Tools Not Rules

Gonna be blunt here. What we are doing with writing assessments isn't working. The way we grade papers and mark student compositions isn't working. How we talk to kids about their writing isn't working. The assignments and the very approach to writing instruction aren't working. But we are working very hard to find solutions.

Problem Number One: Our Approach

Katie Wood Ray writes in What are you Thinking? 

I asked the first student I met with (who had written about four sentences) to tell me why she had decided to start her letter in the particular way she did. "What were you thinking?" I asked. As one of the observing teachers noted, the young girl looked at me as though she had just had a frontal lobotomy. All my wonderful wait time provided no answer. I finally realized it was because there wasn't any answer. I finally realized it was because there wasn't any answer. The student hadn't been asked to do any THINKING or decision-making at all. The topic had been assigned, a graphic organizer told her exactly what to include in each part, and when I sat down next to her, she was simply transferring information from the organizer to a [workshit - sorry - just can't spell it any other way] on which she was supposed to write the letter. The point is, it's difficult for student to answer questions about their thinking when the work they are doing doesn't require them to think. (2006, 59). 

So that means that we need to get kids writing about things they care about and know about. We have to stop giving prompts and start using prewriting activities that help the kids mine their experiences and select their own topics. Here's my favorite prewriting activities from my writing notebook.  Then we need to get them in groups with their peers. Let them read their writing to others.  Let them talk with others about what their writing does to their peers as listeners and readers. Here's my favorite feedback grouping activities. 

Problem Number Two: The way we give feedback. 

We have to stop correcting papers. Lots of theories and research support that, but nobody really cares or has time for that. You don't want a post that spends the majority of the time telling you why I'm right. You want a post that tells you what to do instead. 

Feedback has four levels. Task level feedback tells kids if they did stuff right or not. Process level feedback gives kids an idea of what they did as writers that worked well and why or what they could do instead. Self-Extending feedback does just that. It helps the writers figure out what they can do to keep growing even if the teacher isn't there to tell them what to fix. Self feedback is praise. Praise should never be used with writing or learning. It is actually harmful. (If you don't like that, we can argue about it later. I have tons of research to back it up.) (Hattie & Timperley, 2007).

So what does that look like when responding to a writer? Maja Wilson, in Reimagining Writing Assessment: From Scales to Stories gives us a place to start, even if she didn't pinpoint the levels of feedback I describe above.

The chart on pages 107 and 108 of her text describe techniques that she uses to help kids clarify their intentions/what the text is about, how to suggest adding more detail, suggesting deletions, and how to describe something that works. What she doesn't talk about is why what she suggests is going to actually help writers transfer their skills to the next writing performance. But I can tell you exactly why. Maja matches the level of feedback to what the writer needs to say - her intentions - AND how the writer might go about doing so better. None of the examples in the chart list self-extending levels of feedback. I don't know if that's because Maja purposefully didn't include that level or if she knew the writer wasn't at that stage yet. (We're supposed to match the level of feedback to just above where the student functions.) What I do know is that we are giving waaaay too much task level and praise level to writers - which is probably the main reason kids aren't growing in their ability to compose. Why not? Wilson describes Elbow's (1973) theory like this:

When we give task level feedback like "too much detail," we are "making an hypothesis or abstract theory about how writing works. However, when we we describe the test's effect on us, were's stating and empirical fact ("About two pages into the details about your eccentric neighbor I got really into picturing this crazy character with his little yapping dogs and argyle sweaters, but then I remembered that your profile is about your dad, and I did start wondering if your profile is really more about your neighbor") (Wilson, 2018). 

This makes a lot of sense. I'd call this Task level feedback because it gives a movie of the teacher's mind (Elbow and Belanoff, 1989). The writer now knows how well they completed the task of communicating their intentions. They know if they are right are wrong. They know if the reader "got" what they were trying to say. They learn about things in their writing that they may not have noticed themselves. (I would also tell the reader that the part about the neighbor should NOT be deleted. The writer should keep that portion of the writing. Perhaps it could be used in a new piece or as a part of another one.) 

But we can't stop there. We must help writers name what they have done that works and find a way forward to make things better - not just for this text, but for the next text too. 

In the feedback exchanges below I'll color the task level feedback in blue and the process level feedback in green. Green because that's the kind of feedback that helps the writer move forward - and we need more of that. I'll color the initiating question or comment in orange, because orange you supposed to figure out what the writer wants to say, their intentions?

What part of this essay feels most alive to you? "The part of this story that felt the most alive to you was the part about the letters, and that's also the part that felt the most alive to me as a reader. I'm wondering if you wanted to write mostly about those letters?" (Wilson, 2018, 105). 

The writer explains that she'd added the extra stuff because she didn't think she had enough to make a long enough essay.

The essay is yours. I have a suggestion you should "consider only if [you] think it [is] going to help you do what you [want] to do. In fact, if it doesn't feel right, [you] should tell me, as that could help me think of a different way to help (Wilson, 2000, 105). 

I needed another color because Maja is doing something different here. She is teaching the writer that she is the one that makes decisions about meaning that fit her intentions as a writer. Maja is careful not to take over the decision making process for the writer.

"I think I have an idea that will help you do two things you're trying to do at the same time: make this essay all about the letters, and give you a way to say more about them. What if you open with the scene of opening the letters - everything you just told me know. That scene was so engaging when you described it to me, and then you can add flashback to what led to that moment: the anticipation of going to Holderness, knowing that OB is hanging over your head, and all your experiences and struggles with reading. Because I'll already have read that opening scene about reading those letters, I'll understand those smaller stories as a part of this larger (and most important) story about the reading for connection and comfort" (Wilson, 2018, 105). 

Wilson names the things the writer can do using the terms we use as English teachers. And all of that is connected to the writer's intentions and details. (I'd like to note as a snarky aside here that Wilson didn't focus on the grammar and punctuation of the surface features of the child's writing. Lo and behold, those things got better in the second draft without Wilson even wasting a moment on them. Probably because the writer was using the punctuation and grammar as tools instead of rules to say what she wanted to say. Hmmm. I like that. Tools instead of rules.) 

Feedback Sequence for Clarifying Intentions/Topic

As I read, I'm most pulled in by the paragraphs about the letters. My mind wanders a bit when I read the explanations of your time at Holderness. I'm trying to figure out if that's because you really wanted to write about the letters - and that's what you should focus on and cut some of the other stories  - or if you really want to write about it all, but we need to find a way to make the other descriptions more engaging? (Wilson, 2018, 107). 

Wilson helps the writer understand how what she wrote impacted Wilson as the reader. What you write is supposed to do something to the reader. That's the ultimate task. Wilson is able to give the student writer about how well they have accomplished the task of communicating through this movie of Wilson's mind as the read the paper. She also gives a process level feedback that helps the writer know how she could fix Wilson's confusion as a reader. 

Two Feedback Sequences for Suggesting More Detail

I'm really most interested in those letters - that line about thirty-seven letters got me curious! You're right that it's an outrageous number. When you told me just now about opening the letters in your sleeping bag, I could actually picture that in a way that's not there on the page. If you write a scene - almost like you're making a movie and the camera zooms in so that the audience sees you, surrounded by those letters in your tent on the mountain - that might help me see the moment the way you experienced it (Wilson, 2018, 107). 

Wilson again tells the writer how well she has accomplished the task with a movie of the mind. Then, she gives a process level suggestion about how the writer could go about doing that work.


You write here that "it was just an ordinary family dinner." But I don't actually know what an ordinary family dinner is like for you. Is everyone quiet? Talking over each other? Does your mom ask everyone how their day was and everyone rolls their eyes and says, "Fine"? I know what a family dinner is like for me, so all I can do is project that onto this line. Can you give a details or two that defines ordinary in your family? It could be an entire description, if it's important to setting up the unordinariness that is to come. Or, it could be just a  phrase or two to give us a little glimpse of what's ordinary to you (Wilson, 2018, 107). 

What's important here is that Wilson lets the writer choose if the details are a part of setting up a contrast to what is coming up next. The writer gets to decide if additional detail will help the reader understand her intentions - not the teacher. The writer understands that the details added to a paper aren't about having more detail to have more detail. Instead, the writer understands that details are used to pave a path for the reader to understand the message, ideas, and theme. Details are tools, not rules. 

Feedback Sequence to Suggest Deletions

On one hand, all these examples of your struggle with reading are really interesting on their own. But when I read them one after the other, I find myself zoning out by the third example. I think that's because all the examples are illustrating exactly the same point - that you hated reading in school. Maybe the thing to do here is to pick the strongest example - or pick more than one if the second one illustrates a different point that you also want to emphasize. (Wilson, 2018, 107).

Let's go there. Five paragraph essay. Is this writer adding 3 examples because that's what the body of a paper is "supposed" to include? Because that's some kind of rule? Instead of telling kids they need three examples, let's ask them why they need examples. What function do those examples serve? What point is the writer trying to emphasize or create with those examples? Why does the reader need three? Wilson wisely lets the reader know that they are in charge of deciding what each of these examples do to convey the message. Yep: Tools instead of Rules. 

Feedback Sequence on Why Something Works

I see you've got a flashback structure going here. That works really well for me, because when I read that first little opening scene where you're angry at your friend, it doesn't seem like a significant moment. Frankly, I can't figure out why you're so angry. But as soon as you start describing the backstory - all the moments that led to this opening exchange - I start reading more and more significance into it. So, by the time you get back to that opening scene at the very end, I totally get why you're so angry. The flashback structure really helps you show me how and why such a small, simple moment isn't actually so simple (Wilson, 2018, 108). 

Wilson names what the writer is doing and explains how well it was used to accomplish the writer's purpose - the task was completed correctly. Then, she explains how using this writing move helps the reader understand the writer's intentions more clearly. Flashback is a process technique that writers use to purposefully move the reader. Again, tools like flashbacks aren't rules that apply to every writing task. The writer has to purposefully be involved in the decision making process for using them because they need that tool. Tools not rules. 

Conclusion: 

Perhaps I've honed in a little bit too much on "tools not rules" instead of focusing on feedback, which I really wanted to do. But I think it goes back to our approach to teaching writing in the first place. The writer is the one that is supposed to do the thinking and the one making all the decisions. Not the teacher. Our feedback becomes the tool that writers can use to compose. They don't need our rules and corrections. They need a thought partner that explains why the writing worked or didn't. They need a human to tell them what their writing did. And sometimes, they need a solution for how to fix it when they didn't quite get there. Perhaps that's why what we are doing when we grade papers doesn't work. We are correction and commenting on the rules and not about why we write in the first place. And those corrections do nothing to help a writer know how to fix it when their writing doesn't make muster. Kids don't need teachers to spout more rules. They need the teacher to be a tool that helps them know what to do when they didn't quite get their message across or when they are ready to move to the next level of expertise and refinement. This is one example when it is a good time for a teacher to be a "tool."

Elbow, P. (1973). Writing without teachers. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Elbow, P. & Belanoff, P. (1989). Sharing and responding. New York: NY: Random House. 

Hattie, J. & Timperley, J. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research 77(81). 81-112. 

Ray, K. W. (2006). What are you thinking? Educational Leadership 64(2). 58-62.

Wilson, M. (2018). Reimagining writing assessment: From scales to stories. Portsmouth: NH: Heinemann.