryn Mincey an Associate English Professor at Morehead State University, that discusses evaluating poetry based on certain criteria. It can work for template poems, specific poetic forms and free form poetry. The teacher would have to tighten the specifics towards their particular assignment, but it gives a clear basis on which to start creating a marking rubric.

 

 

 

1. Perspective: The degree to which the writer establishes voice and tone

 

2. Conceptual Complexity: Tension in words and ideas through compression

 

3. Sound

 

4. Diction and Imagery

 

5. Spatial Design

 

6. Artistic Unity

 

 

 

(see the website for further details on each criteria)

 

 

 

I agree that students should write why they made specific choices in their poem like what juicy/spicy words did they use and why or why a certain form etc. She also discusses Poetry Portfolio’s: where a student creates many poems/ starts many poems, finishes and submits the ones they think are the best or interest them. Therefore the teacher only receives what the student deems as their best work. However this does make marking more challenging as the poems will take many forms and may need several rubrics to evaluate successfully.

 

 

 

 

Enjoy! 

Steph

 

Mincey, K. (2009). Assessing Student Poetry. Retrieved Feb. 15, 2009, from http://people.moreheadstate.edu/fs/k.mincey/assesart.html

 

 

Hello!

 

It is very difficult to write anything that hasn't been written already. I guess thats the downfall in posting last eh? I agree with everyone! I think Adrianna is right, a solid rubric is needed. A rubric needs to be provided with a rubric in order to ensure that each student is being marked the same. However, within the rubric it is important to ensure that the majority is regarding creativity. I also agree with Cortnie in the fact that we as teachers want to know how the student came to the end result and the process they went to get there. I think it is a good idea, wherever possible, to have the students mark their own work. I think it is also a good idea for students to explain to either the teacher, class or in a journal, the meaning of their poem and why they decided to write it a certain way.

Thanks!

Jen 

 

 

 

Don't worry Jen, you weren't the last :)

 

I was thinking that we, as a whole, seem to avoid directly discussing the issues this student could work with. We talk about our ideas of the process we would take to assess or evaluate this student but we do not discuss what needs to be directly assessed and how that student could create a more effective poem. I think Steph touched upon different types of assessment but I feel as though we're not directing our ideas towards the work itself.

 

Questions I would propose to the student would be:

 

How did you choose the shape of the poem?

Did this shape reflect the words in the poem? How?

Why did you choose to use a period once in the poem? Is it significant? Does it disrupt or assist the flow of the poem?

Why did you choose to use a space between the last word and the rest of the poem? How does it affect the reading of the poem?

Do you think you could break up the word groupings to have it flow easier or to increase readability?

What are the importance of the segments you divided the poem into?

 

Etc.

 

These questions, and many more, could help us understand what the student was trying to achieve in their poem and as a result they would question and revisit their work over and over again. As it has been said many times before, it is incredibly hard to assess a piece of creative work written by a student. But not only do we need to provide rubrics, we need to see what they are writing and how the student can grow as a creative writer through interactions and discussions with their teachers/fellow students/family, etc.

 

Thanks :D

 

Laura

 

I have recently received some very subjective work from students and I have to say I found it very difficult to put myself in an objective position. I heeded lots of the comments on here and tried to put on my "Have they included what was expected/requested?!" head on - overall I think I was fair but found this to be a lot harded than I expected due to the quality of the work. So basically what I'm saying is - I agree and thanks for all of your advice...

 

At least I enjoyed marking it though :-)      Beth