essays – Montessori Muddle

Letting Students Personalize their Grading Scheme

How do you know if a student has mastered a subject? How do you get students to better understand how they learn and take more control of their education? I’ve been thinking that giving them more control of their grading might be the answer.

Test grades give some information, but experiments can be just as, if not more, informative. Much depends on the learning style of the student and how they express themselves. Verbally oriented might be good at processing written information and putting what they learned on paper. Kinesthetic-oriented students are likely to do better with practical demonstrations and labs that require movement and coordination.

Since there’s some merit to both exams and laboratory experiments – tests are good for checking the understanding of basic facts, while good labs require application of concepts – they have to be somehow added together to determine if and how well as student has mastered the topic.

Usually, the different types of assessment are combined with different weights. 60% of the total grade for a class might come from exam scores, and 40% from labs. But, given the different talents of different students, might it not make more sense to adjust the weights based on the specific student.

In fact, it would probably be even better to have the students decide for themselves on their own personal grading scheme. It could be part of a classroom contract.

Students would have a strong incentive to come up with their own most beneficial grading system, and, if you gave them a little time to understand the exam and lab requirements (say half a semester) before coming up with the weights, they’d have a lot of incentive to really try to understand how they learn best, and how to demonstrate that knowledge.

Once they’d made a decision on grading weights, they could then focus more energy on the parts of the class they find interesting, which, if we’re lucky, make them more motivated to learn the subject. Then they could set out to acquire the same information and concepts from what is to them a more interesting perspective, without having to worry so much about the stress of struggling through those activities they find difficult and tedious.

A student who is good at experiments might learn the facts in the textbook better if they were looking up information for an experiment – a big picture to little picture perspective – while a student who’s read and understands the text might find the experiments a lot easier to deal with (and so perform better) if they’re less worried about getting the perfect grade.

There would probably have to set some limits as to how much they could play with the weights, say plus or minus 15%, but individualized, self-assigned weights could be a very powerful way of tailoring education, especially in a context where grades are necessary.

Why write persuasive essays?

Clarity of thought and the ability to persuade are important life skills that develop as the parts of the brain responsible for analytical thinking develop during adolescence. The persuasive essay is the most common form used to assess these abilities. During this cycle we will work on writing persuasive essays, but it is useful to remember that the pattern of these essays, with their beginning thesis statement, well organized persuasive paragraphs, and concluding statement, can also be used in many other types of presentation.

We can start by considering brain development, because during adolescence the prefrontal cortex matures. Located just above and behind the eyes, the prefrontal cortex is responsible for higher thinking: things like abstract analysis, controlling moods and planning. Not only does this part of the brain get bigger but the way the brain cells, called neurons, are connected also get substantially reorganized. New neural pathways develop as adolescents discover new and more sophisticated ways of thinking about themselves and the world around them.

However, just because the brain develops does not instantly mean we become instantly able to think abstractly. Practice tunes the brain. Repetition is what establishes new neural pathways and makes them bigger and wider.

Yet once we develop these skills, how do we show them to the world? This is where the power of the persuasive essay comes in: arguments require reasoning, logic and deft writing to convince. A good persuasive essay is a tour-de-force demonstration of these higher-level thinking skills. The ability to articulate a clear, straightforward thesis illustrates the ability to integrate disparate ideas. The sequencing of ideas in the paragraphs demands a strict adherence to logic. A beautiful turn of phrase or a description that paints a vivid picture brings the essay to life and captures the reader’s interest and imagination. Beauty appeals to the heart. Logic commands the brain. In combination, the persuasive essay appeals to the key attributes that make us human.

There are, of course, other methods for showing our prefrontal abilities, such as film, dance and oral argument, but these others lack the ease of distribution and the consideration of the audience offered to the reader of the persuasive essay. A simple missive, short and sweet, can be mailed, emailed or hand delivered quickly and efficiently. Furthermore, it places less stress on the reader. A good persuasive essay is necessarily concise; it says only what it has to to make its point. It also offers the reader great flexibility in how to take it in. By skimming the introduction and topic sentences the reader should be able to get the gist of the writer’s argument. Then the reader can choose to be drawn more deeply into the text, or even just an interesting paragraph, by the seduction of elegant prose. The reader can get an essay in myriad ways and can easily plunge into and out of it at will, wallowing in the language or skimming across the tips of the paragraphs.

So while a picture is worth a thousand words, the persuasive essay can convey, not just the ostensible argument on the page or even the message hidden in the subtexts, but the clarity of thought, the abstract thinking skills, and the logical control of the writer herself. A good essay tells as much, or more, about the writer than it does about the topic.

Writing good paragraphs and essays

WritingDEN‘s Tips-O-Matic is a great site on writing great paragraphs and essays. The pages are very simple and well organized, without all the distracting noise of ads and extraneous information.

The language curriculum focuses, in general, on developing good writing style and craft, but some of my students need to work on the basics of essays a bit more, particularly with high-school entrance essays coming up.