How to Create an Essay Comment Bank for Quick and Effective Feedback

A comment bank is a pre-written list of essay feedback comments that you can use to quickly leave feedback on student essays. The goal is to pre-create comments for points that you find yourself making repeatedly on student essays. In addition, if created strategically, the comment bank can be an independent student learning opportunity targeted to the goals for the writing assignment. In other words, your comment bank can direct students to independent learning on the topic of choice.

This process will  streamline the essay feedback process, so you can reduce, if not eliminate copy editing, thereby simplifying feedback. It will also provide accountability for students’ learning. Mimicking writing decisions in the real world (e.g., “Should I use affect or effect in this email to my boss?”), students will learn from outside sources and ultimately make their own editorial decisions. This learning opportunity is far more likely to bring about long-term writing improvement versus the simple click to accept revisions that you would make for them.

Still, there are some key considerations that can make or break this activity. First and foremost, you should absolutely go digital when you teach the writing process. Trust me, it’s really the best way for the comment bank to work as an efficient grading tool for you and an effective learning tool for students. Even as an AP English teacher, my students start the year writing completely digitally. It’s not until at least the second semester, after they’ve had revision and practice that we start doing timed, in-class handwritten essays. You may also want to read How to Plan A Successful Writing Unit by Focusing on Revision.

In this article, I’m going to walk you through how to get started with creating your own comment bank system to work for you and your students. Plus, at the end, I’ll share my comment bank that you can use in its entirety, or piece together to make your own.

Step 1: Keep it simple.

The first and important step is to keep it simple. For example, comment banks with 50+ comments, confusing numbering systems, or multiple-step tasks take longer to figure out than just leaving a new comment in the first place.

The solution is to keep it simple. I generally recommend no more than ten pre-written comments. Here’s why:

1. Our short-term memory capacity is 7±2 items. Though you don’t have to memorize your comments, I argue when providing feedback, we’re asking our brains to do a lot: comprehend and evaluate at a minimum. Keeping your comment bank simple doesn’t mean you give feedback on other items, it just means you’ll be able to use the comment bank more effectively and efficiently. Plus, going back and forth between the essay and comments is distracting and adds an extra step. The goal is to keep the list simple enough that our limited STM storage capacity can help us out.
2. To provide accountability and learning opportunities, each of your pre-written comments will include an independent mini-lesson, a short video, a podcast to listen to, or an article for reading. Some students will need to complete many of these tasks. Over ten can become very overwhelming to students.
3. Choosing under ten will help students focus on specific learning goals that are geared to your assignment. These can change in whole or in part with each assignment to provide a new focus, if necessary. 
4. I’m going to encourage you to reflect on your comment bank with each essay. Therefore, you’ll want to modify it based on the needs of your students. 

Step 2: Make a feedback list. 

Without extended thinking, you can probably list your students top ten writing issues or points of improvement. For example, I know right away that my students struggle with comma splice, awkward wording, commas and quotations, and punctuating titles. These are points that have come up over and over again for the past 12 years of my teaching career. So, I know before I even get started that I undoubtedly will have to comment on these items in my students’ essays. 

However, they don’t all need to be comments in my comment bank. For example, a quick and simple full-class mini-lesson would be more efficient and effective for teaching students how to punctuate titles. On the other hand, comma splice is a bit more challenging. I may need to do a mini-lesson and then reinforce this with a comment and independent mini-lesson on an individual basis for students who need further practice. 

If you can’t list your students’ most pressing writing points (let’s say you’re a new teacher or you moved to a new grade level), you can ask students to write a low-stakes journal entry as a writing sample. A quick read through should give you all you need to know. Don’t be overwhelmed if your students have many, many errors. Commas, in general, tend to be a major area that needs improvement. It can be helpful to focus on a few specific areas for this essay and then focus on a new set on the next essay.

Put it into practice:

Make a list of all of your students’ writing issues or areas of improvement. You might have a pretty big list, but that’s fine! In the next step, you’re going to refine your list.

Step 3: Refine your feedback list. 

Now that you have your list, the next step is to refine your list to identify the top ten. It can be very helpful to start with your objective for the assignment first, and then work backwards to create a comment bank that relates to your list.

For instance, my AP English Language and Composition class writes rhetorical analysis essays at the beginning of the year. The objective for this essay is to write an essay that analyzes how the writer or speaker’s rhetorical choices help the writer achieve his or her purpose. Therefore, based on this purpose, I’ll need a comment about integrating evidence from a source, one about citing direct quotations, one about using commas and quotations, and one about developing commentary to support evidence. Once I have these four, then I’ll add in a few more that I know students will need help with, like comma splice.

Put it into practice:

Choose your top ten now. Remember, it doesn’t have to be ten exactly.

Step 4: Write your feedback comments.

Once you have your comment topics, it’s time to write your comments. Rather than just throwing a rule at them, I like to explain the topic, ask a question, and provide a suggestion. Here’s an example:

Awkward wording: This sentence has confusing sentence structure or wording that makes it difficult to understand. Is there a simpler way to write it? Try reading this sentence out loud.

If it’s a grammatical consideration that will likely show up in the essay more than once, I will make a comment on the first one that I notice. Then, I’ll include a beautifully simple, yet important phrase that effectively will end your days of copy editing line by line. The phrase is “revise through.” Here’s an example: 

Comma splice: A comma splice is a grammatical error that happens when two independent clauses (or a group of words that could stand on their own as a complete sentence) are combined with just a comma. To correct this, add a conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) after your comma. Another option is to replace the comma with a semicolon. Finally, you could just separate the sentences and add a period to the first example. Revise throughout your essay. 

Put it into practice:

Write your comments now. Remember, explain, ask, and/or suggest to guide your feedback.

Step 5: Add in independent mini-lessons for full-class feedback.

To really kick learning into high gear, you can add one final step to your comment: the independent mini-lesson. I suggest including a link to your mini-lesson right into the comment box. The less steps students have to take to learn, the more likely they’ll attempt it on their own and learn from it. 

You can keep it simple by providing more reading, or you can make it interactive with a lesson. Of course, you can create your own mini-lesson in a Google Doc, Google Slide, or the Microsoft equivalent, but we’re talking about saving time, so why reinvent the wheel? There are so many high-quality resources already created. Here are some suggestions for the comma splice comment example from above: 

• Grammar Girl’s 5-minute podcast episode on comma splices
• Grammarly’s blog post on comma splices 
• Khan Academy’s YouTube video on comma splices

It took me only a few minutes to find these three examples. You certainly can choose the one you think will resonate best with your students, or even better, you can provide all three and give students choice. 

I personally stop at this point. The accountability piece for students in my class is their revision notes, which I’ve written about extensively here. However, you could use EDpuzzle to create an interactive activity with the podcast or the video. 

Put it into practice: 

Add links to independent mini-lessons to each of your comments.  

Step 6: Put it into practice.

Here’s what it looks like when I put them together: 

Comma splice: A comma splice is a grammatical error that happens when two independent clauses (or a group of words that could stand on their own as a complete sentence) are combined with just a comma. To correct this, add a conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) after your comma. Another option is to replace the comma with a semicolon. Finally, you could just separate the sentences and add a period to the first example. Revise throughout your essay. Check out these sources for more practice and further information:

• Grammar Girl’s 5-minute podcast episode on comma splices
• Grammarly’s blog post on comma splices 
• Khan Academy’s YouTube video on comma splices

Now that you’ve created your comments. You can upload them to the comment bank option Google Classroom or QuickMarks in TurnItIn, for example. When you’re ready to use them, a quick click is all you’ll need to add the comment. 

For a free copy of my latest comment bank, sign up below, and I’ll email them to you.

Bonus: Reflect and revise.

The final step is to reflect and revise. Are students still making the same errors? How can you provide further remediation? Perhaps, a full-class mini-lesson would do the trick. If students have improved in this area, maybe it’s time to move on to new comments or just simplify and eliminate ones you no longer need.

While this process takes a little bit of time to set up, it can save you hours worth of grading and provide richer, more dynamic feedback that will actually improve students’ writing.