My Students Won’t Know How to Respond to Each Other’s Writing.

So what should they say when they finish reading a partner’s writing?

It’s not about spelling, or quality of sentences, or messiness. This isn’t even a draft – if it were anything it would be a pre-draft – the kind of thing you write to find out what you think.

So what should they say? Put some sentence leads on the screen/board the first few times.

The following might work…again, you know what you have been working on with the students in terms of respectfulness to each others writing.

• I didn’t know that….
• Something like that happened to me when…
• The part I liked best was…
• Tell me more about…
• I was a little confused when…tell me more
• Why….
• But what did he/she say when you….