Posting and Responding for June 7

Today's assignment means that you'll need to have a draft of your essay and post it to the discussion board in response to my call for drafts there. Remember to include extra spaces between paragraphs!

You will also need to respond to two (or three) drafts. We'll do this in five groups of three (two of four).

Group 1: Kimberly, LeAnn, Janita, Theresa
Group 2: Katherine, Eric, Deann, Pei Ming
Group 3: Joseph, Amy, Sandra
Group 4: Bill, Mark, Lacey
Group 5: John, Kyle, Teresa
(You can see the complete roster here.)

Your duties: post the essay, then read and respond to the other essays in your group with the following in mind.

Your comments need to be useful as well as encouraging. At a minimum, do two things:

1. Tell the writer something specific that you liked in their draft. Be specific. If in paragraph two they give a very vivid description of a scene, tell them that specifically. Tell where it is and why you liked it. That is more useful than saying the description was good. Example: "I really liked it in the third paragraph, where you described the guy with the eye patch and the dirty shirt. I could really see him and I thought the description really made the next paragraph work well, when you guys were trying to get the canoe in the water, because I could just see him lurking there behind the trees. Yikes!"

Whatever it is that you like, be specific. Point it out. That way, the writer knows that they've got something on track.

2. Tell them something that you think they could do to make the essay better. What would you like to see in the next draft? Again, be specific. Example: "I liked the way you end your essay by saying that you thought the trip was going to be a lot of fun, but then it turned out to be such a bummer. I think the essay would be better if you did something similar in the beginning, so your reader is thinking about how this trip is going to turn bad. Maybe you could include a version of the third to the last sentence in your introduction."

The writer can choose to do whatever they like, but having some ideas from other people should help.

Remember too that some dialogue can occur there, and you can also email each other using the roster.