R/W post #7
Throughout this semester I have been growing as a student and as an educator. During our weekly readings I have been able to reflect upon my own understanding of the writing process and how I can best present it to my future students. During week 7 we were assigned the reading Giving Feedback: Preparing Students for Peer Review and Self-Evaluation written by Zoi A. Philippakos. This reading in particular stood out to me as revising and editing are difficult steps as I go through my own writing process, and essential part of this step is peer feedback. While I do value peer feedback and think that it provides the writer with good insight, it made me realize that I was never trained to be a peer reviewer. Teaching this skill explicitly to students is the only way to make peer feedback useful. It must address the good portions while also be constructive and questioning certain choices made by the author. I really liked the idea of having a rubric for students to fill out while peer reviewing. This scaffolds students into giving peers descriptive and constructive feedback, and it is easy to see when something is missing from their writing.
During week eight we had the Letter Genre workshop which was beautifully run by Amanda and Lauren. During the reading for this genre in Tompkins I realized how important letter writing can be for emerging readers and writers. This genre has such a specific set up and is general knowledge that should always be taught despite the growth in technology. As I read for class I realized that I was unaware of all of the different types of letters; friendly letters, emails, postcards, business letters, and simulated letters. I enjoyed the strategy Lauren and Amanda showed us which was the online letter creator. This multimodal approach to teaching this genre can appeal to a wide variety of learners and get them engaged in their writing.
Through both of these readings and activities I have been able to make discoveries in my own learning of the writing process and develop a better understanding of how to teach these two skills. I intend on trying strategies like peer review, scaffolded letter writing (on paper and online), and other methods we have learned throughout the weeks with future students. I have already used some of these strategies as I finish work for other classes and it has truly made differences!
P.S. Along with this learning I am being enriched by a multitude of mentor texts which is something I truly value from this class and I have a very limited idea of specific mentor texts.
McKenzie, I'm so glad you are gaining much needed practical knowledge as a teacher as well as useful knowledge to be a better reader and writer. To allow yourself to ability to explore deeply the topics we are discussing in class, in you next open entry, I encourage you to stick to the topics posed in one week's session. As you say, there is so much to discuss, which is why the goal for these entries is not to feel pressure to cover everything, but to select a key concept that you want to explore further.
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