March 26, 2013

There is a will and a way! An update on student feedback


I'm not sure if it's a touch of arthritis or a lack of use because of my fondness for technology as a communication tool, but I can't write the way I used to.  
I mean write-write. Like with a pen and a paper.  
It's not very neat, it seems to take me forever and after a few minutes, it hurts my hand and fingers.  Of course, with young students as readers, one must also print, and do so neatly, which compounds my problem.  

I love to give my students written feedback on their work and back when I was 10 and would play school in my basement, I dreamed of having perfect printing and writing all kinds of wonderful things to my students
  
Well, I still do that, but I'm afraid in order to do it in a timely manner, I need to rely on my computer. Sometimes I can write my feedback to the students, but in the last few years, I find myself relying on typing it, printing it and attaching it to their work.  
I try to make it as personalized as possible but I get that it's missing that *something special*. 

Handwriting the level of detailed feedback to each of my students on multiple assignments takes longer than I feel is appropriate and I can appreciate my students need for a quick turnaround time on their tasks and activities.

The good thing is that in typing their feedback, I can say a little more than I would if I were writing with my pen, since my hands don't have to work as hard. 

For me, it's all about that turnaround time and marking only a few students work a night because my hands get sore means that students wait longer for their work to be returned and that doesn't sit right with me, nor does it help my students to be more successful. 

So in the near future, there will be a number of assignments to be returned to the kids and I wanted to give you this heads up as to why so many of them have typed feedback...it's not because I'm trying to be all 'official-like'. It's all about being the very best teacher I can be.  

It's funny, as I am typing this post, I can almost hear the narrator from a 60s Anacin commercial!    




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