In a stroke of luck, on Friday, I ran into Doris Jacques among the hundreds and hundreds of students and teachers at the College Fair at St. Mike's. We talked about school for about thirty seven and a half seconds, and she mentioned that she's begun writing response groups with (at least one of) her classes. I wish we'd had more time to chat, but buses were about to board.

So, Doris, and everyone else out there in our little blogosphere, how's it going so far? How are you getting kids to respond usefully to each others' writing? I'm doing it in one class and am finding I need to impose more structure in the form of, well, forms that the writers fill out as they lead a conference about their piece.

Sample ?'s
-What words and phrases stood out for you?
-Where does my piece really "get going" for you?
- What do you see as my focus?

I hope I can move away from this more prescriptive way of approaching writing response, but in the beginning the Elbow guidelines on their own didn't seem enough.

Hope to hear from lots of our group here on the blog..... (If you don't have a classroom right now, maybe you can chime in as to what's worked for you in the past when you've asked kids to respond to each other's work...?

Best to all,
Julia

Check out this link to an article featuring, in part, our own Paul Martin on podcasting...
http://www.uvm.edu/theview/article.php?id=1831