February 5

Today, for writing into the day, we answered questions about workshopping.  Then, we discussed the handouts about reflections for workshop and instructor comments and the definitions of revision (re-vision) and workshopping.  After that, we got into small groups and made a list of do's and don't's of workshopping using "Responding - Really Responding - to Other Students' Writing" and our past experiences with workshopping.  We made a class list of the Do's and Don't's, which is as follows:

Do

• Praise for good work
• Be specific
• Be respectful
• Make suggestions
• Analyze where the writer is (draft stage)
• Make notes at the end and in the margins (underlining and circling are ok as long as they don't block the original work)
• Judge what kind of critique the writer needs/can handle
• Ask the writer if the ideas and tone are supposed to be the way you interpreted them
• Ask questions
• Tell the writer if the writing is confusing
• Explain your criticism

Don't

• Don't write 2-3 words for a comment 
• Don't sound like a teacher
• Don't rewrite the writer's words
• Don't nit pick on grammar
• Don't go off topic
• Don't lie
• Don't try to change the writer's style of writing

We read a newspaper article about a 6-year-old boy who took his mother's car to go see his dad.  We picked a perspective in the article and each person wrote a narrative from that point of view.  Then, we used the following steps to workshop Megan's narrative:

1. The writer address 2-3 concerns about the work
2. The writer reads the paper aloud
3. The writer and readers discuss the paper.  The writer asks questions and pushes readers to explain criticism.

For the last five minutes, we got into partners and workshopped one of the partner's narratives.

Homework

• Finish writing your first draft of the Exploratory Proposal.  (It must be four pages.)
• Post a copy of your draft to your blog before class.
• Bring four hardcopies of your draft with you to class.