ELA TPE e

The candidate teaches students how to produce argumentative, informative, and narrative text; implement the writing process; conduct research projects; and write for a wide range of tasks, purposes, and audiences.

What is this?

I created these two peer review handouts for persuasive and creative writing units during projects for EDUC 362: Secondary Content Area Strategies and ENGL 307: Composition Theory and Pedagogy, respectively. The first is a standard worksheet which asks students to evaluate the writer's use of Toulmin's model of argumentation and give specific feedback statements. The second is a peer review letter assignment with sentence frames for providing effective feedback, which is more general and would apply to many writing units. 

Why did I choose it?

I chose these peer review assignments because they guide students through an important stage of the writing process, which is giving and receiving feedback. Since the persuasive writing project is less subjective and needs to include certain elements, each reviewer rates their peer on accomplishment of those elements to help them identify growth areas, and then provides their own insight as well. The peer review letter for more subjectively evaluated writing projects allows reviewer's to answer advice questions posed by the original writer.

What did I learn?

Through making these peer review templates, I learned that the writing process is often tailored to the type of writing assignment. Providing feedback looks different depending on the assignment, as discussed above, because there are different goals for the end product. I now believe one way to make writing instruction effective is to know that the stages of the writing process are varied not only according to individual students' preferences as writers, but to the task and purpose at hand.