Status Reports: Brainstorming with Your Classmates

In a status report, you'll briefly tell your classmates about your work.  What topic are you focusing on?  What are a couple surprising things you've found?

One of the most important parts of your status report isn't the topic itself, but your progress in the writing.  Talk about what you've done to make time for your research.  Describe how you chose your sources.  Ask questions - find out what your classmates think about your topic.  If you're torn between different ideas, mention those.  If there's something about your project you just can't figure out, ask your classmates for ideas.  This is the perfect place for brainstorming.

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Project Workshops: Feedback for Writing Research

As writers, we can only truly succeed if we are able to revise our writing to meet the needs and expectations of our readers.  The workshop provides three important experiences to help you do this better:

1. Reading the work by your peers will help you better understand how different works of writing connect with audiences (such as yourself.)
2. Providing Feedback for your classmates helps you better articulate the writing process.
3. Receiving Feedback from your peers will provide new perspectives to help you revise your current project.

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Alternative Assessment: Student-Centered Grading

Today we'll look at how we assess our progress as individuals, as group members, and as students within the larger context of the classroom and university.  Much of the "changes" we'll be looking at involve how to enter this discussion with our colleagues about personal performance.

This lesson is based largely on Cathy N. Davidson's article Collaborative Learning for the Digital Age in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Unit 2

Workshop Group Rotations

Earlier, we discussed the role of peer review in helping us improve as writers, and then we used the methods of progressive feedback to give constructive help to our fellow writers.  Today we'll use these techniques as we prepare written feedback for our classmates in different groups.

**Note: Since you'll be responding to feedback and completing revisions, tonight's homework assignment is cancelled.  We'll  wait until next week to transition from Blackboard to Moodle.**

Workshop Peer Review - Four Rules of Progressive Feedback

Progressive Workshop Feedback: Four Rules

The success of any writing workshop depends upon the quality of the feedback.  The way we present this feedback is often just as important as the feedback itself.  Here are four "Rules to Live By" when providing feedback to your peers.

Workshop Peer Review - Four Rules of Progressive Feedback

Workshop Peer Review: Helping Writers Improve through Directed Feedback

Today we're going to look at how we provide feedback to help our peers improve their writing.  Receiving feedback can help you better understand how your audience perceives what you've written - giving feedback will help you attune your senses as to what's important in written work.

Workshop Peer Review - Four Rules of Progressive Feedback

Poetry Workshops: The Fifty-Point Scale

The poetry workshops will use a fifty-point scale similar to the Fiction Grading Scale.  However, the scale will be customized for poetry - come back soon to see how the specific needs of poetry are incorporated into the numbering system.

Course Grading - Grading Workshop Writing
50-Point Scale - Fiction - Poetry

Fiction Workshops: The Fifty-Point Scale

Here's the 50-pt scale I use for your fiction workshops.  Before worrying too much about the numbers, make sure to read How I Use the Scale.

Course Grading - Grading Workshop Writing
50-Point Scale - Fiction - Poetry

Workshop Grades: The Fifty-Point Scale

For this semester's workshop assignments, I grade in 5-pt intervals based on a fifty-point scale.  Before worrying too much about how the scale will affect your grade, I'd like you to consider how I use the scale to tell you about your writing.

Course Grading - Grading Workshop Writing
50-Point Scale - Fiction - Poetry

Creative Writing: Workshop Grades

I wanted to let you all know how I see workshop grades in terms of your overall grades for IFP.  Writing is a subjective field, and so it is difficult to assign objective grades.  This is why I use workshop grades as indicators of your writing progress rather than the balance of your total grade.  In all, your writing ability counts toward 30% of the final grade, with a possible 10% adjustment added to the final grade for progress.

Course Grading - Grading Workshop Writing
50-Point Scale - Fiction - Poetry