Alice rubbed her sweaty palms against her mom’s blazer as she delivered her opening statement to the jury. For the past month, my students had been reading Lord of the Flies, and this was the trial of The People vs. Jack Merridew. Alice was not nervous about the notes I might be taking or the video camera pointed at her. She was concerned with the jury’s opinion and the real judge staring down at her, who had just called our classroom court to order with her real courtroom gavel.

Later Alice wrote, “The trial was a perfect chance for me to get an experience of the real court system since I want to be a lawyer for my backup career. Being the defense attorney, the judge told me and the others when to object and when to end questioning to leave the jury suspicious.” My students took the judge’s feedback to heart. As one commented, “It’s not every day that you get a real judge in your classroom.”

It was natural to differentiate when it came to our trial. Students chose their positions based on their strengths. There were witnesses, jury members, attorneys, and a bailiff. In their reflections, they graded themselves and wrote critical comments. One student/lawyer wrote, “Judge Riley gave me a lot of advice during the trial. Even though she sounded like she was bossing us around, her criticism was really helpful.” For students, it was the experience and personalized feedback that was meaningful; the grade was secondary. It was liberating to see that my numeric assessment was not what they cared about most.

When it came to assessing my students on their five-paragraph essays, I did not feel so liberated. As a defense attorney, Alice naturally wrote her essay arguing that Jack Merridew was not responsible for the murders of Simon and Piggy. She had plenty of evidence to back up her claims after her extensive preparation for our trial. She wrote about the deterioration of order on the island and the shared guilt of all the boys. Yet, while her reflection on the trial brought a smile to my face, her essay felt heavy in my hand along with the fifty-three other essays I received. My students were not writing for Judge Riley, the jury or the 6th graders who attended our trial. I was the judge now.

But how was I to give each student meaningful, personalized feedback on their writing? I had given students a rubric when they received the essay prompt, to help them understand the requirements for the essay. I know that for some teachers, rubrics are timesavers when it comes to assessment. But by the time I began grading the third essay of the bunch, I abandoned the rubric altogether. I could not seem to get my comments to fit into the boxes I had created.

So, rather than fight with the rubric, I wrote all over their papers and crafted a personal letter to each student. I made suggestions in the margins to move their writing forward and to correct grammar mistakes. At first, I hesitated about writing all over my students’ papers. However, that was how I learned Spanish grammar when I wrote papers for my Spanish Literature class in college. So I returned my students’ essays with the disclaimer that I have always learned best when my teachers wrote all over my papers. I even showed them an example of one of my college papers drenched in red pen. I told them I would never use red pen on their papers. My students agreed that the color was important. I asked them to please tell me if they would rather I not write directly on their papers. No one did.

In each letter, I highlighted what the student had done well and what they could improve, hitting on many of the dimensions from my abandoned rubric and emphasizing the role of revision. I made sure my feedback was kind, specific, and helpful—just as I expect when students give feedback to each other. Each letter included a checklist with next steps and an attached skill-based grammar exercise specific to each student’s writing. Below are two examples of the letters students received with their essays, one to an advanced writer and one to a struggling writer in my class.

Dear Student A,
What an amazing hook you have in your introduction! You drew me in right from the start and your whole essay was strong. Each of your body paragraphs has solid evidence from the book to support your claims.
What I would like to see you focus on in your next draft is making sure that the major claim that you started with in your first paragraph shows up throughout the rest of your essay. How does each murder connect with this idea that there is a breakdown of order happening on this island? How could your conclusion help summarize why the breakdown in order caused these murders, rather than any particular person or event?
You should be very proud of your work on this essay! You are a talented writer! Keep revising and make this even stronger than it already is!
Sincerely,
Ms. Staff

Complete the following items on the checklist to earn an A on your essay:
_____ Make the suggested changes on your essay as you revise.
_____ Complete the Comma Usage Rule Sheet and Worksheet for grammar review.
_____ Post your revised essay on your Weblog (Essay tab).

Dear Student B,
You have gathered some excellent evidence from the book to build a strong essay! Your thesis is clear about Jack’s and Roger’s guilt and you prove it well. You should be proud of your work!
What I would like to see you focus on in your next draft is rewriting your introduction. Right now, your introduction has all of your evidence jam packed into it. That’s great evidence, but you need to save it for your body paragraphs. Your introduction should briefly introduce the setting and characters involved in your thesis statement. The hard facts and evidence should come later to prove that thesis statement. It’s important to establish your background information first.
Also, when you are writing an essay, you don’t need to announce what you’re going to do. Instead of writing, “In this paragraph, I will prove…” you need to just jump right in and start proving it.
Keep up the great work! I look forward to reading your next draft!
Sincerely,
Ms. Staff

Complete the following items on the checklist to earn an A on your essay:
_____ Make all suggested changes on your essay as you revise.
_____ Complete the Compound Sentence Worksheet for grammar review.
_____ Post your revised essay on your Weblog (Essay tab).

When I asked students to write how they felt about the feedback, one student wrote, “I liked how you wrote all over the paper, so people could correct their mistakes instead of getting ‘you did good’ and stuff, because that doesn’t help anybody.” Only one student wrote about feeling discouraged by all of the marks on her paper, “What discouraged me was the fact that I had made so many mistakes, but there’s nothing you can do about that.” However, that same student also wrote, “One thing that encouraged me was the letter. It shows me that you care.”

Surprisingly, when I asked students if the grammar exercises were helpful or seemed disconnected from their writing, most responded positively in their journals. And when I met with seven students to ask questions and videotape a reflection on how they felt about their essay assessment, three of the students had done the comma exercise and gave each other high-fives. One student shouted, “I learned that there are rules for commas instead of just putting them where you want to pause.” Another student suggested that the class do a Schoolhouse Rock Project where they perform songs about grammar rules to music they like.

***

I have always been uncomfortable with the idea that the teacher is the sole assessor of student work. As much as possible, I use peer critique and invite outside “judges” into my classroom, hoping students will care about these audiences’ assessment of their work more than mine. Yet, at the same time, students want meaningful feedback from me, and giving it to them often makes me feel like a judge. As students opened their envelopes and read their letters, our classroom took on the gravity of a courtroom. I’m not sure that giving them a completed rubric would have had the same effect, or that it would have inspired the same effort. More of my students did a thorough job on their revisions and earned A’s on their Lord of the Flies essay than on any other piece of writing that year. I was proud of their work, and they knew it.

For me, the biggest benefit of writing each student a letter was that all students had the opportunity to earn an A on their next draft (or, in some cases, with their third or fourth draft). That is the opportunity I wanted to make available to advanced and struggling writers alike. In the end, the students who received the letters above both earned As on their essays because of their responses to my suggestions and comments. Now, I just need to figure out how to make this process of assessment sustainable.

Unlike a judge, my students are with me everyday. They know I love them. I am not intimidating or novel. I do not like to be their main audience most of the time, but when I am, I try to challenge them and make them work hard, just like the judge did when she visited. I want my criticism to be helpful. I want to meet them where they are and push them from that point. I have found that it is easier to judge student work than it is to judge my assessment practices. In that department, my students are my jury and I must remember to spend time in the deliberation room to listen to the reasoning behind their verdict. Ultimately, their judgment is what matters most.

To learn more about Cady Staff’s on-going work and research, visit her digital portfolio on the HTH GSE website at https://hthgseedu2024.kinsta.cloud/alumni_dps/cady-staff/