I really enjoyed reading Chapter 7 in Gallagher’s text. Throughout my experience in an education program, little time was spent on how to actually grade writing. So far this semester, we have followed his model of forming “rubrics” with students. During our narrative assignment, we chose important ideas and topics to assess and shared them with the group. After discussing the criteria with the class, we were assessed on what we chose with Dr. Johnson’s help. What confused me about this chapter was the notion that rubrics should be geared toward individual students. While this is good in theory and seems to work in his classroom, I do not know how well this works in all classrooms. I think the graphic organizers he provides students works well, along with the files Christensen keeps of student error. If a student does not have any added criteria, would it make it seem like you were favoring one student of the other? In other words, would the student with fewer criterions feel like he is being cheated out of points? Would the student who has the added criterion feel as if there is too much opportunity for points to be taken away?

            I also found the driver’s education blog to very important. I have never made the analogy before! When teenagers learn how to drive, they are going to make mistakes, all do. But their confidence in driving is effected by how the teacher reacts to their errors. In writing, the same occurs. People of all ages make mistakes when writing. If they are scared and belittled by the red pen, their confidence drops and they may never look at writing positively. They feel like the “writing expert” does not like their work and that there is no point in trying again if they are going to get the same results. These actions can be deadly to both driver’s education and writing students. If they are not treated like individuals who need to practice to enhance their skill, they will not get better and may, possibly, grow worse.