DWRL Lesson Plans - Editing

Color-coding Revision - Visualizing the Process

Cate Blouke — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 18:46:38 +0000

Author:

Image Credit:

"Big Cup'O Crayons" via haydnseek's Flikr stream

Brief Assignment Overview:

Following a detailed set of instructions, students use crayons (or other multi-colored writing utensils) to visually distinguish between certain elements of their papers. The result is a colorful paper that visually demarcates areas of text that may require revision.

Type of Assignment:

In-class Exercise

Assignment Length:

Single Class Period

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Arrangement

Delivery

Style

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Textual Analysis

Word Choice

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Multimodal

Visualization

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

Revision

Organization/Arrangement

Delivery

Media Requirements:

No Classroom Technology Required

Required Materials:

*Having attempted this exercise on computers, I highly recommend a low-tech approach. Using hard copies and forcing students to interact with the material pages themselves both allows for more freedom in marking up the papers and helps the visualization process. Additionally, my students loved playing with crayons.

So, all you will need are:

hard copies of the papers to be revised
crayons, highlighters, or variously colored pens

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Useful Anytime

Early in the Semester

Mid-Semester

Full Assignment Description:

Students are asked to peer review each other's papers using crayons (my personal favorite tool) or other colorful writing utensils. Using three differently colored crayons, they look for very specific aspects of the paper to underline, circle, or cross-out. The particular parts of the paper they should attend to are easily adaptable to an instructor's needs and the common issues arising in a given class. The important thing is that students mark up the papers with different colors and different types of annotation.

This workshop is incredibly helpful to students who are more visually-oriented learners. It is also an extremely helpful editing process for students to practice. By giving them extremely detailed instructions and asking them to pay close attention to more minute aspects of their peers' papers, they often leave the workshop feeling more attuned to these issues in their own papers.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Adapt the workshop instructions to your own needs. This is particularly helpful once you've already seen the students' writing and can gauge the issues that need addressing. For example, in my rhetoric/composition class, I find that students often rely too heavily on quotations in their first papers (which involve a lot fo summary), so I have them underline all of the quotations. This makes it immediately clear to most of the students just how much of their paper is quoted and how much is their own writing. On the other hand, in my literature class my students might not be providing enough evidence from the text, so underlining quotations have the inverse effect of highlighting a paucity of quotation.

My own teacherly pet-peeve is vague pronouns and distant referents, so this usually turns up regardless of the course I'm teaching. But as you'll see in the instructions below, it's fairly easy to tweak the worksheet to fit your needs.

Other than that, make sure to tell students to bring a hard copy of their papers. It's also important to provide writing utensils in a variety of colors (at least three per student). I tend to bring a giant box of crayons to class - both because crayons are less expensive than colored pencils or other options, and because my students get a kick out of playing with crayons in a college classroom.

Instructions For Students:

(You will probably want to re-format this before giving it to students, but for accessibility reasons, I am not retaining the original Word document's formatting)

This exercise is designed to help with the revision process by making certain aspects of your papers stand out visually. For those of you that are visual learners this might be really useful in that it literally highlights the way you use language. For others of you this might just be an easy in-class exercise where you get to play with crayons.

1. Select three different colored crayons. This will work best if they are distinctly different colors.

2. Assign each color a function by creating a color key here:

a. PRONOUNS ___________________

b. TOPIC SENTENCES ______________

c. QUOTATIONS __________________

3. As you read through the paper,

a. With the color assigned to pronouns,

i. Circle every: THEY, THEIR, THOSE, THESE, THIS, IT, ITS,

ii. Cross out any: I, YOU, YOUR, WE, OUR, US, (and any contractions you come across ‘cause they shouldn’t be there either)

b. With the color assigned to topic sentences, underline the first sentence of every paragraph

c. With the color assigned to quotations, underline every quote you come across (make a second line if quotes are used in the fist sentence)

4. Once you have worked through the entire paper, go back through it a second time. Do the following exercises with a pen or pencil.

a. For every pronoun you circled, identify the referent (i.e. who is the “they,” what is the “this” or “it”), and write your answers on the line below each pronoun.

b. Read through each paragraph again, and in the margin write a few words identifying the subject of the paragraph. Does the content match the topic sentence? If not, make a single, neat X across the entire paragraph.

c. For each quotation, assess whether the quote is one of the following and label each quote accordingly:

i. Rhetorically effective (i.e. uses powerful/evocative language) [RE]

ii. Highly specific (statistics or technical language) [HS]

iii. Could probably be paraphrased or seems unnecessary [PARA]

Evaluation Suggestions:

As it's purely for the students' benefit, this assignment is not graded. I simply use this as an in-class exercise and send them home with their marked-up papers.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

My students generally really enjoy this exercise - in part because I have them playing with crayons in a college classroom. What I have found is that the actual process of doing the workshop is more helpful than the feedback they receive - so, in doing this to someone else's paper, it helps them to notice the trend in their own papers. The exercise can be adapted to any number of common problems, these are just three things that my students tend to consistently have issues with in the first paper (no matter how much we've gone over these things in class).

I do think it's important to use hard copies of their papers. I've tried this in a computer-classroom, and using highlighting in Word just doesn't have the same impact. It also makes it more difficult to visualize all together and doesn't have the same tactile effect.

Course Description:

This exercise will work in any course requiring writing and revision. I've used it in both rhetoric and literature classes, but it was originally designed for an introductory rhetoric class.

Rhetoric 306 is a course designed to introduce students to the principles of rhetoric, responsible civil discourse, and college writing. Students are asked to select a contemporary controversy to explore through research, rhetorical analysis, and ultimately to advocate their own position.

Tags:

Revision

Peer Review

Editing

Visual Representation

Editing Poetry: Manuscript to Printed Page

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 18:01:38 +0000

Author:

Frederick Heard

Image Credit:

"Metallic Ballpen Tips" via photosteve101's Flikr stream

Brief Assignment Overview:

Type of Assignment:

In-class Exercise

Assignment Length:

One-Two Class Periods

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Close Reading

Cultural Context

Literary Criticism

Oxford English Dictionary (OED)

Poetry

Textual Analysis

Word Choice

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Multimodal

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

Generating an awareness of bibliographic/textual concerns and raising questions about the physical status of books. Thinking about the material conditions of a work’s production and circulation. Questioning received texts in anthologies and elsewhere and complicating the students’ perception of “authorship.”

Media Requirements:

Media Console/Projector

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Required Materials:

Photocopies of a poem from a facsimile edition of Dickenson (I used “I taste a liquor never brewed” from R. W. Franklin’s facsimile edition).

Several printed editions of the same poem. I chose a poem that was included in the students’ anthology and also brought reading editions by Thomas H. Johnson and R. W. Franklin. I looked up several decidedly non-scholarly versions online to round out the possible manifestations of the poem.

Student access to computers (this could be accomplished with students bringing in their own laptops if not working in a technology-based classroom)

Document camera.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Early in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

Students work on transcribing an Emily Dickenson poem from manuscript form into print. Their transcriptions are then compared with each other and with several printed editions of the same poem and used as exemplary material for discussing editorial decisions ranging from choice of words, letters and punctuation to use of alternate lines, footnotes, etc.

Because Dickenson presents a somewhat extreme example of editorial intervention (few of her poems were published in her lifetime, so most of her poems have no authorized transcription), her poems offer a prime opportunity for introducing students to the impact of editorial and publication decisions on the poems they read. This activity places those decisions in the hands of the students and forces them to think both explicitly and pragmatically about what decisions have to be made to move a manuscript into printed form and what factors influence those decisions.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

I used this assignment on our second day reading Dickinson because I wanted the students to rethink the supposed familiarity with the text of the poem. I did not assign the poem I had them transcribe because I did not want them to have easy recourse to the edition in their book.

After a brief discussion of Dickinson’s composition and publication history, I told the students to close their anthologies and take one copy of the manuscript facsimile. When everyone had a copy, I divided the room into small groups (about three students each) and asked them to log into one computer per group and begin working on their own “print” editions of the poem. I gave the students about 25-30 minutes to work on their editions of the poem. Some groups finished slightly earlier, but one or two groups were rushed and had to leave some words as blanks. Since I was already going to use the document camera, I had each group print out a copy of their edition on the in-class printer (email or the “teacher folder” could also be used).

After collecting the several classroom-editions of the poem, I placed them one at a time on the document camera and had the group read their version of the poem and discuss the decisions they made about capitalization, line breaks, punctuation (including dashes). Each group took 3-5 minutes for a total of 15-20 minutes.

After looking at the students’ editions, I put the different printed editions of the poem on the doc cam and had student’s note the differences between them and their own versions. It is important to have printed versions that differ from each other so students don’t see the differences between their copies and the printed copies as definitively authoritative. We also looked at a couple of websites that host the poem.

After discussing some major differences in copy texts—treatment of alternate lines, use of footnotes, etc.—we discussed how the facsimile, their required textbook anthology, the different “Collected Poems” and the free-floating online editions vary in their broader presentation of the poem (Do they present their version as the final word? Do they acknowledge other versions? Are they aware of and do they acknowledge their editorial contributions? Do they make Dickinson’s poem look like a typical 19th century edition of poetry? If not, how do they translate the strangeness of the manuscript page into print? etc.).

Instructions For Students:

Take a copy of Dickinson’s manuscript and, without referencing your anthology or any online sources, transcribe this poem into ‘printed form’ in a word processor. Make your final edition of the poem look how you would make it appear if you were editing a book of her poetry. If you get stuck in one place, move on to an easier passage and come back to it later. Many difficult words/passages will be clearer when you have established some context. This should take about 30 minutes.

Evaluation Suggestions:

There were no grades assigned for the exercise beyond normal class participation.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

The students enjoyed the hands-on process of transcription. I was worried about time constraints and ended up rushing them in that process more than I would like, so I may let them work for longer next time. If I give them more time, I will actively push the groups that finish earlier to go into more depth with their treatment of alternate lines, footnotes, etc. Some of the students didn’t see the editorial differences as very significant or meaningful, so, if I had more time to work on the assignment, I might expand the latter half to build close readings around alternate versions and see more explicitly how the editorial decisions affect the poem’s meaning. Alternately, I will adjust my expectations and remember that this is an introduction, not a conclusion, to textual problems that we will discuss through the length of the semester.

Additional Resources:

A brief critical reading about editorial practice might be useful as a lead-in or a follow-up for the exercise.

Course Type:

Literary Studies Course

Course Description:

This exercise was implemented in an introduction to literary studies class.

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Revising/Drafting/Editing With Wikis

detweiler — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 17:19:32 +0000

Author:

Eric Detweiler

Image Credit:

Eric Detweiler

Brief Assignment Overview:

Students engage with and revise each other's texts using a wiki platform. Allows students to consider the various ways of composing a summary of a single text.

Type of Assignment:

In-class Exercise

Homework Assignment

Assignment Length:

Partial Class Period

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Collaboration

Software

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

For my RHE 306 (introductory composition) course, I created a course wiki to which students posted numerous in-class activities and homework assignments. I find wiki particularly advantageous for group activities, as students can create pages that all group members can edit/revise/view/etc. (which GoogleDocs can also allow, but in a different manner). A wiki can thus be a useful space for foregrounding the collaborative nature of writing. Also worth noting is the “page history” feature of PBWorks, the wiki platform I use, which can allow both students and you, the instructor, to see how a particular page developed.

This lesson plan provides a way for students to think carefully about the rhetorical choices they make when summarizing a text by collaborating on the creation of a trio of wiki pages. The lesson plan is also designed to help students learn the difference between drafting, revising, and editing—three stages of the writing process we have already discussed as this lesson plan unfolds.

Media Requirements:

Adaptable For Use Without Classroom Technology

Required Materials:

Computers with internet access, preferably one per student; a course wiki (as mentioned above, I use PBWorks).

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Early in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

I divide students into groups of 3.* Each group is assigned one chapter from the RHE 306 first-year forum book, and each member of that group is responsible for composing a “research summary” (RS) of their assigned chapter. (RSs are one-page summaries of a source’s argument, and are ideally free from the summarizer’s opinion about that argument.) I have students compose their RSs as Word documents, then copy and paste them into the body of a wiki page. I also ask them to choose a distinct color for their wiki-page summaries. Below is a screenshot of a student’s RS. The student has turned it blue using the bottom-left button in the formatting toolbars above the text window.

Once each student's research summary (RS) is drafted and uploaded, I assign her/his RS to another group member to revise—for instance, if Jaime, Harold, and Terry are a group, Jaime is assigned to revise Terry’s RS, Harold is to revise Jaime’s, and Terry to revise Harold’s. I ask each student to make her/his revisions in a different color than the original draft of the RS.

Finally, I reassign the revised RS to the third group member, who is charged with editing (i.e., Terry drafts, Jaime revises Terry’s draft, and Harold edits the revised draft).

Since deletions obviously don’t have a color, I also have students record any removed phrases, words, punctuation, etc., at the bottom of the page.

The timing on this whole process can differ—you can assign it as homework and have each stage due on a different day, or you can have the revision and editing stages take place during a class meeting.

After the editing work is done, I have the original drafter look at her/his revised and edited RS. I then let the groups have internal discussions about how they made the choices they did at each stage: Why did Harold choose to quote different lines than Jaime during his drafting process? What led Terry to cut the first line of Harold’s second paragraph? If you want something tangible, you can have students write out their reflections: Where did their group members original drafts differ? What rhetorical choices did their group members make that led to these differences? What differences in opinion were revealed in what group members chose to revise about each other’s RSs, and did any revisions seem especially effective? Etc. Broadly speaking, I like these questions to get students thinking about writing—even summary—as a rhetorical process rather than a fill-in-the-blanks sort of task.

*If the total number of students in the class isn't divisible by three, I'll create groups of four, but each group member will only engage with two other group members' summaries as revisor/editor.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

At this point in the semester, my students are already familiar with the wiki and the process for creating wiki pages. We have also discussed the differences between drafting, revising, and editing, which I roughly define as the following:

Drafting: The creation of new written material—getting words on the page for the first time, similar to invention.
Revising: Working with the words you’ve already composed (moving paragraphs or sentences around, rewriting phrases for clarity, deleting extraneous sentences/paragraphs/pages), which can include some new writing (scrapping and recomposing your introduction, or adding a new sentence at the end of a paragraph to better establish that paragraph’s purpose).
Editing: Cleaning up/polishing your grammar, spelling, citation, etc. (removing commas, adding in-text citations, changing “th” to “the”).

We will have also already covered methods of forwarding a source’s argument, particularly the relative merits of summary, paraphrase, and direct quotation.

Instructions For Students:

Relatively similar to the full instructions above--mostly, assign the students the chapter summary as homework in advance, have them post it to the wiki before class begins the day of the activity, and put them into (ideally) groups of three. From there, instruct them to revise one of there group member's summaries using a particular color of text, the edit the third group member's summary with yet another particular color. At the end, have them discuss why they made the specific revision and editorial choices they did and discuss what they found particularly effective about the group's summaries.

Evaluation Suggestions:

I generally grade this assignment on a pass/fail basis—as long as the student completed all three stages, they get credit.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

Students do occasionally find the process tedious, especially by the editing stage. As an alternative, the original drafts could be shorter. Really, one paragraph of drafted material could be enough given how extensive this activity can become.

Course Type:

Introductory Writing Course

Course Description:

Rhetoric 306 is a course in argumentation that situates rhetoric as an art of civic discourse. It is designed to enhancestudents' ability to analyze the various positions held in any public debateand to advocate positions effectively. Students work in this course willhelp them advance the critical writing and reading needed to succeed in coursesfor their major and university degree.

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