Gilmore Chap 4 peer revision

I really liked the activites that Gilmore set up for student revisions. The read aloud in small groups is obviously a great idea. If a sentence doesn't read well outloud, it is probably a good indicator that it is hard for an audience to read. It points out wordiness and unorganized thoughts. Peers listening can give a side that the writer never thought of. They can also ask questions if things were unclear. these techniques would improve the writing to make it more clearly written. It is also a great way for people to work together. In many jobs, you will be communicating ideas back and forth between people, so why shouldn't this be done in schools.

other ideas I thought were great that I never heard of were the color marking, cutting and pasting, and shortening word count. I really liked the color marking, and cutting and pasteing because it gave the writing and editing process a visual perspective. the color method would be great for teaching grammar and parts of speach so that students can see and find it on their own. the cutting and pasting method also seems like a great way for students to physically mess around with their writing to see if it flows better in a way that they did not expect. thoughts are often circular and jump around. they are never perfectly linear. student writing can also show this so the cutting and pasting method would probably be very valuable. shortening word count is something that I have heard of but not really seen done. It's a great activite because student writing often gets overredundant or wordy. They often add fluff to get to a certain page length.

the teacher student conferencing is something that I always hated doing as a student. often if it was optional conferencing I would never go. Gilmore presents the material in a new light for me because I see how i will need to do this as a teacher.

I liked the idea of zero tollerance grading, because the students must revise, and will get a much better grade in the end. It will also encourage them to revise before it is turned in so they will not have to revise again later.

Publication of Student work is something that keeps coming up. I think that it is a great idea, because they should care more about how their work is presented if there is someone other than the teacher reading it. Gilmore really presents good information in this chapter to give activities that promote revision.