Donald Graves: A Fresh Look at Writing – Evaluation

I first met my friend Donald Graves in 1992 when I attended the University of New Hampshire Writing Program. Donald has had a greater impact on my teaching than any other mentor. When I visit writing classes to see if they are successful I always use his chapter titled, “The Seven Conditions for Effective Writing, from his book, A Fresh Look at Writing, 1994,  to determine if that teacher is on the right track.

Here Donald writes about the importance of evalution in the writing workshop:

When children choose their own topics, they need to know how to decide if their choices are good ones. They need to know how to evaluate their own work. Here again, the teacher can show children how to read their own work—by reading her own. Indeed, the teacher’s entire effort is geared to helping children learn how to examine their own work at a level appropriate to their developing abilities.

For eons learners of all ages have passed their work on to some­one else for evaluation without participating in the process them­selves. Yet children spend 99 percent of their time alone with the topic they are writing about or book they are reading. During those long hours they need to know how to say to themselves, “This is what this is about…no, it isn’t about that, it’s this.” Teachers do have an important role in evaluation, but it consists primarily of helping children become part of the process.

A child comes to the teacher and says, “I’m done.”

“Oh, how did you decide you were done?” responds the teacher. When I began teaching, I used to pick up the child’s paper, read it over, then give it back, and tell the child precisely what needed to be done to make the piece better. Now, when I move around the classroom con­ducting writing conferences, I expect the students to respond first

•   This is what my piece is about (It can only be about one thing.)

•   This is where I am in the draft (I’m just getting started. I’m finishing up. I’m ready to publish.)

•   This is what I’ll write next or this is where I need help.

I expect them to be prepared to tell me about their work and how it is going. This gives them practice in dealing with the structure of evaluation of work in progress.

From the beginning of the school year students keep collections of their writing in folders or portfolios (see Chapter 11). This gives them a sense of their writing history and what they have accomplished that stays with them throughout the year. When a student is blocked on a particular piece, I find it helpful to have him stop for a moment and regain a sense of his history as a writer. Children also need practice in examining and evaluating their work from a variety of angles, and collecting their writing in one place allows them to do that. In all of these ways, children gain practice in using the language of evaluation in reading their own work and that of their classmates, language that has traditionally been viewed as the teacher’s property.