PEER WORKSHOP

We will work in partners or groups to read and comment on each others’ writing. This
will make our writing better and help us learn the common problems and difficult parts of
writing.
Steps:
1) Take a few minutes to explain to your partner what your writing is about. Tell
them one thing you thought you did well and one thing you had trouble with when
you were writing.
2) Trade writing with your partner and read their work. Do not mark on their paper
at all.
3) After you have both finished reading, write on another piece of paper: three things
they did a good job of, and two things they could improve.
4) Trade back papers, read over your partner’s comments, and talk about any parts of
your partner’s writing that you did not understand.
5) At the bottom of their comment sheet, make a goal for yourself for your next draft
of the writing.
6) Make sure that you and your partner have signed both of the sheets.

LITERARY JOURNAL
We will use literary journals as a way to record our thoughts and ideas as we read
different stories or books in literature class. As we move through the book, the journal
will collect and show the progress we made in understanding the story, and will help us
brainstorm for any writing we do about the literature.
Steps:
1) Read through the assigned reading carefully
2) As you read, write down any important parts of the story, or parts you had
questions about in your journal.
3) After you finish reading the story (or part of story) then finish recording your
first thoughts on the reading. Do not just summarize what happened in the
story, explain what you thought about the story.
4) Answer any of the questions that you had during the reading, or respond to
any of the questions you had in earlier journal entries.
5) Choose a specific sentence or two that you think was important for you to
understand the story. Explain why you thought this was an important piece,
and connect it to another part of the story (not in that day’s assignment).
6) Complete one of the four options for journaling:
a. Visualize, Images:
b. Characterize:
c. Background Knowledge:
d. Setting:
e. Predictions: