Improving Student Writing Skills - cse crafts

The Writing Process
parents choose to be uninvolved, you may decide to let
them.
Another scenario is that in which parents are overly
involved and untactful in their comments. The parents
want to help but end up hurting their child’s writing
confidence. In this case, you will need to help them
understand that progress takes time and that one specific
comment goes much further toward improving their
child’s writing than does, “Thomas obviously doesn’t
know how to write. He needs to revise his piece again.”
If you find a version of this comment, the parent needs to
know how hurtful it is to their child’s writing.
• Prepare Students to Give Each Other Comments
Keep in mind that students will need both revision skills
and tact in order to successfully peer-edit another student’s
writing. As discussed earlier in the Peer Revision
section of the Writing Workshop, when modeling the
process, you will want to show students how to give
three positive comments for every two negative ones and
help authors see that “negative” is actually “constructive”—this
follows the widely-used format of Praise-
Question-Polish (Neubert & McNelis, 1990). While
you don’t want students to come to blows or tears over
another’s comments, neither do you simply want a
back-patting session in which students learn little about
improvement. At first, you may want to create, distribute,
and use revision cover sheets, just as you do to help
guide parent revisions.
However, you will also want to encourage students to
discuss their writing freely and to experiment with ideas
to improve it. Through discussing revision options outside
the framework of a guided sheet, students will have
the chance to experiment with the literary vocabulary
you have been teaching as well as taking ownership of
their own learning.
http://www.books-foru.blogspot.com
59