As I said in my previous post, I am attempting to create a writing seminar while student teaching this spring, despite my coop teacher's advice. She has had bad luck with seminars in the past. With all of these recent articles we are reading, I feel confident that I will be able to properly construct a decent writing workshop. Luckily, I will attempt my first one while she's still leading the classroom so I can change things as needed the second time around.
I thought this article's title was awesome, dude. "Awesome, dude!" is an empty feedback quote teachers often overhear during poor peer reviews. VanDeWeghe, along with the excerpt from "After the End" that Dan gave us, gives us real strategies to use in scaffolding students for productive peer reviews.
I also really appreciated Atwell's message; empower students to help themselves. There's also a reward for you - a shorter line at your desk. Even today at the Young Writer's Project, I found myself struggling to give young writers useful feedback all of the time. I wish I would've read this article last night instead of tonight! The very useful list of encouraging, useful, and student-oriented prompts would've surely helped me out today.
Over all, I'm really appreciating all of the real-life, tangible advice these readings have given us as we venture off on our own. I am downloading and filing a lot of articles this semester!
Resource link: There is a lot of bad editing stuff out there on the web! I had a lot of trouble locating something useful! So, I reverted back to something here at the U of MN: the Minnesota Writing Project. I know all of you know what it is but I just wanted to remind people that it's not just for University of Minnesota students, but for K-college students all over MN. It's worth remembering.
Hi Rebecca,
ReplyDeleteWhile I do agree that Atwell's message "empower students to help themselves" is excellent advice, I find myself struggling to figure out how to do this in classes where students resent and resist any and all school work. I think she gave excellent tips for how to structure writing conferences, but what if students don't even have any writing to present during these individual conferences?
This has been my critique for a number of articles we have read this semester. Yes, they give wonderful advice on how to organize conferences, structure the revision process, and develop students ability to respond constructively to peers. But I think they fall short of telling us how to really connect with resistant writers who produce no work during writing workshops. I know that I am struggling with this dilemma at my school on the North side, and I am sure you are seeing your fair share of resistant writers at South.
So I can appreciate all the tips from these articles, but I really hope one article specifically addresses how to engage writers that do not produce during the classroom workshops. I think an article focusing on such a topic would benefit all of us, especially those of us in teaching in less well off urban schools.
See you in a few hours,
Corrie