Resources for Supporting an Online Writing Community

If you are developing or facilitating a professional development program that includes peer editing as a topic/theme/strand you will want to check out Denise Marchionda's "two-peer editing system." Marchionda shares the checklist and specific step-by-step directions she has students follow in her class when editing/reviewing one another's writing. She also shares specific examples of how the strategy led to improved student writing. The article would be useful as a stand alone discussion piece in a professional development session, but even better if it were read, discussed and followed up with teachers engaging in the process with their own pieces of writing, enacting the NWP core belief that teachers of writing should also be writers themselves.

This short chapter from When Teaching Writing Gets Tough: Challenges and Possibilities in Secondary Writing Instruction offers three suggestions for changing your writing instruction to support student writers as independent decision makers.