I really enjoyed reading this article! I think the article gave many great ideas and insights into student writing, conferencing, and responding. What I liked most about her ideas, was the pages and pages of questions to use for editing a paper. From what I have seen in high school classrooms, is that many times when students are asked to revise their own papers or to peer-edit a friend's, they are either given no guidelines at all, or are given just a handful. I don't think a paper will ever be written to its best ability by only checking for spelling or punctuation mistakes. Instead, Atwell lists several questions about purpose, information, leads, conclusions, titles, and style. She really covers all the bases, and gives her students the BEST chance of revising their paper. I think it would be really cool to have all of these topics on posters around the room, listing out the editing questions for each one. That way, when students are sitting in class, just staring at their paper, thinking about how they can change it, they can look up, read a question, and go back through looking for a more specific thing. Another thing I really liked about this article, is the way Atwell dealt with her students when they needed help. Her specific example with Arelitsa on page 50 was a great example of how a teacher should respond. Arelitsa was stuck on something with her paper, and needed help knowing where to go next. Instead of solving her problem and telling her exactly what to do, the teacher simply asked a few probing things to get Arelitsa to think and come to the conclusion on her own.
Interesting stuff... I'm excited to actually use this someday.
-Lacy
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I really like your idea about posting suggestions on poster board throughout the classroom. I can definitely see some serious success coming from that idea. Student tend to daydream, and when they do, they just stare off at a wall in the classroom. By having attractive looking suggestions on how to peer-edit scattered along the walls, students will essentially be staring at what it is they are supposed to be focusing on. Almost like subliminal messages. After awhile, they will probably become memorized in many of my students' minds.
Along with posting suggestions on how to better one's writing abilities, I plan to have inspirational quotes on my classroom walls. As a student, I always enjoyed reading them. Many times, I could agree with them and reassure myself that I could succeed. Although not every student would buy in to my optimistic classroom atmosphere, some would, and those would be the students that I could be proud to say that I was able to impact.
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