In the Fall of 2024 and the Spring of 2025, the First-Year Writing Committee will be gathering to discuss a group of readings about innovative approaches to facilitating peer review in the first-year writing and general education classroom.

We invite all faculty who teach first-year writing and general education classes to read the texts below, to annotate the questions that our facilitators have posed with your responses, and to reply to each other. In order to do this, you need a Hypothes.is account. You can sign up for one by clicking on “Sign Up” in the top right-hand corner of the Hypothes.is pop-out window enabled on this site, or by going to the Hypothes.is account creation page.

To annotate the text on this page, log in to your Hypothes.is account, and then simply highlight it and select the “annotate” button that pops up. You will be able to add a comment or question, reply to other people, or add hyperlinks, videos, etc.

October Readings

The readings from the October meeting were selected by Sandra Córdoba and Lindsey Albracht.

Sandra’s reading was a chapter from Peter Elbow’s book Vernacular Eloquence: What Speech Can Bring to Writing. It was about getting students to read their work aloud. You can access the chapter here.

Here are the questions Sandra asked to the group. We invite you to annotate them with your responses!

1. Did this reading inform or engage you to reflect on some of your teaching practices? If so, in what ways?
   
2. What challenges do you think you might encounter while incorporating reading aloud as a tool for revision in your classes?
   
3. Have you used this technique while revising your own writing? In what ways? Would you share your process with your students?

Lindsey selected a few readings related to student self-assessment of their own writing. The first (longer) reading was about a practice of getting students to annotate a rubric with their own feedback for themself. It’s called “Encouraging Active Participation in Dialogic Feedback through Assessment as Learning” by Claire Louise Rodway

The second and third (shorter) readings are two handouts: one is called 7 Ways To Self-Assess, a handout adapted from Felicia Rose Chavez, The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop, by Sarah Ropp (2021). The final was a handout that Lindsey developed for her own students called “How To Ask Questions About Your Own Work,”

These were the questions that Lindsey asked to the group. We also invite you to annotate them!

1. Take a few minutes to review the handout “How To Ask Questions About Your Own Work” in light of reading Rodway and Chavez’s pieces.
   
2. What is confusing to you in this handout, or might be confusing to a first-year student? 
   
3. Are there ways I can make this prescriptive enough without being overly prescriptive? Are there elements of Rodway that I could bring in, or other ways I could (re)frame anything?
   
4. Can I reframe any of what’s on this handout to be less deficit-focused? Is it deficit focused? It feels like I’m asking students to look for deficits, but I’m also not sure of ways to make it more asset-focused in ways that are also inviting my response. I need ideas!
   
5. Are there ways to for students to better emphasize their own’ strengths in their work without making it seem like a “check the box” requirement?
   
6. Are there other things you’re noticing that could be helpful for me to keep in mind?