Constructive Criticism: How a wrong can make a right!

First, I should say I got overly excited when I saw that one of the articles for this week was titled, “On Conferences”! I am having PARENT teacher conferences with Veann on Friday and, to be honest, I am terrified! It’s one thing dealing with students… it’s another to be in a conference talking about them with their parents! Unfortunately, this article only helped me with student-teacher conferences, but, despite my sadness, it, too, was helpful!

Conferences have long been something I have planned on doing with my students. I have seen Veann have several “mini” conferences with students (only about 3 minutes) over their behavior slips. When a student gets a referral at Northeast (which is a purple sheet), they have to carry around a behavior slip (a blue half-sheet) for a couple of days and have all of their teachers fill it out and sign it. 1) I have noticed that organization can be carried out by color-coding all important documents in schools and 2) The students, no matter how upset, angry, or detached during class, participate honestly in their “conferences” with Veann when she fills out the behavior slip with them at the end of class.

I feel that there is a level of accountability that holds the student to a higher standard and makes them want to do their assignments and complete them on time when student-teacher conferences are involved. Unfortunately, some of the suggestions I read in the article I do not think will apply well to my classroom, but there were many good tips that Atwell gives that I will definitely use! I really enjoyed the guidelines for conferences and the suggestions on how to make the meeting successful, efficient, and useful for the student. It had many good tips on how to approach students’ writing and, specifically, the things that need to be corrected and changed. Critiquing can be a very sensitive issue for many students, so a safe space with a teacher where errors are approached with an attitude that is more “ this is good, there is more room for improvement” instead of “this is wrong, fix it”. I specifically liked the suggestion to avoid generalized praise but to instead praise by being involved in the writing. Pointing out specific things that the student did right is a thousand times more helpful than pointing out ten things they did wrong. If a teacher approached critiquing that way, a student could likely shut down and not listen to any good advice the teacher may have to give.

As most of you know, I am a big fan of AVID, in which we coach students to ask higher-level questions and, in turn, think more critically. This is a much more important, and harder skill to master, than asking low-level questions and then turning to the teacher for the answer. I like how Atwell emphasizes the importance of asking the student about their writing in a way that makes them think about it and go further into their points and opinions. Often, students writing is unclear and fragmented because they do no inductively think their thoughts through in their writing (and yes, I just said inductive). By talking it through with them, the teacher builds on their skills of critical analysis and helps them learn the important skills of inductive reasoning that is essential in their writing.

I also liked the “Awesome Dude!” article because not only did it have a fantastically awesome title, but it again stressed the importance of teaching higher-level inquiry and responses! Woohoo! I am all for peer-reviews, but I am left wondering how to make it appropriate for my 6th graders. Often they are so shy with sharing their writing or too immature to say things nicely to one another, that I worry peer-reviews could cause tension in the classroom and make already resistant writers even more shy and resistant to write and share.

This resource/link I have this week is a blog I found called Successful Teaching, which is a blog full of, you guessed, it, strategies and tips for successful teaching!! The post I found is from 2008 (so relatively recent) and is about giving appropriate constructive criticism to students. I think the key to “constructive criticism” is in the wording and rhetoric: we want to give criticism that allows for more constructivist thinking to occur and work to be produced. We don’t want to give criticism and have thinking shut down and attitudes plummet.