As students enter the computer lab today, I welcome them to "National Cherry Turnover Day". As always, Daily Holidays are shared with the students to build a sense of community in the classroom, and give an opportunity for students to settle in as we begin working in the writing lab today.
Students have begun writing their own Creation Myths in class, in order to provide them time to focus and seek clarification on their prompt if needed, as well as to provide me the opportunity to gauge their on-task behavior.
Today, I introduce our first look at peer editing, an informal evaluation of another student's paper. In order to produce clear and coherent writing in which the organization and style are appropriate to task and audience (W.9-10.4), as they finish drafting, students are asked to turn to a peer, read through his or her paper, and responding to it: does it express the elements of a creation story and does it express the elements of a narrative addressed in the pre-writing planning sheet? In this peer edit exchange, students clarify, verify, or challenge ideas and conclusions in their partner's paper (SL.9-10.1c).
Following peer discussion, students develop and strengthen their narratives as needed by revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach based on their peers' feedback (W.9-10.5).
Students are writing the narrative of the imagined experience of a local geographic or cultural feature's origin, using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences (W.9-10.3). In order to do this, students set out the situation or an observation about the local feature, establishing point of view and introducing a narrator and/or characters (W.9-10.3a). Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, description, reflection, and multiple plot lines, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters, students express the story of how their local feature came to be (W.9-10.3b), using a variety of techniques to sequence events so that they build on one another to create a coherent whole (W.9-10.3c). Students use precise words and phrases, telling details, and sensory language to convey a vivid picture of the creation (W.9-10.3d), and provide a conclusion that follows from and reflects on how the creation is resolved over the course of the narrative (W.9-10.3e).