Madeline CizMadia

Dr. Rieman
UWRT 1103
Response to Reading Kohn Essay
After youve completed the reading for class, please thoughtfully and thoroughly answer the
following questions. Type up your work, print it out, and bring it to class. You can write this
response in the form of an essay, a letter, a question and answer format. We will use these to guide
class discussion. This work also counts as part of your final grade and will be used in your portfolio.
1. Where did you do this reading? (in your room? the library? etc.) What time of the day? What
about the time and place helped or hindered your reading experience?
a. I read this piece in my room in the late afternoon. The room was quiet with little to no
disturbances; however, I read in pieces and took a few breaks. This did not hinder my
reading of the piece as much as reading it online did. Due to the length of the piece I
found it difficult to remember every thought I had regarding the writers opinion.
Ideally, highlighting and annotating the text would have helped me better focus on
what I read.
2. How did you engage with the text? For example, did you underline, highlight, annotate, take
notes, look up words, research anything you read about, just read? It may be helpful here to
indicate what format your text was inpaper copy or electronic and think about how the mode of
a text influences how you read.
a. Although I did read this text off of my computer, I still highlighted and annotated
where I thought I needed to. It was harder to engage with the text because I did not
completely agree with the authors viewpoints.

3. What did you learn in reading this text, both about yourself as a reader/writer and from the
content of the piece?
a. I learned that I accept that an author can defend their point very well even if I dont
agree with their opinions. I think that if I were to write a persuasive paper I would
write it in much the same way, with strong diction and an affirmative tone.
4. What questions do you have after reading this piece? What do you want to/need to explore more
fully?
a. After reading this piece I question the consequences of de-grading school systems.
Giving the students more control over their grades and not establishing a strong
system to assess the students abilities to learn could potentially destabilize the
learning process. Giving the students more control over their grades could also lead to
them wanting more control over other aspects of their education, such as deciding
whether or not they qualify to take a higher level or Advanced Placement class.

5. What personal experiences can you relate to this text?

a. I can relate to this text because my high school used my graduating class as the first
class to not have rankings. Personally I did not like it because I feel as if knowing my
ranking would have pushed me harder to move up. We only knew our tentative
standing by knowing which decile we ranked in.
6. What are your suggestions for how we may focus class discussion today? It may be offering a
quote you found interesting or confusing and want to explore more. It may be a concept you think
we should talk about. It could be some tangential idea you want to talk about. Or perhaps its
some guiding question for the class to consider.
a. I suggest that class discussion should focus on how exactly written assignments and
work should be evaluated. Those who want to share can bring up ideas on different
ways to evaluate work other than grades or numbers. Another topic to focus on could
be In what ways could a de-grading method of teaching succeed and in what ways
could it fail to enrich a learning experience?.
7. Why do you think I assigned you this reading for today?
a. I believe that you assigned this text to give you an idea of not only where we stood in
our beliefs regarding grading, but also to see how opinionated we are as a class. Some
of us may stand with the beliefs of this author and some may not. Seeing how we
state our opinions and explain why we chose to respond the way we did can give you
insight on how we think and respond to persuasive prompts.