‘I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.’

- W.B.Yeats, He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven

A Hierarchy of Concerns

When reading and responding to another’s writing, it’s important to engage with the ideas and acknowledge what is interesting and well put, as well as improvements that can be made.

Bean (1996)* talks helpfully in terms of a hierarchy of concerns in reading work to give feedback. The quality and organisation of ideas and the development and clarity of thought are at the top, and mechanical features, such as spelling and sentence construction, at the bottom. The idea is not to get bogged down with the bottom of the hierarchy unless you are satisfied with the top: for example what is being argued, the way paragraphs link to one another, the overall coherence and focus.

One of the goals of giving effective feedback is to help students take responsibility for their own learning and writing. Thus the common practice of drawing students’ attention to, say, spelling and punctuation mistakes by placing an X in the margin and asking the student to find and correct the problem themselves, will actually be more productive than if the teacher makes all the corrections herself.

Excellent further reading on assessment and other issues related to thinking and writing can be found in Bean. *