Feedback that Moves Writers Forward

If you teach ANY sort of writing (ahem, social studies and science teachers, too), you should read Feedback that Moves Writers Forward: How to Escape Correcting Mode to Transform Student Writing and take Patty McGee's ideas to heart and then into the classroom.

Where do I start?

As a teacher who is going into her second year of only providing feedback instead marks, I NEED to do this more effectively. I also need to model effective feedback for my students, so they can provide better feedback to each other, as well. I learned so much that will help me with these goals from this resource-full book.

I did not expect to get so much more out of it... after all, I just spent a school year giving ONLY feedback! Since reading, however, I have created a contract for students if they need that scaffold to help prove their grade at the end of the quarter, I have collected so many great phrases and routines to use when providing feedback, I have added these three peer feedback protocols to the Feedback in Lieu of Grades LiveBinder (Patty said it was okay!), and I've made a commitment to include a few minutes for reflection in as many days as possible.

Here is one way I make notes - I make lists of what I want to go back to in the book. You'll notice some I've crossed off because I already tackled them, and some I still need to do (um, quite a few I still need to do)...

Here were some of the gems I shared (via Twitter):

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Now go digging and find your own gems in this jewel of a book!

My "gradeless" resources so far: "FaR" tabs of our classroom Weebly

                                    Feedback Instead of Grades LiveBinder for parents to inspect
                                    My own reflections on this journey