Vicky Ballmes

Writing 501
Fall 2015
Writing 2 Changes for Winter Quarter
Through reflecting on what went well and not so well this quarter in my
Writing 2 class I have some ideas on what I think worked well in this course
and would like to do differently next quarter. As part of my reflection process
I asked my students to fill out unofficial evaluations in addition to their
official evaluations; I explained to them that the official evaluations are
important and that I will be reading them and that my supervisor and the
program will also read them and want their honest feedback, but that I wont
receive that feedback until after next quarter begins so I would appreciate
them answering a few questions in addition to help me in evaluating this
course and making any necessary changes for the next time I teach it. My
students evaluations were informative surprising in places, and overall
illuminating in terms of how they thought the course structure, readings,
activities, and writing projects went. Based on my self-review and my
students feedback, the primary changes I plan to make are focused on
incorporating more readings and activities on style, grammar instruction, the
format of my revision workshops, and the in-class group framework.
One of the strengths of my Writing 2 class this quarter things that
seemed to resonate well with the students and that came up repeatedly as
helpful in their reflective pieces was my emphasis on the concept that a
written product is never truly done. As I put it in my syllabus, All of the
writing that you do in this class, from first draft to submitted portfolio, should
be considered in process and never complete. We talked about this in
relation to the structure of the course, with assignments progressing from
project builders to the first complete draft to the submission (not final!) draft.
Two of those submission drafts are significantly revised for the portfolio, but
even then the papers are not done, as evidenced by the fact that they
might be submitted for Starting Lines and in the process go through even
more revision and editing. Related to this, another strength of the class was
the emphasis that it is important to get something written down as soon as
possible in order to begin the process of revision, a concept that was
explained in one of my students favorite articles, namely Ann Lamotts
Shitty First Drafts. Several of my students told me throughout the course
that her article really freed them from the illusion that what they wrote had
to be great at the time that they first wrote it, and made it easier for them to
simply start writing something, anything. When I had my students go around
on the last day of class and say one or two things that they had learned in
the class that they thought would be most useful for transferring to other
classes and contexts several of them explicitly mentioned the fact that its
both okay and common to have a shitty first draft. (In response to that I
shared with them the bumper sticker someone came up with in 501 about
how even Shakespeares first drafts were shitty, which they enjoyed.)
Another strength of my class, but one that I still think can be improved,
was the revision process that we used. In addition to peer reviews of the

Vicky Ballmes
Writing 501
Fall 2015
occasional Project Builder we had a Revision Workshop on the day that the
first WP draft was due for each Writing Project. Soon my students knew
exactly (or at least mostly) what a Revision Workshop day meant; they
brought two copies of their first draft, got candy, and then we engaged in a
variety of revision activities designed to give them a variety of different
forms of feedback including feedback from themselves. While the rest of the
courses activities varied quite a bit in content, if not in form (e.g. we always
had a break halfway through class and did lots of small group activities, but
the content of those activities was a surprise), the Revision Workshop days
were more or less uniform and predictable, with careful purpose. The first
aspect of the Revision Workshop (after candy, naturally) was a guided selfrevision that I called a deconstruction; this activity had them reverse outline
their papers and go through them with highlighters, highlighting things like
theses/organizing statements, topic sentences, evidence, and analysis in
different colors. I then had them evaluate what their deconstruction process
had revealed about their paper whether they had enough evidence or a
clear thesis, whether they used too much direct quote or too little evidence,
whether there were clear and focused topic sentences throughout and
whether they made sentence in their current order. Finally, they sketched an
outline of a preliminary revision plan on the back of their papers based on
their self-evaluation. Usually I did some sort of other activity in the 20
minutes between the end of the self-evaluation and the break, and then after
the break we engaged in peer review. The students first looked over the
clean copy of their paper with a review sheet in hand and indicated on the
peer review sheet what aspects of their paper they had questions about or
wanted more feedback on. They then passed in their paper and the review
sheet and I redistributed them. The students doing the peer review were
told to write their comments solely on the peer review sheet to emphasize
that the paper itself is still the property of the author and that they are just
giving thoughtful feedback. The author got the peer review sheet at the end
of the class and I got the clean copy of the paper for me to read and
comment on. The following class period, when their submission packets
were due, they spent time in class drafting a reflexive cover letter about
their paper and finally, before turning their submission packet in, they read
their submission drafts out loud to another student and corrected/edited the
paper as they went, further underscoring the point that nothing they write in
this class is ever truly done.
A number of students wrote about revision workshop days being their
favorite of the course on the unofficial review sheets, and when I asked them
what type of review (self, peer, or oral editing) they found most useful there
were a number of fans of each type of review. Several said the self-review
deconstruction exercise was the most useful for them because, for example,
it allowed me to visually see what I should eliminate and where I should add
evidence/analysis and it pointed out every aspect of my paper and how I
could improve it. About the peer review students said it was useful because

Vicky Ballmes
Writing 501
Fall 2015
they were getting a perspective other than your own, it provided me with
good peer feedback, and I think as students we accept more help from our
peers than a teacher/professor. Several students found reading their paper
out loud to a colleague to be the most useful form of revision because it
caught many mistakes that I wouldve read over and it allowed me to hear
what sounded awkward that sounded good in my head but odd out loud.
However, while all three forms of in-class revision had fans, peer review was
mentioned by several students as the least useful class activity. They said
that the students pointed out stuff that they already knew about their paper,
gave only positive reviews not critical evaluation, or gave them feedback
that disagreed with my own. Therefore one thing I will be changing up is
how we do peer review feedback in the class. I think its still worthwhile to
include it as one of the in-class review techniques, but I think that what I will
do next quarter is have the students evaluate what they found in their selfreview and go straight into outlining their questions on the peer review sheet
so that theyre more clearly linked with what they just identified about their
own paper. After the peer review Ill hand back the peer review sheets to the
papers authors and have them look over their deconstructed paper and
notes alongside the peer review, and only then spend a few minutes jotting
down their revision plan. I will also incorporate more discussion about how
to give effective feedback; we did read and discuss Straubs Responding
Really Respondingto Other Students Writing and the students said they
found it helpful for giving useful critiques, but I need to make sure that we
revisit the principles in it over and over again and talk about specific review
strategies, for example using one of the Writing 2 handouts that has wording
suggestions.
Another aspect of my course that Im going to change is to try
assigning people to a specific review group for each of the Writing Projects. I
got this idea from visiting my supervisors class and chatted with him about
the reasons behind his choice and how he found it effective after class that
day. I did something like this for the last two class periods and found it
useful, as did my students, one of whom wrote on the unofficial evaluation
that this was the most useful class activity because the last revision of the
portfolio when we worked in groups was extremely helpful in pointing out my
flaws. When I put the students into these groups at the end of the course I
told them we were using a different writing technique, namely a writing
support group, and that writers often use these kinds of support groups to
both get feedback on their work and to help keep them accountable. I had
them share their portfolio revision plans with their group and each make a
goal, something that they would accomplish towards the revision process by
the next class meeting, where they would then get feedback on that
particular item. I like the sense of camaraderie and teamwork it helps to
create, and I think it will be helpful to incorporate into the peer revision
process as well.

Vicky Ballmes
Writing 501
Fall 2015
Based on my own self-revision I want to incorporate the readings on
Style throughout the class to help my students work on the flow and
presentation of ideas in their paper. I liked the suggestion in the Whats
Working presentations of having the students pull out a paper, perhaps one
of the WPs theyve already turned in, and work on it according to the style
principles discussed in that particular chapter. I want to incorporate these
readings and activities throughout the quarter so that the students have this
as a resource and a tool when they come to revising their WPs for the
portfolio. I am not going to add the Style readings to the course reader, both
because there would be copyright issues and because Im happy with my
reader the way it is (and so are the students, based on their responses), so
Ill have to figure out how exactly I want to give these to my students. That
may be through a PPT and quick lecture summarizing the main points, as
was modeled in one of the Whats Working presentations, or I may give
them the articles on GauchoSpace and ask them to print it out and bring it in
(though getting full cooperation with that is always difficult).
Finally, in a similar fashion to the Style readings, I also want to
incorporate small amounts of grammar discussion and hands-on practice
more throughout the course; while I did discuss some things in the class I
saved the majority of our discussions on grammar for the end of the course,
which made it both more boring and less effective for the students than if it
had been better spread out throughout the course. I liked the way Jeff
incorporated a quick discussion on a grammar issue into his class and had
them do a couple of sentences out loud as a group as practical application,
and I also like the idea of having the students pull out their own papers and
work on grammar issues in them in class.