Writing Assignment

For my final project, I am working on planning a unit for the novel Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan.  As part of that unit, students would write character journals as they read the novel.  Character journals are nice for several reasons.  Students become more engaged with the story because they start to look at events and dialogue closely to see how it impacts or is interpreted by a specific character.  Character journals also allow students an opportunity to engage in role-play, which as we have discussed, has a variety of benefits.  Journal entries are typically shorter, so they are assignments that can be done quickly during class or as homework.

My assignment gives a nod to blogging but would primarily be a paper-based assignment.  I did this intentionally because I am trying to develop a unit that could easily incorporate digital writing to add depth but could also be implemented if the technology were not available.  In the assignment description, it notes that entries could be completed in the students' blogs, which implies that it is something that would  have already been developed.  I'm still not sure how comfortable I am with using student blogs as a form of communication or assignment medium in a middle school classroom.  It brings up questions of privacy, availability of computer-access, and efficient use of instructional time. (SIDEBAR:  I predict that much time would need to be spent on set-up, organization, maintenance, and introduction to blogging.  Instructional time is valuable and limited and could probably be spent in better ways.  I think blogging would be great if it could be done in collaboration with a technology or computer class so that English periods could be spent on the communication and writing aspect of it.)

The rubric I created does not address presentation in any way.  This was not an oversight.  The focus of this assignment is on content and voice, which seems most appropriate for a character journal of this nature.  Other parts of the unit will concentrate on presentation.  I think it is important to focus primarily on only a few traits of writing in each assignment.

One concern I have about using rubrics is that they tend to skew the point value.  Too many points can be assigned to a given trait or element when the same value of points is used for each row.  I think the rubric I created avoids this because it has multiple rows for the same trait (content) that focus on different skills (support and accuracy).  In my experience, rubrics are helpful for grading.  However, I typically find errors in them in terms of how grades are distributed after I start the grading process.  I don't know how to avoid this.  I spend time thinking about possible scenarios and outcomes to see if the rubric is fair and accurate, but something almost always surprises me.

While completing this assignment, I found a very helpful website from the University of Wisconsin - Stout that includes many rubrics for use with digital writing.