I don't grade the students' first drafts, but rather provide guiding questions and comments to help them revise for their second drafts. Then the students will peer revise for their third drafts while we're typing in the computer lab this week. Toward the end of the week they will collaborate to help each other edit and print these final drafts for a grade. We're planning to publish the pieces in a class blog, which I have yet to set up with our technology lead - blogs are blocked in our school district.
Just as writing is a process, so is teaching writing. The students have spent about 4 weeks working toward these rough drafts, and most, I must say, are decent. Many are in serious need of reconstructive surgery, but probably the same number are what I deem "good." Every student will revise and improve their pieces.
We began the unit by reading a feature article about feature articles that I wrote, discussing its formal elements and its content: what exactly makes a feature article unique. We read articles in the newspaper, discussed and presented them in groups. We displayed those around the room. We spent a lot of time differentiating between fact and opinion.
Then I had the students propose topics. I frequently had to help my students narrow these topics: they weren't allowed to write about "baseball" for example (too broad), but they could write about "Steroids Use in the MLB" or "The New York Yankees." They had to identify a purpose, an audience and three questions that audience would ask about their topic. I modeled this process for them.
At this point we learned how to cite our sources. This took a lot more time and effort than I thought it would. I had to have the students who "got it" lead groups of students who didn't, until at last every student understood how to cite a book and web resource.
I returned their proposals with my comments, and once I approved their topics, etc. the students were then allowed to begin their guided research. They researched facts and statistics to answer their audiences questions and anything else that developed during their research.
Once a student got a healthy amount of research, he or she was then allowed to begin drafting an outline. I modeled this for them and let them try it on their own. The students who struggled were given blank "outlines" to fill out with their information. This helped special education kids and many others who struggled with organization and the concept of outlining.
Finally, after I approved their outlines, the students were given the "go ahead" to start drafting by hand. I collected the rough drafts on Friday, and while I won't "grade" these, I do give the students an 10/10 points for turning them in on time. On Monday I'll take up late drafts for 10% off, 20% on Tuesday, and so on, until the students reach 5/10. I won't go lower than 5/10 and I'll accept them up until the end of the grading period.
The majority of problems I'm seeing in their feature articles are:
- Generic leads; overused rhetorical question
- Students writing in first person when it's not appropriate
- Giving opinions
- Lack of factual support
- Plagiarism - copying sentences from sources, not internally citing sources, not citing sources at the end of the document
- Lack of transitions
- Lack of organization within paragraphs
- Imprecise language
- Homophones: *sigh*
Aside from the homophones, I'm not marking editing mistakes. I circle the misspelled homophones, because we've studied these so much. Otherwise, I let the editing mistakes slide for now, and will focus on those during the editing phase as students type, revise and edit themselves or in collaboration.
