The Write Idea

I have a son in Godwin High School taking a course with challenging writing assignments. Like most colleges nowadays, this high school has a writing center, a resource for students to use to improve their writing. In addition to a final draft, my son is also required to turn in a first draft that has been marked up by the writing center.

What a great idea! Everybody wins:

• My son gets the benefit of another set of eyes looking at his writing. When he writes, he knows he must write so that another real person — not just a teacher — can understand what he has written. The mark-ups give him authentic feedback for improvement.
• The student in the writing center who marks up my son's paper gets a much deeper understanding of the writing process. The best way to learn is to teach. The student likely also gets service hours.
• The teacher gets papers that have already been screened and corrected of the most egregious errors, so that she can focus on higher-level structure and effectiveness of the writing. The writing center also probably enables more cycles of learning, since the teacher can use her limited time for grading final drafts rather than first drafts.
• The school gets a better performance record because it feeds more sophisticated students into the standardized testing process.

My own students could benefit from this approach. I need to give some thought as to how I can incorporate screening and rewrites into the writing they turn in to me.