Blog for January 25

It appeared to me that all three readings pointed to ways to ease the work load and stress from the teacher, while doing something that is also beneficial for the students. I found Carney’s article insightful as I had just spent Friday afternoon grading World Literature essays. It was very time-consuming and I had trouble pointing out all of the errors. I realize this was a waste of time for me and for the student trying to decipher my critiques. I should have focused on the high-order concerns and pointed to one or two issues I saw rather than trying to fix everything at once. Had I prioritized, it would have been far less overwhelming for both me and the student. The HOCs and LOCs are a tool I will definitely take with me into the classroom. I think the following website would be helpful to students to highlight important issues as they begin peer editing. You could have students focus on different aspects throughout different stages of revision.

http://coe.sdsu.edu/people/jmora/WritingRubrics/sld006.htm

I really like the idea of group or peer editing. I think Williams gives very clear and concise directions on how to approach this in your own classroom, which was very helpful. However, I think Atwell did a nice job summarizing it’s usefulness in the following quote: “In the past I relied too much on conferences with individuals as the forum for helping students reflect on and improve their writing, at the expense of discovering what we might accomplish together, and I put too much pressure on myself” (Minilessons, 151). When students work collaboratively to better each other’s papers they are learning to do far more than write. They are learning to articulate what good writing is and they are also learning how to accept and learn from peer criticism (in addition to numerous other benefits). All the while the teacher reduces her own stress load by allowing students to help and cooperatively learn from each other.

The other thing that resonated throughout the readings was going further in depth rather than covering more topics. It takes time to produce multiple drafts of a paper but it seems to greatly increase understanding which in turn makes that knowledge transferable to other situations. Ultimately, greater understanding is more likely produce independent learners, one of the fundamental goals of teaching.