Formative Feedback using Google Docs

We are in the thick of our new fantasy story writing unit. Students gathered lots of ideas launched from minilessons, chose one to commit to, and shared that idea with me using a plot mountain. They also identified a social issue that they are going to show through their story. As I reviewed plot mountains, I noticed how many stories mirrored their interests out of school: the video gamers have characters being sucked into games, the dystopian readers have futuristic settings with problems of injustice, boy-crazy girls have characters who fall in love with superheroes, and those concerned with bullying have bullying stories (one is being bullied by her talking diary who is revealing all her secrets!).

image from Google play website

After a week of drafting, it was time for me to take a close look at how these stories were going. The students are drafting on Google Docs, which they shared with me. Not only does it save paper, but it also allows me anytime access to their drafts and a tool for commenting easily. As I read, I made sure to find opportunities to highlight and write a positive comment in the margin where I saw the student apply something we talked about in class--slow motion details that show scenes clearly, an interesting lead, short tense sentences in an action scene, dialogue that reveals something about the character-- or something I really enjoyed as a reader-- a funny moment, a surprise, or an interesting conflict or character.

I also found opportunities to highlight and question places where I became confused as a reader. Perhaps the student shifted scenes abruptly and needed to transition more smoothly. Maybe the student started in first person and switched to third person halfway through (or vise-versa) or changed the character's name. Or something happened so abruptly that I was caught off-guard (What? Your best friend just entered your house and shot your brother out of the blue? Why?).

Other times I highlighted and nudged toward a skill taught during previous minilessons. For example, we've been focusing on sentence variety, so I might highlight a couple of simple sentences that could be combined, or long sentences in an action scene that might be better as short tense sentences, or fragments that seemed to have no purpose. Another common comment centered on a long "telling" lead paragraph, explaining everything about the fantasy setting or all about the character and their traits or conflict. For these, I usually said something like, "This is a long paragraph filled with lots of "telling". Consider how to "show" this information to the reader instead: you could say it during a conversation, you could have the character do something that shows his traits, or you could do... something else?"

Finally, I highlighted and "taught" some simple skills where I saw a consistent error. I highlighted dialogue and explained how to use punctuation inside the quotation marks when the quote is followed by a speech marker. I also told students to add a "return" and "tab" when each new person talks. Similarly, for those stories that were all one paragraph, I found the first place where the idea shifts, and "taught" how writers look for those places to add paragraph breaks (using a "return" and "tab" to indent). Several students shifted verb tense in the middle of their stories, so a quick "choose one tense and stick to it throughout your story" reminder at the point of shifting sufficed.

As I was doing all this reading, highlighting, and commenting, I had Lucy Calkins' voice in my head, "Teach the writer, not the writing." Although I felt I was fairly prescriptive in some places (especially the skills comments), I tried really hard to keep the ownership of the story in the students' hands. By asking questions, giving strategy reminders, and open suggestions starting with "consider", the choice about how to revise is up to the student.

I captured my suggestions on a document so that I can go back to the students and talk through some of the more difficult suggestions (such as the show-not-tell lead), and I can also go back to the story and see if my nudges moved the student along. Once students submit their final stories (they change ownership so that I am owner and they can only view), I can re-read my comments as I grade to see if they actually followed through on making changes.

Google docs keeps students' writing process very transparent. I have constant access to their work and students can always view my suggestions. Once they feel satisfied that they have acted on the suggestion, students have the power to "resolve" the comment, which hides it from the draft and makes it look clean, but it is still available to view through the comments button at the top of the page. Students can share their writing with a few others in order to get peer feedback, and I can see the kinds of comments their peers make. Are they the "I love your story! It's so good!" comment which does little to help the writer, or are they the constructive kind, either specific and positive ("I love how you showed that your character is brave by making her confront her fear of spiders") or helpful ("You need more periods here because I got confused when I read it")? Google docs has been a great tool to use for student writing projects!

Dreaming of Demons: Using the Rule of Three to Modify Teaching Texts

Last spring, I was reading the news and stumbled across this article, "Strange Sleep Disorder Makes People See 'Demons'". Hmm, I thought to myself, this could make an interesting fantasy story. I saved the article to my computer for some future date. This summer, when I had some time, I wrote the story that had percolated for a couple of months, and called it "Demon Dreams".

Here I am in December, and we are in the first weeks of our new fantasy writing unit. As with all fiction writing units, the first lessons were focused on gathering ideas using a variety of strategies. I decided to throw in the strategy of "Use ideas from the world around you" as one place to launch into story ideas, and shared the sleep disorders article with my classes. There was quite a buzz that day with "What ifs" flying around the room. I shared with them my quick story blurb based on this article:

image from wikipedia

What if there was a girl who was obsessed with the Mortal Instruments series (City of Bones series by Clarissa Clare), and really wanted to become a Shadow Hunter. She reads this article and decides to create demons from her dreams, and then fight them. It takes her several tries, but then she succeeds. Now, I haven't decided yet how I want it to end. There are several possibilities: she could kill the demon and win, the demon could kill her, or maybe there's something else, which I will keep thinking about.

By the end of the gathering week, students had settled on a blurb that they could commit to, and wrote it in a way that they would remember the idea when they returned from their 3-week winter holiday.

As I was looking ahead to the drafting lessons, I returned to my finished "Demon Dreams" short story to modify sections that we could work with. According to Mary Ehrenworth at the TCRWP Writing Institute, mini-lesson model texts should be based on "The Rule of Three": One place where the teacher shows the students how to use the strategy, one place where the teacher and students can work together with the strategy, and one place where students can work by themselves with the strategy.

I will start with this first drafting mini-lesson (all teaching points from Calkins, Lucy. "Realistic Fiction/Social Action Fiction" in A Curricular Plan for the Writing Workshop--Grade 7, 2011-12. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2011): 

“Writers often think of a story as having three parts—one part where we meet the characters and find out about the setting as well as hints of the problem, one part where the critical problem is faced and choices are made, and one part that shows change and/or resolution. Writers don’t necessarily start drafting with part one, though—we often begin by drafting the second part, to make sure we use our energy on the most critical moment of action, decision, and conflict. Then we’ll write what comes before and what happens after.” 

When I teach this lesson, I'll share a timeline of the blurb to model the decision-making part of what to draft first. When I returned to my finished story, I found the part that focused on her attempts to create and successfully creating the demon, and I copied it onto a new document, called "Draft 1". I'll share this at the beginning of the next class.

The next lesson teaches story leads in order to help the writer get from the beginning to the middle:

“Writers try different leads for our stories. We start in different places, we write three versions of the same scene, we try different voices (first and third), or we start in various settings, to surprise ourselves as writers. Then we show our partner some of our leads and get feedback from a partner writer.”

In my finished draft, I had already written a long lead-in to the middle; it needed a sentence or two to help it make sense: "Liz read through the past couple of days of her dream journal before she went to sleep, focused on making the demon come closer." Next come some dream journal entries that talk about her attempts and the dream in which she succeeds in conjuring the demon. During the lesson, after I read Draft 1, I'll return to that new sentence and teach around what needs to come into the lead: Introduce the character: Liz takes fencing lessons, is a huge fan of the Mortal Instruments series; issue: looking for happiness by becoming a Shadow Hunter; problem: demons are evil and dangerous and Liz is just a girl; context: establish the night paralysis idea and why Liz is keeping a dream journal. We will brainstorm a list of ways to begin stories, such as dialogue, action, flashback, explanation. Then we'll look at my story. I drafted some leads ahead of time, and will share two, ask for help with a third, and have them work independently for a fourth (#2 is the lead I want to use eventually, and I'll choose one other to model how authors think of several leads before settling on one):

1.     Liz had always wanted to be a Shadow Hunter. Ever since she read City of Bones, her dream was to fight demons and live in the supernatural world with vampires, wizards, and werewolves. When she read an article that explained how some people saw demons when they experienced sleep paralysis, she had an idea. (explanatory)

2.     Liz could barely control her glee as she stepped back into the Sleep Center waiting room, photocopied instructions in hand. “I got it! Let’s go!” Robin smiled warily as she stood up from the orange plastic seat. As they walked to the bus stop, Liz launched into her plan, explaining step by step how she was going to “create a demon” through her dreams and then fight it like the Shadow Hunters in her favorite book, City of Bones. Robin walked quietly beside her. Liz finally wound down as they arrived at the bus shelter. (action- beginning chronologically)

3.     Liz lay in bed, twitching in her sleep. Her eyes rolled behind their lids, and her hands clenched. Short, sharp cries escaped from her pursed lips. She was having a nightmare, exactly as she’d planned for the past two weeks. (action- middle, and will flash back to beginning)

4.     The demon stood before her, scaly and menacing. Liz faced it with her fencing sword, feet planted, ready to fight. This is the moment she’d been waiting for. (action- end, and will flashback to beginning)

We've talked a lot about mood in stories this year, with a focus on how setting details and word choice create that mood. This is a sophisticated writing technique that eighth grade writers can handle, and fantasy stories are ripe for adding setting and mood details. Here is the mini-lesson teaching point:

“As we draft our first scene, writers work on creating a setting that is a psychological state as well as a physical one. We create a mood by something as simple as the weather, and by small details that make a place seem happy or oppressive. We also look to each of our scenes with this lens, elaborating our settings so they create a certain atmosphere that shifts throughout the story.” 

I went back to my Draft 1 and looked for a scene that included a lot of mood details. I found the scene where Liz finally meets the demon in her dream. I had written it like this:

Liz walked through a forest of red trees. It was drizzling and misty, making everything damp. Drops fell off the red leaves like blood. There was no sound. She could feel the demon presence getting stronger as she walked forward, like a throbbing in her core. Part of her consciousness told her to run away as fast as possible. She kept walking, intent on meeting the demon at last.

 Lots of great sensory detail, ominous mood, just what I was looking for. However, there is nothing for students to do with it since it's already done. I needed to cut it back to the bare bones:

She walked through a forest. She could feel the demon presence getting stronger as she walked forward. Part of her consciousness told her to run away as fast as possible. She kept walking, intent on meeting the demon at last.

In my modelling, I can explain how I want this mood to be scary and ominous, and then I can add one or two details about the forest. The class can help me add another setting detail, and finally they can come up with a third.

When we get through drafting, we also need to take a close look at sentences. We did some work with simple, complex, and compound sentences, and sentence fragments during the fiction reading unit, and now it was time to apply those sentence skills. I will use this mini-lesson teaching point:

“We can also take a fresh look at our sentences, with the lens of short and long sentences, and when to use each. A series of short sentences often create a sense of tension, which is released with a longer, serial sentence."

There is certainly an action scene at the end that could use re-writing. Here is what I have in Draft 1:

“Come on!” Liz shouted. “I’m not scared of you!” The demon ran to her in two bounds, but Liz was ready. Her sword slashed through the air, landing on its shoulder and cutting deep. It let out a howl, strangely high pitched, and lunged at her. Its teeth snapped closed as she dodged and ducked. It reared up on its hindquarters, raking the air with its claws.

It is easy to model the first revision: "The demon ran to her in two bounds. Liz was ready." The next sentence also lends itself to being broken up into short, choppy sentences. The tricky part is that "longer, serial sentence" that releases the tension. Where should it come? This is a great discussion point where we can try out different versions of the same scene, looking at the work that punctuation can do for a scene's pace and excitement, and reinforcing the idea that exploring options leads to much stronger writing at the end (I still have students who turn in first draft work, or work that has been only cursorily spell-checked).

In true Understanding by Design style, I started with the end in mind (my finished story), and worked backward to design lessons that will guide students through the writing process step by step. I used Mary Ehrenworth's "Rule of Three" to re-write my model texts so that my lessons used the gradual release model: I do it, we do it together, you do it. I have more work to do, especially around editing, which still befuddles too many students. But I have enjoyed re-thinking my own writing process, the decisions I made while writing, and seeing how my students can make my story even better.

To read my full story (without any student help), click on this link.