Teaching Writing -- Developing an Editorial Process

Tomorrow I am giving my students their first writing assignment of the year. We did a lot of writing at the end of last year and I was quite pleased with the progress the students had made. This year, I want for that progress to continue and I've done a lot of thinking about how to make sure their writing keeps improving. There are a couple of things I am beginning to make sure that happens.Instituting an Editorial ProcessA couple of times last year I had the students take their writing to a classmate to be read and I was pleased with how helpful this process was. I learned with my last class that a few things need to be in place in order for a peer editing program to be successful.

• Accountability. Reviewers need to be held accountable for their remarks. They need to sign the review sheet and it should be turned in (with the reviewed paper.) I insist on this not because I need to make sure students are being kind to each other, but because I need to make sure they are being hard enough on their classmates. The temptation for reviewers is to read it through and say, "I think it's good," and say nothing more. Reviewers need to know that it is important and helpful when they critique their classmates' work. They're not being mean, they're actually being nice.
• Form. The teacher needs to create a solid framework for the reviewing process. Perhaps the process begins with the writer performing a self-review, then finding a reviewer, reading the piece aloud, then the reviewer reading silently. Before reading silently, the reviewer should have a review form to fill out that gives guidance on things to look for. The reviewer then fills out this form, signs it and gives everything back to the writer.

Ideally the next step would be for the writer and reviewer to sit down together and have a writing workshop. This is a good way to ensure that revisions are actually made. Students' temptation to write it once and call it finished is incredibly strong and it takes a concerted effort to convince them to sit down and revise. Many of my students were reluctant because they didn't want their finished writing to be messy. They thought that if I asked them to revise they would have to rewrite the entire paper so they wouldn't have cross-outs, inserts and arrows.

In addition to improving our editorial process, this year I plan on only rarely collecting a piece of writing the day that it is assigned. I am hoping that by refusing to accept writing immediately after it is written, I can encourage students to take another look at their work. I have also asked that students ask their parents to read over their writing the night they take it home. I spoke with the parents at our recent parent meeting about doing this and everyone understood the importance of this individual one-on-one writing workshop help.

My hope is that with these procedures in place my students' writing will continue to improve.