Teaching Remotely? Check out what Our Online Teachers Say About Giving Feedback Remotely.
Research shows that feedback from a teacher has the greatest effect on student achievement. Providing actionable feedback that is specific and focused helps students grow and improve their writing. Students need to know how they’re doing and where they can improve.
Other lessons in ThinkCERCA, like Direct Instruction lessons, Reading Practice, and Skills lessons use multiple choice assessments that automatically grade an assignment.
To begin the grading and feedback process for ThinkCERCA Writing Lessons, select a lesson from your Class Planner or the Classes page. Lessons that need feedback will be marked with a blue bell icon. Once you select a lesson, you will be taken to a page that displays details about the assignments in this lesson. If a Writing Lesson has not yet been graded, you will see a prompt to provide feedback under the “Status” column. Once you click this prompt, you will choose whether to grade the Writing Lesson with the Quick Score or Rubric Score. For consistency, the scoring method you select will be applied to the other assignments at the same grade level in this particular lesson.
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This video, “Grade a Lesson” offers a more detailed explanation of how to grade in ThinkCERCA.
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Quick Score
The quick score option allows you to give brief targeted feedback and can be used as a formative assessment. With Quick Score, you can grade student writing on a 4- or 5-point scale. You will also be able to write additional feedback, return the assignment for a revision, submit without a score, and assign a Growth Focus for the student, which will guide students on how to improve their writing in the future.
Once these fields have been completed, you can submit the grade and click onto the next student’s writing.
Rubric Score
With Rubric Score, you can grade an assignment by selecting a score for individual components of a five-point rubric, including descriptors that represent beginning, developing, and mastery of each category of the rubric. These scores will add up to an overall score on a 100-point scale. Rubric score is used for the three writing benchmarks and can be used as a summative assessment with the writing lessons.
Similar to grading with Quick Score, you will be able to provide additional feedback, submit without a score, return for revision, and assign a Growth Focus before finalizing the grade. You can also write your own comments in the rubric and in the text by highlighting the text and leaving a note.
CLICK HERE To download our latest rubrics.
Strategies to Try with Students:
- A Feedback Loop strategy or having students reflect on their writing using a Student Reflection sheet can be a great way to highlight areas of improvement for next time.
- Having students reflect on their peers' thoughts about their writing as well as your own has the potential to show more student growth. This resource provides directions for facilitating peer editing as well as checklists for students to use.
- The Writing Lesson Checklist provides students with a guide to follow as they complete each step of the Writing Lesson. Make a copy of the document and provide your own instructions as well!
Additional Grading Support:
Beyond scoring a writing lesson, you should also provide personal, clear, and actionable feedback to students so they know how to improve their writing. If you’re wondering where to start, we recommend reviewing our Student Writing Exemplars with your team. The exemplar represents what a student in each grade could achieve by the END of that grade
We’ve gone ahead and curated different options of feedback you can use in each section of the rubric.
- Feedback on Writing (Argumentative)
- Feedback on Writing (Narrative)
- Feedback on Writing (Informative)
We've also created specific guidance for scoring argumentative and narrative writing:
If you have additional questions about grading in ThinkCERCA, review our Help Center articles or reach out to support@thinkcerca.com. If you’re not yet comfortable providing feedback on student writing, you can also reach out to your School Success Manager for personal help on delivering feedback!