Other educators' thoughts on the value of responding to student writing

The environment needs to be supportive and non-threatening.
The teacher needs to develop a community of writers.
An audience gives purpose for writing and a wider range of next step comments.
Comments should be specific and immediate.
Students can be trained to give effective comments - taking the entire responsibility for constructive comments off the teacher.
Evidence of achieved success criteria across a range of pieces can be tracked and recorded.
Blog posts are shorter pieces to edit and comment on but still give evidence of targets achieved and editing completed.
Concrete examples of next steps helps student editing.

http://patue.teachercast.net/responding-to-student-writing-chat-archive/

Student bogs - personalised tutorials

The frequent posting of writing on personal student blogs allows for a record to be kept of student strengths, success criteria achieved and teacher conferencing.  Although the best input in a 1:1 conference, evidence is given from the text, examples given and the advice can be re-visited on multiple occasions. This can all be done any time of the day - which is good as they keep posting from home at any time of night!

While our goal is to widen writer audience to gain constructive comments, those of a teacher are also valuable and hopefully motivational to students.

Personal student blogging takes off!

On June 10th four children got their own student blogs then a further three became bloggers a couple of days later.  In four days they published 42 posts, received and made 110 comments and started 13 further drafts.  While this keeps me on my toes with checking and moderating, it is a phenomenal effort of self motivation within student writing.

Kidblog - please link here.

Every post needs to be moderated by the teacher and rather than proceeding through the editing process behind the scene, I am posting work before it is of publishing level.  This is to allow comments of the readers to suggest the next steps for editing.

Points to celebrate:
More writing is being done - even from home.
Children are actively supporting the next steps suggestions for editing through comments.
I am just waiting for the bloggers to go back an make the suggested changes!

Click on the images for a closer view.

This is the final edited copy of Lachie's writing.

The whistle blew.  We’re off.

Josh passed me the ball. I was running like a leopard. There was a mud puddle as big as a swimming pool.  I went right through it and then I slipped. The ball went into outer space.  I got back up and then the ball came down as fast as an asteroid. Luckily I caught  it,  then I ran off as fast as I could.  Suddenly another puddle was right in front of the try line  and I was thinking should I pass it. No don’t pass it just score it. So I ran,  I skidded and scored!

Access to blog posting

It takes too long to get the whole class through drafting, editing and publishing a piece and so we are in Week 4 without any writing having been published on the writing blog which defeats the whole purpose of encouraging effective comments for further editing.

Three students have started to use the Blogger Tool during Daily 5 Work on Writing and this is proving popular.

Introducing a small number of students to having their own blog will give opportunity for posting writing as a home-learning activity rather than e-mailing and getting the teacher to post it. This will allow them to write on-line and access their incomplete work from anywhere and anytime.

Small steps up the mountain....

Looking at that huge list of tasks could be daunting but I am working my way through a few of them.

Include a blog link to the success criteria of the current writing type:
These are now linked on a blog page and within the posts.  

Model more on the writing blog - steps, editing, process with teacher writing, photos of student drafting etc.
Examples of student work are posted with success highlighting, annotations and steps to take in the editing process.

My next steps in the process are:
1.  Add a blog page with effective commenting directly related to writing
2.  Provide more links to motivators and challenges for 'Writing Seeds' and free choice writing

Action Research Reflection 8.5.13

I have continued in my journey by joining the New Zealand Literacy Group, constantly searching Twitter and blogs to gather ideas, further research papers and making connections by posting comments on other class blogs.  This is modelling what I would like others to do for my class and giving other students valuable feedback on their writing.

I am also pleased that I haven't bombarded the class with all the things I have been investigating over the holiday break but have started implementing them slowly.  Having said that - going through all the previous posts gave me over 15 action points.  If I am going to survive this next term, I might need to limit it to achieving only some of what is listed below.

Next steps:

Teacher

• Keep the teacher questions in mind when planning
• Include a blog link to the success criteria of the current writing type 
• Provide a 'page' on the blog with instructions on effective commenting
• Compare samples of student comments over the year 
• Tracking the type of comment to assess how many are constructive
• Model more on the writing blog - steps, editing, process with teacher writing, photos of student drafting etc.
• Break down the 'Writing Process' steps clearly on the blog
• Provide more links to motivators and challenges for 'Writing Seeds' and free choice writing

Student

• Use the 'Writer Questions' as a constant prompt when writing
• Recognise the difference between social and constructive commenting
• Review writing comment success criteria and paste checklist in drafting books
• List the next steps they could take in response to a constructive comment

Wider community

• Run training sessions for students, parents and wider family on constructive comments
• Teacher/students respond in kind with constructive comments and link to Blog URL 
• Continue to promote work on this blog through teacher and class Twitter

Signing our blog away!

Over the holiday break I continued to look for ways to make connections with a wider audience for our blog.
1.  Signed up with Primary Blog Map
2.  Signed up for a blog link on Literacy Shed
3. Made connections with Weedons Kowhai Conversation, a Year 4/5 class do collaborate with our writing and make constructive comments
4.  Wrote constructive comments on 10-12 children's posts, leaving our class blog URL for return traffic

The results are...
We have been attached to the Literacy Shed - right near the top for people to visit.
We have a list of 26 questions to answer about earthquakes for a UK class of Year 4 students on Monday - a real audience and a real purpose - to help the UK class write their reports!