Diane Dockus's List: Commenting on Student Writing

• Developing writers require support

  • Sticky NOte check
• The more people write, the easier it gets and the more they are motivated to do  it

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  Writing instruction must include ample in-class and out-of-class  opportunities for writing and should include writing for a variety of purposes  and audiences
• Writing, though, should not be viewed as an activity that happens only within a  classroom’s walls.
• It is useful for teachers to consider what elements of their curriculum they  could imagine students self-sponsoring outside of school. Ultimately, those are  the activities that will produce more writing.
• Whenever possible, teachers should attend to the process that students might  follow to produce texts -- and not only specify criteria for evaluating finished  products, in form or content
• In explaining assignments, teachers should provide guidance and options for  ways of going about it
• Sometimes, evaluating the processes students follow -- the decisions they make,  the attempts along the way -- can be as important as evaluating the final  product

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  One way to help students become better writers is to make sure they have lots  of extended time to read, in school and out
• After making a draft, it is often helpful for writers to discuss with peers what  they have done, partly in order to get ideas from their peers, partly to see  what they, the writers, say when they try to explain their thinking. Writing  conferences, wherein student writers talk about their work with a teacher, who  can make suggestions or re-orient what the writer is doing, are also very  helpful uses of talk in the writing process.
• Writing happens in the midst of a web of relationships
• Writing instruction must accommodate the explosion in technology from the world  around us.

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