Resource Topics

Teaching Writing - Responding to Writing

Viva la Revolución: Transforming Teaching and Assessing Student Writing through Collaborative Inquiry

English Journal, 2007
Molly Fanning, Brigid Schmidt
Two teacher-consultants with the Capital District Writing Project, challenged by doubts about their assessment methods, collaborate to design a grading system based on evaluating a wide range of student work. They urge others toward the "intellectually transformative" experience of collaborative inquiry. More ›

Elbow Room: Tweaking Response in the Secondary Classroom

The Quarterly, 2005
Anne Marie Liebel
Astonished by her eleventh-grade students' enthusiastic response when she asks them to help her revise a piece of her own writing, Ann Marie Liebel began implementing response groups, a technique described by Peter Elbow in his book Writing Without Teachers. Here she gives a detailed description of how she adjusted Elbow's methods to fit her high school and college freshman classes and offers trouble-shooting tips for other teachers. More ›

Finding the Black Ninja Fish: Revision and Writing Groups in the First Grade

The Quarterly, 2005
Joanna Franklin
Joanna Franklin lays out the instructional sequence she implements in her first grade class to teach revision. She begins in September with rereading, advances through Authors Chair and the creation of a class set of criteria for excellent writing, and by March has her students successfully working in writing groups and revising their writing. More ›

Book Review: Response to Student Writing, by Dana R. Ferris

The Quarterly, 2004
Gabriela Segade
Segade reviews Dana R. Ferris's Response to Student Writing, which surveys the research on teacher response to second-language writing and discusses how the findings translate into classroom principles and practices. More ›

Peer Review Times Two

The Quarterly, 2004
Denise Marchionda
Noting that the classroom logistics of peer response to writing can get dicey, Denise Marchionda developed a two-peer editing strategy for her college composition class. She describes her system in detail and shares the checklist she created to elicit productive discussion between the writer and reviewers. She explains the advantages of two-peer editing over teacher-only reading, single-peer editing, and group-response editing, and cites articles for further reading. More ›

The Best Way to Teach Good Writing Is One Step at a Time

The Quarterly, 2004
Randy Koch
Randy Koch, director of the Writing Center at Texas A&M International University, shares some of what he's learned about revisions strategies after twelve years of teaching writing. In this article, he recounts ways to prod students into adding rich details to their drafts. More ›

Thirty Minutes with Mikal

The Quarterly, 2004
Beverly Alsleben
Beverly Alsleben encounters many misunderstandings and miscues as she works with Mikal, an adult English language learner. Alsleben makes suggestions for bridging some common cultural differences that arise between teachers and new immigrants. More ›

Where Writing Really Begins

The Quarterly, 2004
Randy Koch
Responding to students' writing, Randy Koch notes, is the most time-consuming and important part of a writing teacher's job. A teacher must do more than mark up students' errors if the students' writing is to improve. Grouping his thoughts under six guiding principles, Koch shares his approach to response: emphasizing students' strengths, clarifying what is expected in the next draft, laying some groundwork for revision, and taking into account students' readiness to apply the suggestions they receive. He gives examples of his commentaries on student essays. More ›

Reading Practices as Revision Strategies: The Gossipy Reading Model

The Quarterly, 2003
Peter Kittle
No one questions that revision is a good and necessary part of the writing process. But like many things that are "good for you," writers, especially young writers, resist making it part of their routines. But when a high school teacher adapts a reading strategy for revision, he stumbles upon the quintessential revision strategy: one that is both "good and good for you." More ›

Reflections on an Online Teachers Writing Group

The Quarterly, Winter 2003
Anne Elrod
A teacher describes the parallels and differences between her own experience in an online writing group and the experience she gives her student writing groups in her classroom. More ›

Book Review: Winning Ways of Coaching Writing

The Quarterly, winter 2001
Jim Addison
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Working With Beginning Writers

The Quarterly, Summer 2001
Alisa Daniel
First-grade teacher Alisa Daniel writes that students need to see their teachers write. They need to see the struggles, the thought process, the actual writing process that begins in the writer's mind and ends up on the paper. More ›

Behind Their Backs: Proximity and Insult in Student Response

The Quarterly, Winter 2000
Roger Green
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Book Review: Across Property Lines: Textual Ownership in Writing Groups, by Candace Spigelman

The Quarterly, Fall 2000
Jane Mikoni
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On Coaching the Writer

The Quarterly, Spring 2000
Jon Appleby
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Spotlighting Excellence

The Quarterly, Winter 1999
Denise Amos
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When Correcting Errors in a Mistake

The Voice, Fall 1998
Adair Lara
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Pruning Too Early: The Thorny Issue of Grading Student Writing

The Quarterly, Fall 1997
Stephanie Wilder
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How to Practically Guarantee Poor Student Writing—Without Even Trying

The Quarterly, Spring 1996
Diane Christian Boehm
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OP 40. Revealing the Teacher-as-Reader: A Framework for Discussion and Learning

National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy Occasional Paper, 1995
Melanie Sperling
Sperling offers a framework for thinking about the perspective teachers bring to reading students' writing, identifying five ways that one teacher reader oriented herself to her student writers and their writing. More ›

Revisited article: Tennis Anyone? Or Whose Paper Is It?

The Quarterly, Winter 1995
Jim Hahn
In 1980 Jim Hahn of the Bay Area Writing Project, stopped "fixing" student papers in his English classes and revised his teaching methods to make the students more responsible for their own work. In this 1985 article he presents his rationale for this change. More ›

The Cheating Disorder

The Quarterly, Summer 1995
Richard Murphy
In this excerpt from The Calculus of Intimacy, Bay Area Writing Project Fellow Richard Murphy's inspiring account of his life as a college teacher of writing, Murphy takes a candid look at cheating. He describes two encounters he had with students he suspected of plagiarism, which led him to question his own ability to trust his students. More ›

Our Writing, Ourselves: Portrait of a Writing Group

The Quarterly, Winter 1994
Joan Cotich, Deborah Dixon, Lorrie Nelson, Aline Shapiro, Beth Yeager
In this reflection of a writing project writing group, a diverse group of five women educator/writers who teach at different levels from first grade through college, describe their activities and experiences as they explore the question, "What makes our group work?" Joan Cotich, Deborah Dixon, Lorrie Nelson, Aline Shapiro, and Beth Yeager share their individual and group processes, giving numerous examples of their writing exercises and their writing. More ›

OP 26. High School English and the Teacher-Student Writing Conference: Fine-Tuned Duets in the Ensemble of the Classroom

National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy Occasional Paper, 1991
Melanie Sperling
Sperling examines some of the teacher-student conferences in an urban ninth grade English classroom and concludes that teachers' brief conversations with individual students can play an important role in writing instruction. More ›

TR 48. Dialogues of Deliberation: Conversation in the Teacher-Student Writing Conference

National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy Technical Report, 1991
Melanie Sperling
Sperling focuses on three students in a ninth grade English class as they converse individually with their teacher about their ongoing writing. She examines how such conversations contribute to the process of learning to write. More ›

Khasru's English Lesson: Ethnocentricity and Response to Student Writing

The Quarterly, Winter 1990
Alex Moore
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Book Review: Sharing Writing: Peer Response Groups in English Classes, by Karen Spear

The Quarterly, January 1989
John R. Maitino
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The Response Factor

The Quarterly, Summer 1989
Kate Chapman
Chapman evaluates the letter exchange her English students engaged in with their American counterparts as one which developed confidence. "[T]hey found encouragement and acceptance . . . a far cry from the usual red ink." More ›

TR 37. I want to Talk to Each of You: Collaboration and the Teacher-Student Writing Conference

National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy Technical Report, October 1989
Melanie Sperling
Sperling examines teacher-student writing conferences in a ninth grade English class for six case-study students, showing how collaboration between teacher and student encourages students' learning as writers. More ›

Dr. Faustus, Rodent-Envy, and the Two Party Weekend

The Quarterly, January 1987
Susan McLester
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TR 03. A Good Girl Writes Like a Good Girl: Written Response and Clues to the Teaching/Learning Process

National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy Technical Report, May 1987
Sarah Warshauer Freedman, Melanie Sperling
The authors present a case study of a high-achieving student in a ninth-grade English class, exploring and analyzing sources of the student's misunderstanding of teacher-written response to her writing. More ›

TR 04. Historical Overview: Groups in the Writing Classroom

National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy Technical Report, September 1987
Anne DiPardo, Sarah Warshauer Freedman
The authors review research on peer groups in the writing class. They discuss the role of groups in the collaborative process of language learning and suggest directions for future research on collaborative learning. More ›

TR 12. Peer Response Groups in Two Ninth-Grade Classrooms

National Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy Technical Report, October 1987
Sarah Warshauer Freedman
Freedman looks at peer response groups in two ninth-grade college preparatory classrooms, analyzing how students' face-to-face interactions reveal how they approach their writing processes. More ›