Dear colleague,
Here's a quick Woodenization example for a couple of biggies in my classroom:
- How to improve your written responses to Short Answer Question (SAQ) prompts
- How to understand the rubric
After my students wrote their first SAQs of the school year, I worked hard to give them fast, simple feedback. Using our single-point rubrics (see pp. 184-185 in your copy of These 6 Things), I did my darnedest to have the ~70 student responses scored on the day they were submitted in class. I figured, “I'm going to be scoring these eventually, so why not dial myself in and get them scored quickly?”
But if I were to just pass back the rubrics the next day without Woodenizing that part of the learning process, I'd leave a lot more learning potential on the table than I want to.
So I did a few simple things:
- When I was done scoring, I made a list of my three biggest concerns with student writing quality (see “Roots and Shoots List” on pp. 181-183 of your copy of These 6 Things). You can see that list in the screenshot below.
- I took a couple photos of how I tended to mark these common problems on the rubric. Again, you can see those below.
This fairly quick set of actions set me up for some simple and solid Woodenization the next day.
Before handing the scored rubrics back, I spoke to my students for 2-3 minutes about the following points:
- “I've given these scores so quickly so you can improve your practice. Just like a good athletic coach is going to give you some game feedback shortly after the game concludes, so, too, I'll always try to do that with your writing.”
- This signals to the students that I know what I'm doing — a Credibility booster. It helps them attach the Value some of them have for athletics to the work we do in this class — a Value booster.
- “These were the most common problems in your writing. First, a lot of you are still developing your writing jobs in the area of explanation. You want to make it super clear to the reader that you understand how the example you used in your response fully answers the question. When in doubt, write more, elaborate more. SAQs are rough-draft writing exercises, and when we're writing rough drafts, more is better. Second, quite a few of you are still trying to get the regions of the world situated in your mental map. If you used states like the Delhi Sultanate or Song China in your responses, you'll see that I've noted something like what you see on the example here, indicating that the example you used is not located in Southeast Asia. Finally, this is small but important: You've got to write in complete sentences. I won't explicitly teach the mechanics of English in this class, but in your English courses, you will do regular Mechanics Instruction that Sticks warm-ups — pay special attention during those.”
Then, I handed the student work back and showed them how to submit their rewrites for any questions they missed.
Woodenization is very simple, and we always want to make it as efficient as it can be. So much of this efficiency comes from the clarity we bring to the act.
And in trying to Woodenize Woodenization for you here, I hope I've been both efficient and clear.
Teaching right beside you,
DSJR
Leave a Reply