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WRITING GROUPS AND
REVISION STRATEGIES
TARGET: LITERACY NARRATIVES
WRITING GROUP PREPARATION
No Class on Monday—YOU MUST ATTEND YOUR WRITING GROUP
CONFERENCE (I will not accept your second draft if you do not
attend)
Second Drafts DUE 9/16 AT NOON: How to submit, what to
submit, and where to submit
• Upload revised literacy narrative to your personal blog (post as an
attachment)
• The body of this post should contain your 150-250 word reflective
cover letter:
• Explain the edits that you made to this draft
• Explain your goals for this draft
• Explain how you feel about this draft (what do you like about the draft, what
don’t you like about the draft, what are specific problems that you are
having, what are specific paragraphs or sentences that are giving you
trouble)
• Post AT LEAST 2-3 questions that you have for your group members (you might
borrow questions right from the peer review sheet in FGC 145-146)
WRITING GROUP PREPARATION
Before your writing conference:
1. Visit the blogs of your group members (where can
you find this? On the course blog under the tab
labeled “Course Roster”)
2. Download and print the papers for each of your
group members
3. Read each group member’s paper (take notes on
the draft as you read)
4. Read and respond to each member’s reflective
cover letter
WRITING GROUP PREPARATION
What should we be writing on drafts?
• You should make comments on the draft that will help the writer know how to
revise his/her paper
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Make notes in the margin that let the writer know what you think is the thesis statement,
topic sentences, where s/he is expressing his purpose, where you get confused as a reader,
where you are pleased as a reader
ASK QUESTIONS: If you see something missing from the draft, write down a question in the
margin; if you want more details, write down a question in the margin; if you get confused
while reading, write down a question in the margin
Give suggestions: This is really interesting…might you make this the focus of the paragraph?
As I am reading this, I’m not sure I understand how this relates to the last paragraph, could
you use a transitional phrase here to help you—or—is this paragraph really necessary? I see
you are having some difficulty meeting the page requirement, I think this would be a good
place to add an additional paragraph about ____.
Review pages 145-146 in FGC. This is a peer review worksheet. We will not be using the peer
review sheets physically—but—you should be considering these questions and responding to
each group member’s paper based on them
Review pages 57-58 in LBH, there is an example of comments on a draft—this is a good
model
NOTE: writing groups are not editing groups, while you may note some spelling/grammar/mechanics
issues, your focus should be on content, organization, and development
WRITING GROUP PREPARATION
What do we bring to the writing group?
• Have a copy of your paper handy—we will be looking at
our own copies of your draft as we give you feedback
and you will want to be able to follow along
• Have your printed and annotated copies of each group
member’s paper (you will give these to each other at
the end of the conference)
• BRING COMMENTS – Again, be prepared to talk through
your response as a reader. Again, we will chat for 15-20
minutes about each paper (I suggest that you come
prepared to talk through the “Literacy Narrative Peer
Response” worksheet, pages 145-146 in FGC—we will be
using this to guide our discussion)
REVISION AS RE-WRITING AND RETHINKING
Post on your personal blog:
Think of the most significant moment in your life with
whatever literacy you are working with. What is the single
most important moment?
On your blog, free write---write down every single thing that
you can about this moment. What happened? Where were
you…what did it look like, who else was there? What
happened? How it make you feel? Every little detail---keep
writing…
Describe the scene richly, so perhaps return to the prompts
that we worked with the other day. For example, in this
moment of importance, what did literacy (your particular
literacy) look like, feel like, smell like, sound like, taste like?
REVISION AS RE-WRITING AND RETHINKING
Now that you have described every single thing that
you can about this moment of significance….
Explain why it is so important to you--• How did what occurred in this scene that you just
drafted change things for you, make you realize
something that you did not realize before, make you
suddenly understand something?
• What (specifically) about this particular moment
makes it significant?
• Did you come to a realization? What was it? Why
was it important that you come to this realization?
• Did this particular moment change you, how?
REVISION AS RE-WRITING AND RETHINKING
1. If your thesis statement is something like—”Swimming
literacy made me the person I am today”…you are
being too general. If readers don’t know you…they
have no idea what this actually means (well, who are
you?) Similarly, HOW did swimming literacy (or
whatever literacy you focus on) make you a ____
person and why is this important?
2. Try this…Swimming (sub your own) literacy taught me
________ and _______ by asking me to ________. This has
affected my life by making me, as a person, _______
and ______.
REVISION AS RE-WRITING AND RETHINKING
• Take a moment to step back from your literacy
narrative.
• What is literacy…how do you (a) define and (b) describe
the particular literacy that you are working with? (Note, by
this, I mean what is dance or baseball or basketball literacy)
• Why is literacy important? (Again, be specific to the literacy
that you are talking about---why is it important that you
know how to tumble or know how to dance…beyond that it
makes you happy, beyond that it’s how you met all of your
friends, beyond that its important to your entire family)
• What about you as a person is the result of acquiring and
learning this particular literacy?