Overview:

An important part of this class is learning how to receive the comments of others and use them to guide your work.

Writing assignments are often “ambiguous problems”. The path to the solution is not a direct path.

Writing classes teach in the way writers learn, by creating drafts that test possible solution, then re-adjusting the design of the solution based on the outcome. Often, that includes feedback from a teacher, client, colleague or boss.

My job as a teacher is two fold– coach and audience. In my role as coach, I look at your work, identify your particular needs in terms of the assignment, and articulate a path to revision. As audience,  assignment guidelines and rubrics are expressions of quality and criteria. I read as an audience that considers success in terms of those criteria and offer a response in terms of them.

Your goal as student/writer is to use my comments in two ways. As student, use my comments to make choices about what you need to learn that will help you across many different assignments. As writer, review my comments to understand what needs to be done for this particular writing task. That review includes analyzing and summarizing comments, as well as following up on any questions you might have. Please follow the direction below when you receive my comments.

Instructions:

In the folder for the assignment, you’ll find a recording with my comments and a comments document

Listen to my comments and in the appropriate section of your notebook, do the following. These notes will be collected as part of a project folder. If they are missing, I consider the writing assignment you turned in and that I commented on a missing assignment.

Create a page with the following heading: Assignment Comments

Summarize the main points of my spoken comments

Review my in text comments and summarize any points you want to note

List any questions you may want me to answer.

If you’d like to discuss comments with me, follow up in class, and, if there is not time to discuss them in detail, make an appointment for my office hours, which you’ll find in our google drive folder under “Office Hours Assignment Sheet”