Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Ideas for Revision (from WriteBoston)

As a follow-up to tonight's WriteBoston PD (Nov. 16):


The dilemma I shared with my colleagues was with the writing process, and the constant desire to get more out of revisions. Like all of us, I struggle with how to receive a draft, offer advice, and then have students revise their papers in a timely manner (and without having to grade 600 drafts). Often I just grade and say, “Do THIS better next time.” Thankfully I got some great advice through our Consultancy Protocol activities tonight. 

I think I’d definitely like to start utilizing Google Docs more in the peer revision process. I use it quite extensively to grade papers myself, but the idea of having students offer feedback TO each other – which I can then view – sounded pretty appealing. In addition, I like the idea of modeling peer revising (I’d always passed out a sheet and told them to just go at it!), then explicitly teaching to patterns. If I’m noticing that most of my students are struggling with intros, then I’m going to model a sample intro (likely a student from another class) and have students work in class to create or revise their own. I get worried about keeping pace with the curriculum, but the feedback I received tonight made it more likely that I’ll take a week or two-week chunk of time to address writing mid-unit. Who says I can't stop in the middle of "Julius Caesar" to work on those papers analyzing Brutus' funeral monologue? 

Overall, tonight was very valuable to me, and I think I’ll employ a few different strategies to help my students improve throughout the process. Thanks everyone!

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