Deb Blaz
Using a highlighter to encourage students to learn from their mistakes in writing

I got very, very discouraged when returning papers to students who simply looked at the grade at the top, and not at the corrections I had painstakingly made on their papers.

Spurred by my own children's feedback from college, (who had told me they could submit papers once for corrections before a final grade was given), I began using a highlighter on my students' papers. If there was an error, it was highlighted, and that's all. Spelling errors, usage, grammar, all were merely highlighted. At first I was using different colored highlighters for spelling versus grammar, but that was confusing, and I went to just using one color.

Then I returned the papers, and students were required to correct all errors. I used the "Ask Three; then see me" rule. If students asked three classmates and none could determine what the error was, I would help (and teach a mini-lesson on that topic to the whole group). Then I took the corrected papers home, reviewed the highlighted sections, and assigned a final grade.

It took almost no time at all just to look at highlighted sections, so looking at each paper twice proved not to be too much extra work...and the improved proficiency was more than worth it. The 'students-teaching-students' dynamic of the Ask Three rule was good, and, when required to correct the same errors over and over, students made much less of them.

Also, the requirement to redo papers resulted in better first drafts; students seemed less likely to turn in a hastily-written first draft, as they knew they'd have a lot more work to redo theirs than their classmates, who, when done, were encouraged to use some online activities such as freerice.com.