Blog #12: Dominic Lopez

  

 

These are the areas of the reading that I wanted to discuss for this week: 

1.) I would really like to implement the method for teaching writing that is discussed in chapter five of the Warnock and Gasiewski text that has to do with peer reviews. In this method, students provide feedback to each other on the peer reviews and revisions that they do for their peers when reviewing each other’s writing. What I like about this method is that students will get feedback on the type of feedback that they are giving when they do peer reviews for others which allows them to see if the type of feedback they are giving is useful and effective rather than feedback that shows little effort. It helps them to understand when they aren’t being specific enough or reading their peer’s writing as thoroughly if their comments aren’t very detailed. It also allows them to help their peers improve their feedback as well which makes all of the student’s future revision skills and peer review skills that are in the class that much more effective. Students will also be able to practice articulating their ideas from their writing when questioning why a student did their feedback for their writing in a certain way which will help them in developing and arguing their ideas both verbally and into their writing. Lastly, it helps students reflect on their writing process and the writing process itself which makes them think about writing with metacognition. In their future writing following this activity, they will be more considerate of what they are writing and how and why they are writing both in their own writing and in their revision of their peer’s writing. 

2.) I also think that students being grouped together to work on one writing assignment together as referenced by the annotated bibliography assignment discussed in chapter six of the text is an interesting way to improve student writing. Students are so used to having to do papers and other writing assignments all on their own, but having students have to work together to write one assignment can give them some perspective on the writing process and their own writing. Their own writing skills will be challenged when they encounter how the people in their group write and when the people in the group respond to their writing when deciding which person’s writing should go in which part of the assignment. A student would be able to critique the writing of the people in their group as well since each student has to contribute some writing to the assignment. 

3.) In chapter six, I thought that the metawriting exercise of having students go through their writing to change a specific part of their sentences like replacing or removing all instances of the verb “to be” an engaging and impactful writing exercise for students. It gets student to begin to implicitly understand how grammar works and how even small specific changes to their writing can make their writing more original and communicate ideas differently. I think it can get students to see what mistakes or habits in their writing they are sticking to without realizing it and get them into the habit of frequently going through their writing to rearrange, remove, or replace aspects of their sentences.