Communal Corrections: Facilitating Class-Led Peer Revisions in College Composition Courses

Submitted by Brittney Sifford on
Duration
-
Abstract

After several years of teaching writing, it is clear that revision is the most important and most difficult part of the writing process.  I have stopped the traditional process of partnering student up, trading papers, and having them make random corrections.  Now, we correct papers as a class, we have substantive discussions about decisions in writing, and my students are actually learning how to be better writers.  I have used this in my ENG101 and ENG102 courses at EMCC, but this can easily be used in any course that incorporates writing.  I think this would be extremely effective in developmental courses. 

Division/Department
Completed Full Cycle
No
Course Number
ENG102
ENG101
Files
Attachment Size
cats.docx 15.03 KB
cats-student-sample.pdf 73.72 KB
revision-exercise.docx 13.64 KB

Comments

Kelly Loucy Mon, 01/22/2018 - 10:13am

Brittney, I love this idea! I have done something similar before the students start writing their own drafts where we will review past student papers, but I never thought about doing it as a peer review of current drafts. I would suspect that students might also put in additional effort to their draft, knowing one of their paragraphs might make it as a sample. I love that this exercise models how to do revision and engages the students in conversation about writing. 

Teri Graham Tue, 01/23/2018 - 10:34am

Brittney - I appreciate the fact that now the whole class becomes a resource for the student rather than just a partner.  Also, if a student is nervous about not understanding something you have created an environment that encourages sharing and dialog.  Do you by any chance have any data - previous semesters correction results in comparison to the results after you have implemented this change?

Becky Baranowski Tue, 01/23/2018 - 12:41pm

Brittany,  

Thanks for taking time to submit this CATS.  You may have completed the cycle with this.  It sounds like you may have previous data/observations from using the partnering method as compared to this peer review method.  You made an improvement plan, implemented it and have results based off of this.  I may try this with my journal writing I have students do in my math classes.  Thanks!