Lesson Plan Über Alles

New Grading Reduces Portfolio Grade

Here's new grading template for 1A and 1C:

Portfolio 1: 75

Portfolio 2: 75

Essays 1-4: 150 each for 600

Essay 5: 250

Total: 1,000 points

 

What's the Difference Between a Competent B and Exceptional A Essay?

A Competent and Exceptional Essay

When I give a paper a B grade, I’m saying that the essay is competent.

By competent, the essay has a solid thesis, is well organized, has adequate paragraph development, has helpful transitions, and uses the right amount of outside sources to support the author’s claims and assertions.

However, the word competent also points to certain derogatory characteristics: The competent essay tends toward cliché, truisms, aphorisms, and familiar, predictable, “safe” territory.

As a result, the competent essay is stale and boring so that the reader feels as if he is slogging through the exposition and is eager to get to the “finish line.”

In contrast, the exceptional essay is an A paper because it has all the characteristics of being precisely what it is called, exceptional:

The exceptional essay has surprises, taking the reader where he didn’t expect to go. “Wow, I never imagined I’d arrive here,” the reader thinks to himself. “Who in the hell wrote this gem,” the reader continues. “I want to know this person. I want to have some of this person’s greatness. My God, the more I think about it, this writer is so much smarter than I am, I think I’m jealous.”

The exceptional essay has the “wow factor” in terms of its intellectual muscle flexing, its complexity, its insights, its ability to grasp contradictions and paradoxes of the human condition, its ability to grasp dichotomies and tug on both ends of those dichotomies with equal rigor.

The exceptional essay has muscular sentence structure with no “steak fat” or filler as it relies on a precise, diverse word choice and is spoken with a powerful, confident voice that makes the essay a pleasure to read.

The exceptional essay does not use sanctimonious, self-regarding, long-winded rhetoric to bore and chafe the reader with the writer’s sense of self-righteous, bombastic rectitude. Rather, when the exceptional essay does dip into the thesaurus of “surprise words,” the words are “perfect for the occasion” or are used with acid-tongued irony.

The exceptional essay does not hide behind a variety of sources because it is too shy to reveal its feeble voice; instead, the exceptional essay relies mostly on the writer’s dominant voice, the Alpha Dog of the exposition, using the research material as “small pack dogs” or assistants to the Alpha Dog.

Eight-Point Attack on Grade Inflation

I started my eight-point attack on grade inflation this semester and notice that students are more attentive and less prone to lolly-gagging on their smartphones during lecture. This motivates me to keep my foot on the pedal, so to speak.

I've got eight points so far. Maybe I'll find more later, but here are the eight for now:

One. Cut down conferences to only one per semester (for the final essay) to put some distance between the students and me. Too much familiarity breeds grade inflation creep. 

Two. Crack down on aggregate essays in which student presents the text and sources that comment on the text but does little analysis in his or her own words. Usually the aggregate essay is a sign that the student did not read the book or text and is faking it. 

Three. Crack down on thesis statements that merely summarize the text’s major points. 

Four. Use anti-plagiarism software to verify the originality of the manuscript. 

Five. Emphasize grading rubric points in the lecture and consistently apply those rubric points during paper grading. 

Six. Make the reading exams in-class to see the disparity, if any, in typed and handwritten papers. 

Seven. In argumentative essays, don’t give anything higher than a D to a paper that does not address opponents’ views with counterarguments. 

Eight. Don’t give an A to a paper unless the student can establish an authorial presence that drives the exposition (related to number two in which students, lacking the confidence or skill to assert a writing voice or presence, rely on the aggregate approach to essay writing.

 

 

 

 

 

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The Grade Inflation Trap in College Composition: Conferencing

The Grade Inflation Trap in College Composition: Conferencing

You try to be personable in the classroom and in general. You tell jokes, you tell personal stories. You want to be funny, hip, and cool like Louis C.K. and Ricky Gervais. In the process the wall breaks down between you and your audience, your students.

You conference with them during their essay first draft. You get to know your students' struggles and heartaches. You learn of death, poverty, hardship, sometimes so brutal that you feel guilty that your life is relatively easy.

Here's the trap: Creeping grade inflation. There's a rubric you have to follow. Deviate from it at your own risk. If you're too flexible, you'll be branded an "easy pass" and attract the easy pass crowd, students who feel entitled to a high grade with minimum work.

This is my struggle.

I'm not going to move to the other extreme and be some cold stoic; however, I am going to seek balance.

While I want to use humor and personal stories to connect with my students, I'm going to combat grade inflation with the following:

No more conferencing

No rewrites after a grade has been recorded on an essay

Five In-class reading quizzes per semester

Break down the rubric to the students and explain how you will apply it to the grading of their essays

No grading the essay in front of the students. With the student peering over your shoulder, you may break down a bit. Grade the essay in privacy without hearing the breathing of fear, anxiety, and desperation, which might cause you to deviate from the rubric.

In the end, it's all about balance. You have to be personable on one hand, but be consistent on the other.

I can tell you from experience that this balancing act is easier said than done.

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