I thought my student partnership went well overall. My writing partner was enthusiastic and timely about getting her responses to me, which didn't appear to be the case for a number of other people in our class, so I consider myself lucky in that regard! I very much enjoyed her writing and I hope I was able to help her, at least a little bit.
Because I have my own classroom and my own students, I was hesitant about this partnership at first. I felt that I could have been spending my time responding to my own students. BUT I only felt this way at the very beginning. After I started corresponding with my student, I realized that it was a good experience for me to have a student from a different school that I don't know so well to respond to. I feel like sometimes make comments to students based on what I know of them and not necessarily what I know about their writing, so I found this partnership helped me focus back on the student's writing instead of the student.
I appreciate your honesty about not really responding well to the project at first, because I felt the exact same way. Like you, once I focused more on the student's writing rather than the actual idea of everything and the student himself, I was able to get more out of this project.
ReplyDeleteAmy- It must have been odd to have this kind of a partnership when you have a similar partnership with dozens of students every day! It was probably also a bit disconcerting to share your own work with her when you aren't used to doing that with your own students. Do you think there is any benefit to letting your own students read and critique a piece you have written?
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