You know I hate grading, and giving feedback on their writing pretty much lands in the same category. I think my aversion stems from the feeling that neither are worth my time. Let’s face it, as teachers we have 10,000 things to do and time for maybe a quarter of it, so we have to decide where to invest that precious little time. For me: lesson planning and thinking of new ways to engage my Little Darlings is worth my time…spending time with a red pen is not.

It’s so conflicting: feedback seems like something good teachers do, right? But I can’t justify writing careful comments for a passing glance. This has been something I’ve been pondering, experimenting and finally feel happy with what I’ve cooked up, in terms of written feedback, for my novice and intermediate Little Darlings, that I am excited to share with you. Up first, novices!

Written Feedback for novices:

I have arrived at the following conclusions:

• Correcting “errors” is NOT worth my time and doesn’t do anything good for them either.
• Writing comments on their writing is only worth my time if it makes them feel good.
• Writing comments on their writing is especially worth my time if it serves as good PR for my classes and our program.

After my Little Darlings’ first Celebration of Knowledge, I tried something new on their writing section. I jotted notes, or drew little pictures or asked some questions, with the intention of making them feel good…but I didn’t want to stop them. I sent their writing to their parents, too!

Disclaimer: I didn’t send all the writing samples to all the parents…only the impressive ones! (I sent 55 writing samples out of the 100 tests. For students who exceeded Nevada’s target of Novice Mid, I wanted to celebrate that with their loved ones at home! ) Another disclaimer, I had to figure out the easiest way to do this quickly, because, of course, precious limited time!

Here’s what I sent:

First I wrote a generic form letter, with a short explanation and a gentle request to avoid criticisms of grammar errors and spelling mistakes, because in Spanish 1, our goal is communication! If you’d like, grab a copy of the form letter here and edit it for your Little Darlings’ parents.

Thankfully, my school has a fancy, shmancy copy machine that scans and emails a PDF of the scan. I loaded the whole stack of exams in the top loader, added in my email address, and pressed scan. The copy machine did it’s magic and I ended up with a gigantic PDF waiting in my inbox by the time I trekked back to my sweet little portable.

Lastly I created a gmail template with the form letter above, to avoid having to copy and paste the letter in each time. If you have gmail and you are not creating templates, stop everything and read this post. I promise, it will change your life! You can thank me later.

Then the process was as quick as:

• Opening the gigantic PDF of the tests, waiting in my email inbox
• Inserting the form letter template in a new email
• Scrolling through the test PDF and taking a screenshot of a great writing sample
• Pasting the screenshot in the text of the email
• Copying and pasting parent email addresses and clicking send
• rinse and repeat

I sent these on parent conference day. Since Spanish is an elective at my school, I didn’t have very many parent conferences scheduled, so I had some extra time to make students and parents feel good. It look me just over an hour to send 55 emails but I think I could have done it even faster…I kept getting distracted by the responses flooding back. YOU GUYS! The parents LOVED them! Just look at a few of the responses:

Then the following week, so many Little Darlings told me their parents made them read it and translate it back to them. They reported that their parents were quite impressed! One boy told me his mom (a native Spanish speaker) cried because she was so proud that he’s finally learning Spanish 😭

Did it take some extra time? Yes? Was it worth it?! 100%!

• Making kids feel good ✅ 😄
• Impressing parents✅ 😍
• Fostering connections between teenagers and their parents✅ 🥰️
• Also didn’t hurt that I forwarded one to my administrator✅🤣

Stay tuned for the next post: Making Feedback worth it: Part 2 Intermediate Classes

And while we’re on the topic…have I told you that I will be a “Spotlight Presenter” at CI Summit this summer and we’ll dig deep into all things Assessment. Care to join us in Norman, Oklahoma this summer?! If this sounds like your jam, don’t miss the early bird registration discount!