3 Chapter 3: Personal Narratives
Section 3.1 Emily Mullikin: Students Researcher Spring 2025 semester
Feedback to Field Experience Mentees: Inspired by Joelle Pederson
While researching the question, “What is effective feedback for student writers?” I referenced Joelle Pederson’s article, “Revision As Dialogue: Exploring Question Posing in Writing Response” in which Pederson references three types of questions most effectively used for student writing feedback. Viewing the student as an author rather than a student was a pivotal moment for the efficiency of our research regarding writing feedback. This semester, I thoughtfully responded to the students assigned to me in a way that would hopefully make them write more confidently and be more receptive to feedback. While exploring these power-affirming, power-concealing, and power-preserving questions, I discovered a combination of these questions seemed more effective, disguising the role of authority or judgement when writing. Here is a small example of my research:
I used mostly power-affirming questions and occasionally used power-concealing and power-preserving questions. Student number one asked “Is this placed in the correct place? Or do I even need it my piece?” and I responded using a power-concealing question. “Maybe you could reword this and add it to the conclusion to add length and depth. It is a great sentence but I think it would be better in a paragraph rather than on its own?” I also used this method of questioning when responding to student number two when he wrote,“worthless as taking notes of a piano,” and I responded, “Do you think we could say this in a smoother way? Maybe something like “something worthless such as (or like) learning notes on piano…”
With student two specifically, I often used power-concealing questions, sometimes focusing on his grammar and mechanics, asking him if there was a better way to phrase some of his awkward or repetitive phrases. I also use power preserving questions, aiming students to reconsider the conventional models for their writing, like their introductions and conclusions. I also used power affirming questions that were more open ended when responding to almost every student. I asked student two, “How can we change this to make it more impactful? such as “The importance of Education” “The evolution of education and its importance” I also referenced Pederson’s article when asking all of the questions. I asked student number three specifically, “Could we use examples to tie the ideas of this paragraph together more clearly?How can you combine some sentences for more effective ideas?”
Other teaching methods used by previous teachers also helped give these students successful feedback. By using the “bless or pressed” method and “author’s agenda’s,” I was able to focus on what the students wanted me to directly address in a more or less critical manner.
Works Cited
Section 3.2 Cierra Poe: Student Researcher Spring 2025 semester
Student Agency Through Rhetorical Patterns
In an instance, student writing can be transformed from basic into critically acclaimed in the eyes of their teachers. Personally, while undergoing a field experience project with a local school, in which I analyzed the effects of different types of feedback, I learned that grammatical and structural revisions can elevate student work, but the real greatness comes from the depth at which students think about their essay topics. While reading the revisions students made after my feedback, I realized that questions asking about the common rhetorical patterns of cause/effect and compare/contrast led to a deeper understanding of their sources and their topic at hand and gave students a sense of agency in their writing. Questions about the depth of their writing using cause/effect and compare/contrast questions, rather than about grammar, spelling, or structure, aided in the students’ ability to pull better evidence out of the texts and explain that evidence in a way that almost any audience could understand. These questions are more easily understandable to students because they encompass skills mastered in elementary school. These skills, although seemingly basic, can add lots of depth to students writing when talking about more difficult to understand subjects. Students are giving a lot more agency with these types of questions, because they are not as confusing as other feedback styles that use ambiguous words such as “analyze, evaluate, or examine.”
During this field experience opportunity, students were working on essays sculpted from reading scholarly sources or accounts from philosophers. While experimenting with my feedback style, I started asking students to dig deeper into their research to find out what they were most interested in. They started to revise their texts with better evidence for their opinions based off of their close readings. For example, one student’s paper was focusing on two aspects of advancements through time: the advancements themselves and the people who created them. I asked her how questions like “why and how?” can shape her thesis when applied to the facts such as “who, what, when, and where?”. In other words, I asked her to explain the effects of the advancements she mentioned. In order to get all of those questions answered, she chose to address how pioneers in innovation helped further sciences and the discoveries we make today. Instead of just focusing on the facts of the matter, she was able to take facts from the articles she read and create a more well thought out thesis that was intriguing and understandable to her audience by focusing on explaining “why and how” these facts came about and how they effected the trajectory of future innovations.
In another student’s paper, she explained the differences between economic and ethical wealth and the effects these types have on someone and the world around them. Her first draft included mostly personal accounts and some accounts of celebrities who focused on money vs. aspects of ethics. While these examples explained the difference between the two for her audience, she didn’t really explain how these aspects effected the people in the examples and the world around them. I asked her to reread her research and find other articles that displayed the differences as well as the effects of these matters, essentially asking her to compare and contrast the aspects of wealth and examine the cause-and-effect relationships of the aspects. Through this method of feedback, she understood that the paper’s thesis needed to be reexamined in order to show not just the basics of “Who, what, when, and where,” but also “why and how” these aspects matter and are effective.
Section 3.3 Jachin Irwin: Student Researcher Spring 2025 semester
Effective Feedback: As schools move further and further away from the unreliable method of throwing back a marked up once-and-for-all final product back to students, a more advanced and successful method of providing feedback has risen to popularity. This type of feedback is based on the process of students turning in various sections of an assignment for comments about their successes and failures. After each section is attempted, revised, and finished, all of the previous sections combine to form a polished finished product. This new method is titled Process-Oriented Feedback. However, as with all new methods for testing, the proper step-by-step process for determining the proper time and place for the various styles of feedback is once again another problem for educators to sort out.
Formula: In my personal experience, and with the help of the Podis & Podis article “Improving Our Responses to Student Writing: A Process-Oriented Approach,” the best process for deciding which type of feedback is most effective relies on a two step formula that I have outlined here. If students have issues with grammar, form, aspects of a work, or other writing issues that have a right or wrong answer, a direct correction is most fitting for students. This ensures that students learn from their mistakes to further apply their newly gained knowledge to all further instances of the same type. Students who have any other type of issue, such as requiring more critical thinking, will require Power-Affirming corrections. These corrections are focused on using student wording, legitimizing mentees reading of their own text, and focuses on interpretive dilemmas.
Examples: Oftentimes, students will turn in grammatical errors that are simply fixable with a direct correction. These suggestions, like one that was included for a student who incorrectly listed a comma before introducing a quote, were addressed by my suggestion to simply remove the comma. The student was able to correctly fix their mistake and apply their newly learned ability on each of the following assignments that I reviewed. However, in the matter of a student not properly expanding on their argumentative essay counter claim section, a different kind of criticism was required. I provided this student with a power-affirming correction that properly praised the student in their ability to define the other point of view of the argument and encouraged them to strengthen this section by expanding on their information to refute the other position that they defined. This student was able to confidently address my concerns in a purposefully unambiguous manner that resulted in a well-thought out revision to the section.
Testimonial: As a young educator, with a mind always focused on progressing the current state of the field of English education, this is the only way to move forward with the writing process. It is destined to produce the best results with the current information that we have available to teachers. Students will be much more successful in future writing endeavors if they are proficient in each area of the writing process. Whether it is only for state tests or the future authors of America, a combination of direct and power-affirming corrections are the way forward.
Podis, L. A., & Podis, J. M. (1986). Improving our responses to student writing: A process‐oriented approach. Rhetoric Review, 5(1), 90–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/07350198609359139
3.4 Jalyn Thacker: Teacher Researcher Spring 2025 semester
Though my students’ writing is improving and morphing, their authors’ agendas still tend to have a lot of the same questions, which makes me worry about their confidence in their own writing. In their author’s agendas, I am still getting multiple students ask general questions like, “How can I make this flow better?” During other Field Experience hours for Dr. Hruby [our course professor for Teaching writing], I had other students at a different school ask the same type of questions, which leads me to believe that these students simply are not confident in their writing abilities, even the very strong writers.
When I met with my mentees in person, I informed them that asking me more in-depth and specific questions would help their writing advance quicker, when compared to asking a question that blankets multiple possible issues they’re having with their writing. I also informed them that by asking themselves questions like, “Should I be more specific about this point?” and “How can I make my point clearer here?” will help their writing feel more concise even when I am not there to help them.
Because my group of mentees is such a diverse group of students, I do not see many similarities in their writing styles. I have a couple students who put their all into each assignment and a couple who strive for a more low-effort writing style, but everyone is very unique within their own writings. I have some very strong writers who pinpoint exactly what they don’t like and ask for my opinion on how to make it better, but for the most part, my students just need some help clearly defining and defending their thesis. I gave them some tips and tricks on how to ensure that their thesis is clearly defined- I challenged them to ask themselves to sum up their paper in one sentence and if this is not their thesis, then their thesis is not clearly defined.
I try my best to solely abide by the authors’ agenda, so I usually find myself focusing on sentence structure and helping my mentees more clearly define their thoughts in their writings. I try to give advice that my mentees can use in their own writing across all genres, so it has been difficult finding the balance between specific and helpful feedback and being so specific that the advice doesn’t apply outside of the genre of writing or even the paper the student is working on. I am sometimes struggling to give helpful feedback because a couple of my students genuinely are fantastic writers and though they ask for advice, I don’t see anything wrong in their writing to help them fix. In this case, I do my best to let them know that I don’t see anything in their writing that needs correcting, but I try to give them tricks to try for when their writing just doesn’t feel right. In most of these cases, when I say that I did not feel as though the writing needed to be corrected, I had the student re-read their own writing and looking at the writing with fresh eyes made them realize that their writing is fine, they had just been looking at it for too long.
The article that I chose to summarize is from the University of Waterloo Centre of Teaching Excellence, entitled, “Receiving and Giving Effective Feedback”. This article gives multiple different ideas of ways to improve your feedback in order to make it more effective, including “Balance the Content” and “Own the Feedback”.
According to the article, “Balancing the Content” means to ensure that you are both giving feedback on things that need to be improved upon, as well as bringing attention to the aspects of writing that your recipient did well. This will help build confidence in their writing while still helping them approve.
The article also defines “Own the Feedback” as being able to take ownership of your own opinion in your feedback. The main idea that stuck to me from this segment is the idea to use singular pronouns like “I” to discuss your feedback, rather than saying general terms like “we” or “they”.
Works Cited
Receiving and Giving Effective Feedback: Centre for Teaching Excellence: University of Waterloo. Centre for Teaching Excellence | University of Waterloo. (2025, March 28). https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/catalogs/tip-sheets/receiving-and-givin g-effective-feedback