Part I consists of advice for personally responding to student writing. These are pretty good pieces of advice, mostly because they did not come from me.

Part II consists of helpful links to facilitate writing response. I hope you find these tips useful. All of the links in some way have guided my thinking about the nature of response and the kind of pedagogical framework from which my ideas about writing, teaching, collaboration, process, design, and response evolve.

Tips for Responding to Student Drafts

(Heavily distilled from Traci’s List of Tens: http://www.daedalus.com/index.html)

• "Cut and paste" to repeat the same sentence over and over when replying to papers online.

• Group discussion of how to use the feedback is especially important.

• Have students write a reflective piece on the drafts that they are submitting and respond to their reflections in your comments, rather than to the draft itself. If you've not tried this before, you might begin by asking students to include responses to three issues:
  (a) What part of this draft is the strongest?
  (b) What part of this draft will you work on next?
  (c) Turn in 3 what-if's. Imagine at least 3 things that you might do to change this text: tell me what they are and why you're thinking of doing them. Begin your response with "What if" -- for example, What if I cut the second paragraph completely?
  

• Use a template that focuses on student-generated guidelines for the assignment. I have my students read examples of drafts written by students who have worked on a similar assignment in the past and/or professional examples in their books. They create criteria for the assignment, and we shape the criteria into a response template or checklist. The criteria might have broad categories such as "Readability, Clarity, Interest Level, and Organization" or "Ideas, Purpose, and Meaning."

• Use journalist's questions to structure a response. Sometimes all 6 are more than I have time or energy to do, so I choose 2 or 3 and use those for all the drafts I'm reading.
  
  -- Who is this draft written for? Who is the audience?
  -- What is this draft about? What is its purpose?
  -- Where do details and specifics stand out? Where does the text SHOW well?
  -- When I get to the end of the draft, I...? [complete the sentence & explain -- for example, "I wondered whether the hidden money would ever be found."]
  -- Why did you...? It's an interesting choice/technique/etc. Why did you choose it?
  -- How would your draft change if you...?
  

• Respond to the draft from different points of view. I like to use this technique when we've been talking about the different audiences for a piece and the ways that different readers respond to a text

• Write two paragraphs in response to a draft. In one, use you-language, and in the other, use I-language. In the "you" paragraph, echo things that you have read in the paper, giving writers the chance to compare what a reader sees in the paper with their intentions. For example, I might write, "you seem to be sad that the playground has been torn down." I focus on what I see as the writer's intentions, goals, and strengths (not the weaknesses). In the "I" paragraph, I indicate my feelings about the text.

• Respond to a partial draft by outlining what you think will happen next and why. This kind of response works well early in the drafting process, especially with narrative papers or arguments. I generally write two short paragraphs. The first summarizes what happens in the text up to the end of the draft. The second guesses at least three things that I think might happen next. As is the case when I use three different points of view. I include one silly response -- something absurd or unlikely or humorous.

• "Talk Less, Ask More." Ask them what concerns they have, and what they think can be done to address these concerns.

• Demonstrate how reading comprehension techniques apply to reading rough drafts. Write a one-sentence summary of the draft; write a sentence identifying the draft's main idea, and write a sentence or two drawing conclusions about the text. Be sure that each is labeled clearly, and then talk about how to use the information (e.g., writers should think about whether the implied main idea you've identified fits the purpose they had for writing? You might ask them whether there is anything they might change to make the main idea clearer to readers.)

• Students ask the responder questions when they turn over their paper. I include my response to their draft in their journal rather than as an end comment on the paper. My response is likely to include questions for them -- based on techniques like those above. As work progresses during the term, I encourage students to reread their journals and note changes they see. Periodically, I read back over older entries as well.

Part II

1. prompts for writing a response essay: http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/acadwrite/reaction.html
2. progress review: http://core.ecu.edu/engl/finleyt/4323_F2001/ProgressReviewRubric.htm
3. cooperative learning rubric: http://core.ecu.edu/engl/finleyt/4323_F2001/CooperativeLearningRubric.htm
4. conference rubric: http://core.ecu.edu/engl/finleyt/4323_F2001/ConferenceI4323.htm
5. you'll never know unless you click: http://www.ncte.org/teacherfest/tinbergppr.shtml
6. understanding the "design process" (student/project transformation): http://www.bergen.org/AAST/projects/Engineering_Graphics/pencil_sharpener/process.html
7. critical thinking: http://www.teach-nology.com/currenttrends/critical_thinking/
8. service learning + writing: http://www.ncte.org/threshold/books/59168/ch11.html
9. writing workshop: http://www.ncte.org/lists/ncte-talk/jun2000/msg00010.html
10. writing process club: http://www.angelfire.com/wi/writingprocess/club.html
11. adapting lessons for ALL learners: http://www.teachervision.com/lesson-plans/lesson-3759.html?for_printing=1
12. scoring rubrics: what, when how: http://ericae.net/pare/getvn.asp?v=7&n=3
13. 1 minute paper; formative assessment technique: http://www.cte.iastate.edu/tips/cat.html
14. teaching frosh comp (the basics): http://teacher2b.com/non-fiction/freshcmp.htm
15. statistical research on causes of syntactical errors: http://curie.pct.edu/courses/evavra/ED498/R/er.htm
16. lesson plan design: http://www.foothill.net/~moorek/lessondesign.html
17. balancing your life/expectations as a comp. teacher: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~tep/tshooting/balancing.html
18. cognitive overload: http://www.mines.u-nancy.fr/arco/publications/intellectica/num30/abstracts30.pdf
19. using multi-media: http://www.youthlearn.org/learning/activities/multimedia/index.cfm
20. state of the art web design (hottest web design company-- note how texty it is): http://www.sandstromdesign.com/
21. reflection journal rubric: http://www.catholic-forum.com/catholicteacher/outcomes_rubric_reflection_journal.html
22. cooperative group process steps: http://www.vta.spcomm.uiuc.edu/sitemap.html
23. learning how to use the brain: http://www.newhorizons.org/ofc_21cliusebrain.html
24. fishbowl discussion rubric: http://www.eed.state.ak.us/tls/frameworks/wrldlang/wlinstr3.html#GroupProject
25. The Weekly Reader (Great Online Reading Topics): http://www.englishcompanion.com//room82/weeklyreader.html

Evaluating Descriptive Writing with Technology

About eight years ago, I learned how to change font color with my computer.  Playing around, I literally colored every adjective on a short story purple and noticed how the descriptive elements of the document popped out at me. In the final editing stages of short story writing, I regularly use this technique to see if my writing is sprinkled evenly with color or too purple. - Dr. Todd Finley 

Editing Writing with Double Entry Notebooks

I use Double Entry Notebooks (DEN) to help my university writing students raise their consciousness about how readers might react to their stories. Using the right tab button on the horizontal ruler of Microsoft Word, students set the format so that the story prints out in one long vertical column on the left side of the page.  Reading the text on the left, students write Who? What? Why? Where? questions of the material that a reader might ask.  Writers need space to reflect and let their work develop.