revision

A Revision Plan for You + Your Students

Allison Marchetti Allison Marchetti, assessing writing, feedback, revision, Uncategorized Tags: , , Leave a comment

KISS. Keep it simple, stupid. A mantra I usually don’t heed until the end of the year. When I don’t have a choice.

Our end-of-the year to-do lists are sometimes so lengthy and complicated, the only way to keep up with them is to simplify. To pare the lists down to their essentials. To prioritize.

Sometimes student drafts feel a lot like the end of the year: fraught with chaos and  accompanied by a miles-long to do list. Fix your commas. Bring out your voice here. Can you say more about that? Add detail in the fourth paragraph. Have you thought about a title? Consider zooming out more in your conclusion. Don’t forget to italicize the title of the book and refer to the author by her last name! Paragraphing needs work. Let’s have a conference!

Just as our heads swim at the end of the year, students’ heads swim when they receive a paper — or have a conference — with copious amounts of motley feedback. Continue reading →

Revision: A New Kind of Final Exam

Rebekah O'Dell alternative grading, revision, Stefanie Jochman, Writing Workshop Tags: , , , 8 Comments

 

Screen Shot 2016-01-23 at 10.23.11 PMInspired by Rebekah’s decision to quit grading earlier this year, I have been trying to take more risks with assessment in my own classroom. I haven’t gone grade-free quite yet, but I’m looking for more opportunities to involve my students in the assessment process. Since it is end-of-term time for many schools, I thought it would be helpful to share what I tried with my freshman classes for our semester exam in December.

The Dilemma: How can I return to writing without interrupting a performance unit? How can I assess students’ writing progress without assigning a brand new final exam essay?

My freshman curriculum is structured such that, by the time final exams roll around, my classes have moved away from writing workshop into a Romeo and Juliet performance activity that combines with a brief objective test to form their exam. I really like using the performance activity as part of the final, but every year, I feel like my final assessment shortchanges all the work students have done as writers earlier in the semester. I want my final exam to reflect students’ progress in reading, speaking, listening, and writing!

The Solution: Independent revision of past work with help from Google Apps for Education
Continue reading →

Meaningful Revision in Five Days

Allison Marchetti Writing Workshop Tags: 8 Comments

Tara Smith of Two Writing Teachers once posed the idea of an in-between study, a study that occurs during the brief pause at the end of one unit and the beginning of another. In the middle of December, I found myself with an extra week before exams began — not quite enough time to start something new before seeing students off for the holiday.

I had been looking for a way to teach revision meaningfully — not as a series of single lessons at the end of each unit that often felt rushed and last-minute — but as a true unit of study that would allow students to explore different revision techniques and experience the power of transformation. At the time, students were working on assembling midterm writing portfolios, so it seemed a perfect opportunity for a mini unit on revision. Continue reading →

Responding to the Writer, Not the Writing

Allison Marchetti Writing Workshop Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Lucy Calkins’ wisdom about teaching the writer (and not the writing) continues to reverberate decades after the publication of her book The Art of Teaching Writing. Yet many of us do not teach in a way that promotes writers. I know because I was one of them.

In the past, I taught writing one composition at a time, units with finite beginnings and endings. Each stack of papers collected was an island…I gave little thought to how one student’s paper fit into the larger scheme of her writing. Students received grades and feedback, and we moved on without much reflection. I taught writing in this way because I didn’t know any better. I had good intentions, but I didn’t know another way.

Until two years ago when a colleague put Penny Kittle’s Write Beside Them into my hands, and reintroduced me to Don Graves and writing workshop through Penny’s work.

Writing workshop changed everything. It refocused my teaching and convinced me that teaching writing–even teaching writing well–is not enough. We have to teach writers.

Continue reading →