Every task page publishes its criteria table on the day the task starts. Most people read it once, on that day, and then hand in something that misses two rows they could have repaired in a quarter of an hour. This page is that quarter of an hour.
We do it together the first time, on a piece belonging to nobody in this room, so that the move is not new to you on the day the work being judged is yours.
The routine
- Open the task page and put the criteria table beside your work — two windows, or the page printed.
- Take the rows one at a time. Against each one write yes, not yet, or partly, and one sentence of evidence: the paragraph, the line, the thing a reader would be able to point at. “Yes” with nothing after it is a wish.
- Name your weakest row. Not the fastest to fix — the weakest.
- Write one sentence saying what you will change, and when.
- Change it, in what is left of this period or in the next one. This is why the self-check never lands on a hand-in day: a judgement you have no time to act on is a worry with a date on it.
Steps 2 and 3 are the whole exercise. Naming your weakest row honestly is harder than the repairing, because it means writing down the thing you were hoping nobody would look at.
One row, judged honestly
From The Story Behind the Story: “Application — the story uses the techniques from the unit deliberately, and the writing is controlled.”
Partly. The perspective is a real choice and I can say why — it is the sister who tells it, so the reader finds out late. But the middle two pages are seven long sentences that all start the same way, which is not control, it is drift. Weakest row. Change: read those two pages aloud and break three of the sentences, before the period ends.
That entry is worth more than “good” written against all three rows, and it took less time to write.
Two things that feel like honesty and are not
“I know what I meant.” So do you. The rows are about what a reader gets, and a reader has only the page. If you have to explain a sentence out loud for it to work, the row is not yet and the sentence is the fix.
“There is a quotation in it.” A row asking for evidence is not asking whether a quotation is present. Ask instead what the sentences after the quotation do: if they say the quotation again in your own words, the evidence is decoration and the row is partly at best. See The Paragraph for where the actual work goes.
Where this fits
What you decide about your own work is not part of your mark, and neither is what a classmate decides — see How Marks Work. That cuts both ways: nothing you write here can cost you anything, which is exactly what makes it worth writing honestly.
What it changes is the work. A self-check that ends in a repair is the cheapest improvement available in this course, and by the last unit it is something you do without being asked, which is the actual point. Keep the checks in your Reading Journal and read them beside each other when you build the pair for Showing Growth — the row you keep marking not yet is the story of your term.