She wasn't thinking...that's why.

Wilson slams me again with practical application for the classroom:

“We can’t learn to write from following orders. That might work for memorizing multiplication tables. But to compose, we have to make an endless string of decisions. And there’s never one right decision; you’re deciding between dozens of plausible decisions every decision you make. In addition to reflecting on the reality of composing, our decision making lens supports our larger goal of preparing students to write in a more inclusive and equal democracy” (Wilson, 2018, p. 71).

Because writing is so complex, our approach to instruction and feedback for assessment of growth must be different. Wilson shared a story from Katie Wood Ray as she conferenced with a writer. She asked the student about how she started her paper, "What were you thinking?" (Ray, 2006, 59). The student couldn't answer because she wasn't thinking. She was copying the beginning from the five paragraph graphic organizer she was told to use for the prompt. The student couldn't answer because she wasn't making decisions at all. She was following orders. The result is often crappy writing that the kids can't discuss. Even worse? Kids don't realize that they should be able to have something to say about what they are doing and why.

"For writers to grow, they need lots of practice finding and developing their intentions and using them to make decisions as they write" (Wilson, 2018, 75). That means our minilessons should explicitly model how one goes about doing that. That means that the way we conference with students should pose questions that allow them to speak about how they make decisions as writers. “The purpose of a writing conference, then, isn’t for the teacher to give advice about the writing, but to invite the student’s other self to speak - and then to listen" (Wilson, 2018, 89).

We help the writer become aware of their intentions by helping them focus on the things that drive intention: feeling, impulse and meaning (Wilson, 2018). We need to make students aware that they have these to begin with. It is that awareness of intention that will drive the decision making. Here are the questions Wilson recommends. They are very similar to Carl Anderson’s Recommendations in How’s It Going. The difference is that the teacher is now purposefully conducting these “idea conferences” to help the students connect to their intentions as writers.

Assessing for Intention: Conversation Starters

1. Tell me what you're working on and how it’s going.
2. How did you get the idea for this?
3. What made you write about this?
4. What are you trying to do here?
5. How did you start this?
6. How are you feeling about this?
7. What were you thinking when you wrote this?
8. Is there anything that’s not here that you really wanted to be here?
9. Does this do what you want it to do?
10. Tell me what it was like when you were working on this.
11. Did your ideas or feelings about this essay change while you were working on it?

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.

The Student Experience in Writing: A Moral Imperative

Yep. Still reading Maja Wilson's Reimagining Writing Assessment: From Scales to Stories.

Dewey (1938) pointed out to us several things that must be considered when we teach writing:

1.  The student's experience will determine if the student is writing because the task is interesting and meaningful or if the writing is done to comply and perform. In other words, how we go about teaching writing, assigning writing, and giving feedback to writing will predict how the student responds to writing in the future. This is well documented in Reading. If we force reading on students because we think they should read a particular text or level of text, we can pretty much ensure that they won't choose to read later for themselves. Same for writing. How many people do you know in today's world that tell you they love to write and choose to do so for fun? Consider the finger pointed. We are creating experiences with writing that don't reach the goals we say we want to reach. And these experiences live on in future writing experiences in ways that none of us can bear to read.
2.  Dewey points out that people learn from everything. Sometimes, though, they go the wrong direction. We must make sure that the experiences with writing that we promote in classrooms are not miseducative. To do that, we must find ways of gathering feedback FROM students that help us assess if our work helps students grow in the right direction. Only then, can we name those writing moves for the students and teach them how to use their intentions, audience, and relationship with the medium throughout their writing process and growth.

Wilson provides a heuristic for teachers to begin thinking about student writing processes. Applying Hattie's (2012) levels of feedback, collectively, this set of questions serve to help the teacher gather feedback about how the writer's PROCESS impacted the TASK, or product. This triangulation of motivation, process, and product requires significant interpretation by the teacher.

How are the writer’s intentions engaged throughout the writing process?

• What motivated the act of writing?
• What was the interplay between internal and external (and intrinsic and extrinsic) motivations?
• What influenced the writer’s intentions as she wrote?
• How were big and small decisions influenced by the writer’s intentions?

How does the writer use her sense of audience (and self and others, real and imagined) to make decisions throughout the writing process?

• What is the author’s relationship with readers - and her understanding of them?
• How does the writer’s relationship with her audience (self and others, real and imagined) affect her writing process, in positive and negative ways?
• How does the writer negotiate her relationship with audience (self and others, real and imagined) to solve problems, push forward, or revise?

What’s the writer’s relationship with the medium - its nature, characteristics, limitations, and possibilities?

• In what ways does the writer notice and respond to the nature of the medium?
• How does the writer struggle with the limitation of the medium - and what results from that struggle?
• How does the writer let the medium’s limitations and possibilities shape her intentions and decisions as she writes? (Wilson, 2018, p. 60)

This level of feedback seems foreign to me. I'm pretty sure I have had limited to no interactions with student papers that gets this deep. But how powerful!

Don't we need to see how the writer's intentions are coherently expresses throughout the text and the process of completing the composition? After all, it will be a flawed process the writer uses that takes the writing into incoherence.

Don't we need to see how the writer was purposefully making decisions about the audience? After all, it will be through a flawed process that the writer forgets to whom he writes and what that reader will need?

Don't we need to see how the writer manipulates the medium to fit his intentions and audience? After all, won't it be a flawed process and task level understanding that indicates a the inability to compose within the boundaries of the medium?

A return to Dewey reminds us why this approach needs more attention: the moral imperative of inclusive democracy. The way we evaluate student writing must embody the values of growth as opposed to rank division of our society. Wilson reminds us that the core of writing well lives in our decision-making capacity. Our assessment and feedback must inspire, even require, writers who are "active and informed decision makers" (Wilson, 2018, p. 52).

Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and Education. West Lafayette, IN: Kappa Delta Pi

Hattie, J. A. C. (2012). Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learning. New York, NY: Routledge.

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

Intention and Audience: The Genesis of Communication

I'm still reading and thinking with Maja Wilson in Reimagining Writing Assessment : From Scales to Stories.

Intention and audience are the genesis of writing. In my own writings intention and audience are the only inspiration to compose. Is that true for school sponsored writing? Where students are told what their intentions are to be and for whom the audience is absent? When I approach student writers, am I making the assumption that they care about the topic? Do I assume they understand or visualize the audience responding to their work? So abstract.

Wilson reminds us all that meaning not only drives the form(medium) but also the desire to compose (communicate) at all. On page 58 of the text, she created a call out box that describes "A Writer's DNA: Decision-Making Relationships Between Intention, Medium, and Audience" (Wilson, 2018). I have adapted the box, maintaining her language with the italicized font to adapt this thinking for a student resource. Not only do we as teachers need to be aware of the origin of writing, but we need to help students become aware of the wellsprings of thought that can flow through their pens to paper so that others can row through the current of ideas they provide for the reader. (Recognize the reference to Gustav? "What a heavy oar the pen is, and what a strong current ideas are to row in!)

Again, Wilson's work is a practical application of feedback. Hattie and Timperley (2006) speak of SELF-EXTENDING Feedback. At least that's what I call it because it connects to what we teach in reading. We want students to have self-extending systems in place for decoding so that they can read increasingly complex tasks. Hattie and Timperley call this level, SELF-REGULATION, or CONDITIONAL. In other words, how does a writer evaluate and sustain the writing act for himself? How does the student "monitor his own learning process" to continue working and growing and writing (Hattie, 2012, p. 134). We have to teach writers the metacognitive awareness and executive behaviors required to give feedback to themselves.

As before, I will transform Wilson's words into an instructional tool, followed by an evaluation of the levels of feedback implied by the questions. Collectively, I believe that the questions serve as an example of how we might teach students to apply the SELF-EXTENDING levels of feeedback for themselves and their peers. 

Relationship between the writer’s intention and the medium:

• The text expresses and transforms what is in my mind.
• What do I know?
• What have I read?
• What have I seen?
• What have I felt?
• What has happened to me?
• What do I wish to happen?
• How have I used the questions above to take what is in my mind to express and transform my thoughts into marks?
• The text does not match what is in my head.
• In what ways?
• How will I respond?
• My meaning and intention change as I see what I have composed.
• In what ways?
• How will I respond? (Adapted from Wilson, 2018, p. 58)

In this first excerpt, Wilson (2018) helps create a scaffold for the writer to examine the product, or TASK, of composing as well as the PROCESS he has used do so. The what questions help the student evaluate the TASK. The HOW questions prompt the writer to evaluate the PROCESS he has used to compose that were effective as well as those PROCESSES that might need improvement with revision. By examining what has worked well, the writer can name the features that can be used in the next writing performance. By identifying areas in the composition that don't work so well, the writer is alerted to problems that might have been missed and trigger a search for more effective solutions, strategies, skills, information, etc. 

Relationship between the writer and his audience:

• I want someone else to look at the page and see what is in my mind.
• I want to know what someone else sees when they look at what I have created.
• I want to keep this for myself. (Adapted from Wilson, 2018, p. 58)

Wilson now provides a scaffold to help the writer become more explicitly aware of the impact he wishes to have on the audience - even if that audience is the writer himself/herself. Conscious awareness and attention to audience brings purpose and context to the composition. By seeking this feedback from self or others, the writer can then evaluate the impact of the product, the TASK.

Relationship between the writer’s intention, the medium, and his audience:

• I can make changes on the page to better show someone else what is in my mind.
• In what ways?
• How will I go about doing so?
• I can make changes on the page to better show myself what is in my mind.
• In what ways?
• How will I go about doing so?

Wilson ties all of the elements together with this set of questions and considerations. First, the writer must consider the TASK*. Does he have the information and skills to revise the composition? Then the writer can select from existing schema or search for more effective PROCESSES that will help improve the writing in ways that fit his audience, intentions, and medium.

*Note: In some instances, the TASK is the text/composition itself. The creation of the text is the purpose. In other instances, the TASK is the knowledge and skills required to improve the text/composition. The distinction lies in understanding that TASK level feedback is about the product. Was the product correct or not? In writing, that can be the text as a whole. It can also be the revisions and additional information.

The Horse, Fertilization, and Screws: Re-imagining Assessment FROM Writers

I'm reading Maja Wilson's Reimagining Writing Assessment: From Scales to Stories. 

While there are SO many ideas that you need to know from this book, I have happened upon some ideas that will help your teaching practice. (You should get the book to fully understand the theoretical perspectives behind these ideas, but most teachers want to go directly to the "good stuff" they can actually use in practice. Be careful, doing that turns into taking an innovative idea and doing the same old crap that didn't work in the first place. Wilson tells us it's like using a hammer to to screw a screw. "Something gets screwed, but it's not the screw" (2018, p. 26).

I'll also be combining my comments here with the concept of Hattie and Timperley's (2006) four levels of feedback. Doing so fits well with Wilson's approach because what she describes in her book is a practical application of THE element that Hattie realized is most neglected. We often think that feedback is something that we give to students. While that is powerful, that's putting the cart before the horse. It's like incubating and egg that has not been fertilized. FIRST, feedback must come FROM the learner TO the TEACHER. Then the teacher must begin to make decisions about how to make a decision about the level of feedback that can then be returned to the learner.

So, on with the horse, fertilization, and screws.

You'll have to get the book to read about the insights Wilson learned from Bob's composition. Truly brilliant. That experience led her to realize that stories "can become a tool for inquiring into a writer's development" (Wilson, 2018, 41).  By eliciting the stories of how Bob composed, Wilson identified how teachers get feedback FROM students that they can use, "forming writers even as it helps them understand them and their work" (Wilson, 2018, p. 41).

She uses the framework of story to establish a form for her inquiry and preparation to help the writer. I'll pose each section, italicizing her exact words, but reshaping them in format. (Wilson put them in paragraphs.) Then I'll follow each section with commentary on how the ideas intersect with the four levels of feedback. Wilson provides excellent questions that teachers could use to begin their thinking before working with students in a writing conference.

Setting:

• Where and when does ____ compose?
• What are the circumstances of his composition?
• Immediate
• Rhetorical
• Cultural backdrop
• How does the writer use these circumstances to cull materials, purposes, and “forms”? (Adapted from Wilson, 2018, p. 41)

I used to think about the types of feedback as different kinds of responses that the teacher could give to the student. Wilson's framework begins with setting. The teacher is gathering both TASK level and PROCESS level feedback about the writer. Wilson helps teachers examine elements of the TASK itself, the physical location and time of the act of writing. By examining the circumstances, the teacher has further specifics about the context of the task that impact the performance: the process of writing itself. In the last question, Wilson provides the teacher with a question that helps the teacher gather PROCESS level feedback from the writer about the process the writer uses to accomplish the written task.

Character:

• Who is ___ as a composer?
• What is the story of his development?
• Why does he compose?
• What are his intentions?
• What is he thinking and feeling as he composes?
• What previous experiences and relationships does he bring to bear on his composing?
• What relationships does  he foster through his composing - and his compositions? (2018, p. 41)

After the teacher has examined the setting in which the student composes, Wilson suggests that we look at who the writer is as a character. I would characterize her questions as SELF level feedback, although differently than Hattie. Hattie (2012) found associations with ineffective SELF level feedback when it was delivered as praise. As I have responded to student writing and have read about giving feedback to writers, there is always a dead level awareness that these writers are HUMAN. I must acknowledge who they are as writers in a way that is not associated with praise. Wilson offers an effective heuristic here to help us gather feedback from the writer that honors them as living and breathing people. 

Action:

• What does ____do?
• With what and with whom does he interact?
• What obstacles does he encounter?
• How does he attempt to overcome these obstacles?(Wilson, 2018, p. 41)

Now the teachers have considered the student's writing in terms of setting and character, Wilson suggests that we gather feedback about what the writer does: Action. This involves considering what the writer DOES (TASK level feedback) and HOW the writer goes about doing so (PROCESS level feedback). Wilson's first three questions prompt the teacher to gather TASK level information from the writer. The fourth question prompts the teacher to gather PROCESS level feedback from the writer. After examining the student and his/her writing in terms of a narrative, the teacher is more prepared to give feedback that has greater impact.

I'm not a big fan of conclusions, because I don't think most people read them. But I would like to reinforce two concepts here: 1. Wilson gives us tools to significantly improve how we respond to writers more productively and humanely. She shows us where we should begin. 2. Wilson's ideas work because they center on the most effective type of feedback: feedback the teacher gathers from the student. 3. And I lied. Three concepts: Teachers gather ALL of the types of feedback mentioned in Hattie's studies. Developing a teacher's awareness of these levels to consider should help the teacher make better decisions about how to help writers grow and thrive.

Hattie, J. A. C., & Timperley, H. (2006). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81-112.

Hattie, J. A. C. (2012). Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learning. New York, NY: Routledge.

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

Never Have I Ever

My friend Ray Ann McCay posted this challenge on Facebook. I scored a one. But I'm kinda proud of that. Each one of these called up lovely memories and people that I haven't considered in quite some time.

Wouldn't this be a good writing prompt activity? Kids could write these to challenge each other? Or for other characters? Even real people in history? (<<Groan>> I bet someone writes one about Trump.)  We've all had different experiences, and this activity might be just the kind of thing to liven and encourage the classroom toward the end of the semester or the beginning of the next one. 

Now...where can I tap a maple tree?