Teaching Note: 

This activity is a modification of the one described by Jane E. Hindman in her 1999 article “Inventing Academic Discourse: Teaching (and Learning) Marginal Poise and Fugitive Truth.” This activity works best if you can draw on a stash of former papers for your class and is best done in small groups. You will also need whatever rubric you grade with in your class as well as maybe 2-3 sample essays per group. This is an activity that can be repeated throughout the semester if your rubric changes with your assignments or can be done at the beginning of the semester to help students understand what the expectations are around academic discourse in your class. 

First, provide your rubric to students along with 1-2 examples of papers graded on that rubric. 

Then, arrange students in groups and distribute a selection of essays to each group.

Ask students to read those essays, read the rubric, and discuss them with their groupmates. Have each group come up with a grade for the essays in their possession and a reason for why they gave the essay that grade.  Finally facilitate a discussion with students about why they gave the grades they assigned, what they found confusing or unusual in the rubric and what they were individually thinking about as they graded. 

For example: 

1. What did you think would be the most important thing to grade in the essay?
2. What did the rubric privilege in the responses? 
3. How did you determine what grade to give the essay? 

Then you can use this to segue into a discussion about what gets valued in academic writing- and that often organization and development might outweigh local errors in grammar and syntax.