Students often struggle with generating ideas for writing. They labor through jot listing and creating idea webs. Once that is done, they grab onto a topic idea and begin writing with some type of organizational strategy in mind to create an appropriate beginning, middle, and end. Once it’s down, they feel success. Getting it down was enough of a challenge, and the thought of having to go back and make changes is even more overwhelming. They are ready to turn it in. What are some ways we can encourage students to improve their drafts by purposefully revising and editing their writing?
In In the Middle, Nancy Atwell stresses the importance of teaching students to be responders to their own writing before peer conferencing. As teachers, we can easily model what that looks like by placing our own draft under the document camera and sharing our own thinking about our own writing. We can start with some guiding questions that match one of our recent mini-lessons. For example, if we are focusing on good beginnings for narrative writing, we might read aloud our beginning, point out the anchor chart of types of good beginnings, and reflect out loud on whether or not ours fits the list. We might think aloud as we re-read and recognize some sections might seem confusing.
We also can model at the same time how this self-reflection can lead to improved peer conferencing. If a student self-reflects first, she can go into a peer conference with a specific question. For example, in my modeling with my own piece, I might say to students, “I think there are some parts of my writing that might cause some confusion for the reader. Can you tell me if you are confused?” I would then ask the student to read aloud my piece of writing. As I listen to someone else read my piece, I might actually “hear” where that confusion creeps in. I might then ask what causes the confusion… poor word choice? not enough details? a sentence that just doesn’t make sense?
At the point of modeling this strategy, the students in our room are most likely at different points of drafting. I would stop at this point and give every student 2 sticky notes. I would ask them to read as much as they have written (not everyone needs to be at the same point in drafting) and create one question they want to ask their conferencing partner about their writing. I would provide a list of possible questions that relates to recent mini-lessons. I would ask each student to write one question on a sticky note. I would then have students exchange papers with partners and take turns reading aloud one another’s papers. On the clean sticky note, I would have the writer take notes on what she realizes needs improvement based on the reader’s read-aloud and the reader’s answer to the question.
That would be the student’s first peer conference. Short, to the point, not enough time to get off topic, and just enough time with few enough steps to keep students focused on the task. I would move around the room as students conferred and listen. At the end of this time, I would selectively share what I heard. I would highlight the good questions and the productive feedback. I would then give students a 3rd sticky note and provide a possible sentence starter, “After self-reflection and peer conferencing, my next step as a writer is….”
I can remember times when I simply told students to get with a partner and confer and all that I heard was a lot of “That’s good” or “I like it” feedback. I too quickly decided that peer conferences didn’t work, so I would have to be the one to confer with students. Without requiring self-reflection first, students would come to a writing conference expecting me to “just tell them what to do.”
Before any revising and editing can happen, students first need to recognize places that changes need to be made. Through teacher modeling, self-reflection, and focused peer conferencing, students can begin to recognize ways to polish the rough draft.
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