Meaningful Revision

Another week of great material from Anderson and Noden!

I especially appreciated Noden's discussions about nonfiction writing and editing.  One thing that he addresses that I believe to be an indispensable focus for English classrooms is the relationship between content and form.  While I got a taste of the omnipresence of this relationship in high school, I did not fully understand or appreciate its immensity.  Content and form are married in writing, but also in so many other contexts.  It is an important pattern for students to be able to identify and utilize.

I absolutely agree with Noden's revision strategies.  Indeed, the revision process is not complete without giving form, content, style, and conventions each their proper due. 

His discussion brought to mind an observation that I completed in a ninth grade Honors English class.  The teacher opened the class with a discussion on how the students viewed peer editing.  Their responses were dishearteningly true.  One student shared that peer editing is simply "an excuse for the teacher not to grade."  Other students asserted that it provides no value because their classmates only focus on correcting basic mechanics, if they even care enough to do that.  The teacher then worked with her students to develop peer editing goals focused around three questions: "Do I understand?  Is it confusing?  Am I convinced?"

The students really seemed to appreciate the opportunity to vent frustrations about the peer editing system and have a hand in designing the expectations for the workshops.  They engaged in great discussions about their classmates' papers for the rest of the period.

Noden's suggestion to begin with style is helpful!  My own experience supports his claim that most Language Arts/English teachers begin and focus the revision process on conventions, ignoring the other three components.  It is also encouraging to read about the checklists, which are essentially scaffolded road maps to stronger writing.  I do not need to overwhelm my students with rules.

This is the first time that I have EVER heard someone suggest that a final draft does not need to be perfect.  "With students, the idea is to begin with one category and progress through the other three" (244).  In retrospect, throughout middle and high school, I was given assignments and expected to demonstrate mastery of form, content, style, and conventions starting in. the beginning of the year.  Noden instead seems to suggest scaffolding the writing.  We want the student to succeed in each of these four categories, but can they be successful if they are bombarded with them all at once?  Is it better to layer these revision categories?

One additional revolutionary concept from the text: "[U]se a checklist, a checklist that has been taught before students revise" (239).

Providing the students with the tools they will need in order to be successful before we assess how well they use those tools...  What a novel idea.