The Roots of the Equation

For previous portfolios in my class, students have asked me how I want them to format their work. Should they write their reflections all on one sheet, or on each assignment? If on one sheet, should get organize by the assignment it refers to, or by the standard? I had said it didn’t matter to me, they could do what they like – and this may have contributed to how hard it was to grade them all.

This time I demanded they write the reflections on the assignments themselves (or, at least, on a slip attached to that assignment), and it was so much easier to grade – I didn’t have to flip back and forth between the reflections and the assignment to see if what they wrote was accurate (often it isn’t – they’ll say they did a thing they didn’t actually do). And the few students who didn’t follow directions took so much long to grade. Maybe I shouldn’t have graded them at all – just returned them and had them redo it.

So I think I’m going to be stricter about formatting from now on. There are things that are important to have students have a say on in class – but I don’t think this is one of them.