Writing Groups and Revision Strategies

1. Writing Groups and Revision Strategies Target: literacy narratives

2. Writing Group Preparation No Class on Monday—YOU MUST ATTEND YOUR WRITING GROUP CONFERENCE (I will not accept your second draft if you do not attend) Second Drafts DUE 9/16 AT NOON: How to submit, what to submit, and where to submit • Upload revised literacy narrative to your personal blog (post as an attachment) • The body of this post should contain your 150-250 word reflective cover letter: • Explain the edits that you made to this draft • Explain your goals for this draft • Explain how you feel about this draft (what do you like about the draft, what don’t you like about the draft, what are specific problems that you are having, what are specific paragraphs or sentences that are giving you trouble) • Post AT LEAST 2-3 questions that you have for your group members (you might borrow questions right from the peer review sheet in FGC 145-146)

3. Writing Group Preparation Before your writing conference: • Visit the blogs of your group members (where can you find this? On the course blog under the tab labeled “Course Roster”) • Download and print the papers for each of your group members • Read each group member’s paper(take notes on the draft as you read) • Read and respond to each member’s reflective cover letter

4. Writing Group Preparation What should we be writing on drafts? • You should make comments on the draft that will help the writer know how to revise his/her paper • Make notes in the margin that let the writer know what you think is the thesis statement, topic sentences, where s/he is expressing his purpose, where you get confused as a reader, where you are pleased as a reader • ASK QUESTIONS: If you see something missing from the draft, write down a question in the margin; if you want more details, write down a question in the margin; if you get confused while reading, write down a question in the margin • Give suggestions: This is really interesting…might you make this the focus of the paragraph? As I am reading this, I’m not sure I understand how this relates to the last paragraph, could you use a transitional phrase here to help you—or—is this paragraph really necessary? I see you are having some difficulty meeting the page requirement, I think this would be a good place to add an additional paragraph about ____. • Review pages 145-146 in FGC. This is a peer review worksheet. We will not be using the peer review sheets physically—but—you should be considering these questions and responding to each group member’s paper based on them • Review pages 57-58 in LBH, there is an example of comments on a draft—this is a good model NOTE: writing groups are not editing groups, while you may note some spelling/grammar/mechanics issues, your focus should be on content, organization, and development

5. Writing Group Preparation What do we bring to the writing group? • Have a copy of your paper handy—we will be looking at our own copies of your draft as we give you feedback and you will want to be able to follow along • Have your printed and annotated copies of each group member’s paper (you will give these to each other at the end of the conference) • BRING COMMENTS – Again, be prepared to talk through your response as a reader. Again, we will chat for 15-20 minutes about each paper (I suggest that you come prepared to talk through the “Literacy Narrative Peer Response” worksheet, pages 145-146 in FGC—we will be using this to guide our discussion)

6. Revision as RE-Writing and RE-Thinking Post on your personal blog: Think of the most significant moment in your life with whatever literacy you are working with. What is the single most important moment? On your blog, free write---write down every single thing that you can about this moment. What happened? Where were you…what did it look like, who else was there? What happened? How it make you feel? Every little detail---keep writing… Describe the scene richly, so perhaps return to the prompts that we worked with the other day. For example, in this moment of importance, what did literacy (your particular literacy) look like, feel like, smell like, sound like, taste like?

7. Revision as RE-Writing and RE-Thinking Now that you have described every single thing that you can about this moment of significance…. Explain why it is so important to you--- • How did what occurred in this scene that you just drafted change things for you, make you realize something that you did not realize before, make you suddenly understand something? • What (specifically) about this particular moment makes it significant? • Did you come to a realization? What was it? Why was it important that you come to this realization? • Did this particular moment change you, how?

8. Revision as RE-Writing and RE-Thinking • If your thesis statement is something like—”Swimming literacy made me the person I am today”…you are being too general. If readers don’t know you…they have no idea what this actually means (well, who are you?) Similarly, HOW did swimming literacy (or whatever literacy you focus on) make you a ____ person and why is this important? • Try this…Swimming (sub your own) literacy taught me ________ and _______ by asking me to ________. This has affected my life by making me, as a person, _______ and ______.

9. Revision as RE-Writing and RE-Thinking • Take a moment to step back from your literacy narrative. • What is literacy…how do you (a) define and (b) describe the particular literacy that you are working with? (Note, by this, I mean what is dance or baseball or basketball literacy) • Why is literacy important? (Again, be specific to the literacy that you are talking about---why is it important that you know how to tumble or know how to dance…beyond that it makes you happy, beyond that it’s how you met all of your friends, beyond that its important to your entire family) • What about you as a person is the result of acquiring and learning this particular literacy?