Based on my past few years of teaching, I believe that I can teach students to write high quality pieces of writing regarding content. However, I feel that I struggle with teaching editing. I have a hard time getting my students to really take their time to do a good job of editing. I recently read Chapter 9 in “Writing Essentials” by Regie Routman. I really liked her approach to editing. First, she makes an editing expectation list with her class. I believe this would give my students a voice and hold them more accountable. Then, Regie Routman said that you should firmly tell students not to waste your conference time if they have not completed every editing expectation on the list, reread their writing, and fixed up most of their misspellings. I really liked this idea and approach and plan on trying it in my classroom in the future. I also liked the idea of doing a student directed writing conference or using a self-evaluation before a conference towards the end of the year after I have directed many writing conferences to model for the students.
I also liked the expectation list. It reminds me of a rubric, how you make sure the expectations are clear for the students.
ReplyDeleteKatie, good for you in feeling confident in teaching how to write quality peices in content! I also like Routman's description of how to make students more accountable in editing -- and that we shouldn't be doing any editing for them that they can do for themselves. So true! We need to hold the red pen and send them back.
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