Halfway through the course

Halfway through the course, one thing that I appreciate is our daily writing prompts. I think it is a good way to get my brain working in the morning, especially during summer. Having the daily prompts allows me to get into the writer's frame of mind for the rest of the class. I also like it, because it allows me to practice writing for a nonacademic setting. Yes I am in class, but I can write these responses however I please so there is no need to worry about grammar or anything that would make my responses academic. In 8th grade, my teacher gave each of us a journal and told us that we were to write in it 5 days a week, that what the last time I was given a task of daily writing. So at the beginning of the quarter when I was told we would be doing daily writing activities I immediately got nervous because I thought what am I suppose to write about? Well through these prompts and my blog that I am suppose to be doing almost every day, I think my mind is slowly starting to be turned into a writer's mind that does not stress out about writing. I realize that by doing these writing prompts, I am to reflect on the way I feel about certain things, and I can write about what is on my mind at the current moment. It is nice to not be intimidated by writing, but to find it as a release.

At this point in the quarter, I think that it would be useful to talk more about grading and how to best manage that part of assigning students a paper. We briefly touched on grading with the narrative paper, so it would be nice to talk about it again with the other two papers. I would like to possibly find an online resource that gives tools for different forms of grading. I do not want to always use a rubric or a check sheet. It would be nice to see what else is out there, so that I can change up my grading procedures in order to give my students a different form of feedback after each major assignment if possible. Also, I do not know if there is a solid answer for this, but how do we decide on a rubric if a paper gets 100% or misses points for certain things. I do not want to become biased and think that a students paper is excellent while the another is good simply because of the way I feel about the student.