Class Blogger for the Day

Today Ms. Lang started class on a light note by asking us what our least favorite color was, as a way to take attendance. It appears that yellow is the popular color to dislike. We then got right down to business and discussed the assigned reading on how to respond to reviewing other peoples’ writing. The talk stressed the importance of constructive criticism, understanding the writer’s goals by having a conversation with the writer, and not worrying about correcting grammar. By the end of the discussion, we were eager and ready to start reviewing what our peers had come up with for our “discovery draft”. After splitting up into groups of three, we took a few minutes to brainstorm questions that we would want our reviewers to respond to. Then, we exchanged drafts and began reading what our classmates had written, while taking ten minutes to talk about what that person wrote. We talked to our peers about how their paper was going to flow, the transitions that they planned on using, and how we could further develop our ideas to make the content of the paper more descriptive and overall better. Of course no class would be complete without writing a blog, so Ms. Lang challenged us to reflect on the writing workshop that we had just participated in, and blog about the feedback we received from our group. We thought about what advice was and wasn’t helpful, and what we will include in our next draft. Overall, class today was devoted to challenging us to think more about the goals of our paper. By working in groups and getting feedback from other people, we were forced to think about our work in a much different perspective. Although this is still part of one of the beginning stages in the writing process, it is certainly a crucial one because it can make the difference in whether the paper is interesting to read, or just another college paper that was written the night before class without much thought. Class concluded with the announcement that our homework is to read an article about identifying plagiarism, which can be found on the class blog.



Ms. Lang teaching us about reviewing drafts:

 

 

 

Students hard at work in the writing workshop: