Help: I teach Senior Composition with 35 in a class

by Mitch

Oct 7, 2011

Due to budget cuts, etc. my college prep writing classes have ballooned to 34-35 this year. On top of that, we teach in trimesters, and the extra 20 kids I have over the course of a day is creating 15-20 hours a week more of reading/editing for me.

I assign three major papers of between 3-6 pages and use the writing process in which I see the RD for content and a later draft for editing. In between, students meet in groups to discuss revsions and proofreading, but in 20 years of doing it, I've never felt this swamped.

Question----what are other teachers doing with classes this size to still provide quality instruction/feedback without going insane?

I'm considering editing 50% of a paper, to show habits and patterns, instead of the entire paper. I think I could defend it as still valid...ideas?

Thanks!

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curiositycat Hi Mitch,

Yes, 50% is totally reasonable. I personally don't even look at rough drafts--I project a couple "guinea-pig" ones on the document camera, highlighting issues that the kids should be looking for in their peer content workshops, but I only read and score the final copy (they kids also do a revised draft that they peer edit for co...See More

Oct 7, 2011

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Mark I think it is perfectly acceptable to cut out the RD reading and put it on peer editing and self editing. That would help in spades. I know you like to give the feedback, but something has to go and this way you are still teaching editing skills which will be helpful in college.

Good luck.

On 10/07/11, curiositycat wrote: > H...See More

Oct 10, 2011

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question br> > Something else I would recommend is reading Papers, Papers, > Papers by Carol Jago--lots of good tips on cutting down the > time spent reading and scoring papers.

Would you be willing to share some tips from the book before I decide to buy it? Thanks :)

Oct 18, 2011

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curiositycat Hi,

I've been trying to locate my copy of the book, but I can't find it at school or at home. I probably loaned it to another teacher. I've used the strategies in the book for a number of years, so I no longer remember which of them were mine originally and which were Carol Jago's. I will say that it is the gift that I always give my stude...See More

Oct 21, 2011

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