Reaction to MY Access! Writing Program Video

As a Delawarian, it is very refreshing to see my home state get a little publicity at St. Peter's. Red Clay Consolidated School District was not known as one of the upper echelon districts in the state of Delaware, but it is very interesting to see that they are using new technology to improve reading and writing. The program that RCCSD is using seems like a great idea that would benefit many teachers and students nationwide.

With over one hundred students, assigning one five-paragraph essay turns into hours and hours of grading that may take a week to return to the students, or longer. I'm not going to go down the road of complaining about the grading, but the problem that I have noticed is that many of my students only care about the grade on the paper compared to the comments. If the essays are returned a week later, students will briefly look at the comments, look at the grade, and in most cases, throw the paper away. One "perfect world" solution would be to have students read the comments that I have written on their papers and have them see me either before/after school to receive their grade. In my opinion, the only way to improve on writing, is to talk about the writing......talk about the positives and negatives of individual students' papers.

I would love to find more information on this program to see if I would be able to implement it in my school's curriculum. Thanks for the great video.