Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Blog Post #3: Peer Editing

everyone needs a good editor

Peer Editing
Often in grade school, teachers told their students to peer edit particular activities, worksheets, term papers, etc. Hearing the words, "pass your papers behind you so your peers can edit your work," always seemed to make me extremely nervous! I would think to myself, my work wasn't good enough and my peers will laugh at my hard work! However, when I got in high school, mainly the 11th and 12th grades, I wanted the teacher to say, "pass your papers behind you!" I would rather have a peer edit my work, and not a teacher. Peer editing, as described in the video "What is Peer Editing?" and the slideshow "Peer Edit With Perfection" means to work with someone your own age- usually someone in the same class as you- to help improve, revise, and edit his/her writing. This assignment suggested by Paige Ellis, a former EDM310 student, was very helpful. Paige Ellis demonstrated a situation involving errors in her peer's blog. Some of the errors in the blog were obvious, while some where not. Ellis personally asked Dr. Strange how she should address the situation. Dr. Strange told Ellis that the best way to approach it was her choice, whether publicly or privately, but it needed to be done. As future teachers, we will have to critique our students work constantly. So, when peer editing we should approach situations like Ellis demonstrated, in the same way we would as a teacher. There are three steps we should follow when editing our peer's work. Step 1: Compliments. We should compliment on our peers hard work, focusing on the main idea and structure. Step 2: Suggestions. After complimenting on the work, we are to make suggestions, if need be. For instance, if the work is not organized, suggest in a positive way, that the structure of the work is not properly built and the worker should rethink their way of organizing the work. Step 3: Corrections. If there should be grammatical errors, in a nice way, the editor should comment on how to correct the errors. For this step, the editor should pay close attention on how they word the needed corrections, don't be a Mean Margaret or a Picky Patty. We don't want to embarrass or humiliate the peer. In the video "Writing Peer Review Top 10 Mistakes," a class of elementary students explained in a humorous way, the top 10 mistakes when editing. When editing, we should stay positive and not be a Mean Margaret. We should also critique discretely, and not be a Loud Larry. This assignment, suggested by Ellis, has opened my eyes to new ways of critiquing, not only as a peer, but also as a future teacher! Using the previous suggestions from Ellis' blog, the two videos and the slide show, I will honestly critique my group member's blog posts! Both of my group members, have typed up very well written posts! I have not found major grammatical errors or spelling errors. If I do find an error, I plan to email my peer to suggest a change that should possibly be fixed. I choose to email my peers rather than in a comment, so that they will not feel humiliated or embarrassed in front of the rest of the class. (I hope that they do the same for me!!) Both my group members, have great organization skills when it comes to their blog posts. The posts are not scattered, they are uniformed. Making critiques on a peer's work, is potentially an amazing thing in the long run. When a student critiques a piece of work, they see things, the writer/worker does not. As said before, at first you may feel intimidated when having a piece of work edited by a peer. Therefore, I ask you this, would you rather a friend edit your work, or a teacher who gives the final grade?

4 comments:

  1. Great post Caitlin! You followed the guidelines to writing a quality blog post we discussed in class very well. To answer you question, I would personally like for a friend to edit my work in hopes of them giving honest feedback. I can tell you really put thought into this week's blog assignment. Makes it hard to critique when you have done such a great job. Keep it up!
    Melissa

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  2. Caitlin, I felt the same way when my teachers used to ask us to pass our papers to someone for revisions. Now, I much rather my peers read my work before turning it into the teacher. You did a great job on this post! No revisions needed.

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