The Assessments For Weaving Imagination Into An Academic Framework

By Author: FIRELEAVES
Total Articles: 49
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I don't mean to suggest that imaginative work cannot be subjected to the detailed, rigorous assessment that might be applied to literary or rhetorical analysis as long as the rubric makes what is valued explicit. The work of Carolyn Forche and Philip Gerard on creative nonfiction has been an invaluable resource for engaging students in writing that requires imagination as well as research Omega Replica and critical thinking and for developing a rubric to assess this type of work. The characteristics in the "Exceeds Standard" column of the rubric in Figure 4 were distilled from the introduction to Writing Creative Nonfiction: Instruction and Insights from Teachers of the Associated Writing Programs.

This rubric ensures nonfiction has a purpose beyond information or analysis and attempts to capture in usefully explicit terms at least some of the characteristics of imaginative writing, which resist confinement in columns and rows.

My colleagues and I lament that, as the number of our students increases, our feedback tends to focus on what to fix rather ...
... than what went well. At the beginning of the school year I vowed to experiment with using technology to provide more positive feedback, without devoting even more time than I already do to responding to student work. Most of my students are able to email their writing to me. I've found that in the time it typically takes to note errors and write some cursory comments by hand, I can open documents in Microsoft Word, use the highlighting and Insert/Comment tools to make detailed comments, and type a substantial paragraph of feedback at the end of each piece that congratulates the students on their strengths and provides guidance for revision. After several rounds of experimentation, I asked my students for feedback. Although a few students preferred handwritten marginal comments and saw the word-processed comments as impersonal, most of them were enthusiastic about the detail and readability made possible by technology.

While I'm pleased with the results of the assignments and strategies I've used to give imagination a legitimate place in a high school classroom, even in advanced placement classes, I've also realized that resistance to change will continue to come from the direction in which I least expected it: students. To overcome this resistance, we must work within our discipline and across Omega Replica Watches disciplines to rethink what we assign, how much we assign, and how we assess student work. I also recognize that there's only so much that can be done at the local level. My students' perspectives on how to achieve success are not just a reflection of their experience in suburban Connecticut. Deep change can only occur if our national focus shifts from what can be quantified to the true quality of each student's educational experience. With an administration in the White House focused on hope and change, and a host of problems clamoring for imaginative solutions, it seems like time to engage in a national conversation about how we define a good education, time to have the audacity to propose that learning should be joyful, and time to include imagination in our national agenda.