The idea of reading and reading and reading again hit me this afternoon. I was sure I'd corrected mistakes caught by others, but I almost turned my paper in to Steve with a missing quotation mark. Eek!
Talk about a valuable lesson! One that I will definitely take to my students.
The whole process of creating our stories for the institute publication has been good for me to go through. I confess that my students and I finally get around to doing things later than we should, which means we don't give ourselves enough time for thoughtful suggestions and peer editing and refining of articles. My experience here has been a real eye-opener in showing me how necessary it is to take several looks at a story.
I can't say enough great things about the work done by my group's mentor, Josh Coddington. When we met the first time, he was remarkably fast about addressing our diverse topics and leading us to new ways to look at them. When we met again to look at our stories, he presented kind, thoughtful -- and necessary -- changes for us to make. But he didn't just tell us how to change our stories; he led us to finding many of those changes (almost) on our own. He said he really likes the editing process. It shows.
The other members of the group approached the peer editing process very much the same way. I know it's made an impression on all of us, and I believe we'll all take the experience back to our classrooms.
Elizabeth Granger
Lawrence Central High School
Indianapolis, Ind.
You are right that it is so easy to read right over your own mistakes. We know what we mean, so our brain just fills in the blanks. I've done it myself so many times I don't want to admit it.
ReplyDeleteScott Davis
Westville OK High School