Writer’s Note Suggestions

On this page, you’ll find several different kinds of suggestions for composing a writer’s note. You can use these prompts if you need to, but you can also write this note completely on your own. The main idea here is that you tell your reader what you wanted to accomplish with your draft, where you think you were successful and where you think you still need to do some work. You can also use this note to tell your reader what kind of help you’d like. Do you need help with the introduction? With developing a character? Would you like your reader to sketch a scene for you? To tell you what doesn’t feel right to them? Get the feedback you want by bein very explicit in this note about what you need and expect from your reader.

a.Why did you choose the title you did? What does it say about your draft? How does it establish and limit your subject? How does it set the voice or tone of the piece?

b.Describe the hook you used in the first paragraph of your essay. (question, dialogue, facts, scene, quote, tension or conflict, image, etc.) Why do you think this is a particularly compelling way to attract and keep your reader's attention?

c.What was the main purpose of this essay? What did you want to accomplish by telling it?

d.Which of the writing exercises helped you the most in writing this draft (looking for details, focusing through tension, titles as ways to focus)? Is any of that writing a part of the draft? Where?

e.Which of the readings from the text influenced this essay? Did you model your essay on any of them or think about how any one of those writers had presented their ideas when you were writing your own essay?

f.What was the hardest part about writing this draft? What was the easiest? What seems to you to be most effective in the piece? Why? Where are you stuck or unhappy about the piece? If you had more time, what would you keep working on.

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Midterm Learning Letter

1a. Which moments come to mind when you think back over the course? Good moments? Bad moments? Perplexing moments? Quickly sketch in a small handful of such moments. Two or three sentences can easily sketch a moment; often one sentence will do (indeed you can sometimes point with just a phrase to a moment that your reader will obviously remember -- e.g., “That day you scolded us for posting late”).

1b. What do these moments tell about you as a student, about the teacher, about the course?

2. What are you most proud of about your own effort or accomplishment in the course? What are you not satisfied with, or what do you want to work on improving?

3. What are the most important strengths or skills you brought to this course?

4. What has been the greatest challenge for you?

5. Tell about the effects of the course on your writing. Talk about: changes or lack of change in the quality of what you write changes or lack of change in how you write changes or lack of change in your attitudes and feelings about writing.

6. What have you learned about other than writing -- perhaps about yourself or about people or about learning?

7. What has been the most important thing you’ve learned? If you wish, you can just circle something you’ve already written.

8. What do you need to learn next?

9. What was the most and least helpful about: the exercises the responses from peers the responses from the professor the readings how the course is structured

10. What aspects of you has the course brought out? What aspects has it left untapped or unnoticed?

11. If you could start over again, what would you do differently? What have you learned about how to learn better?

12. Do you have any suggestions for how the course could be made more helpful?

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Final Learning Letter

This letter is a reflection on the learning you’ve done over the course of the semester. Here are some prompts to help you write this letter. Feel free to add other comments as you think necessary in order to explain and discuss your learning over the course of the semester.

1. What are you most proud of about your own effort or accomplishment in the course? What are you not satisfied with?

2. Describe your writing process at the beginning of the course. Describe your writing process now. How are the changes in your process significant? Tell about the effects of the course on your writing. Talk about: changes or lack of change in the quality of what you write changes or lack of change in how you write changes or lack of change in your attitudes and feelings about writing.

3. To be a good writer, you need to be a good thinker. How have you grown as a thinker over the course of the semester? What have you learned about making connections between your personal life and the world around you? About developing an idea? About responding to criticism? About reading your own work actively and critically? What is the most important thing you learned about writing?

4. What suggestions do you have for improving the course in the areas of content or style of delivery?

5. What have you learned in this course, about writing, about reading, about research, about yourself, that you feel will “transfer” to other aspects of your life as a student? How useful has this course been to you in terms of your writing life? In terms of your college career?

6. How would you assess the work and the effort you”ve put into the course? What grade would you give yourself for the course? Why?

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Reader’s Guide to Commenting on Peer Drafts
Responding to Essays

Three steps

1. Read the writer’s note and the essay. Write a letter to the writer responding to their writer’s note. Make sure your response is thoughtful and thorough. Try as hard as you can to be helpful to the writer.

2. Reader-Based Feedback. You need to be honest. Tell what’s truely happening to you as you read. This kind of feedback tells as much about you as it does about the writer.

A. Read the first paragraph. Stop at the end and tell your the writer what's going on in your head at that particular moment. What are you reminded of? What do you expect to happen next? What's the essay going to be about? Are you engaged? Bored? What detail facinates you? What detail seems irrelevant? What do you want to know more about? Roll the movie of your mind at the moment you stop reading.
B. Read the second paragraph. Answer the same questions.
C. Read to the middle of the essay. Answer the same questions.
D. Read to the end of the essay. Tell how you feel now. Were you surprised by the direction the essay went? Is there still something you want to know more about? How do the beginning and the ending of the essay fit together? Do they “match up with” what happened in the middle? What do you feel now? Why?

3. Criterion-Based Feedback. This kind of feedback is more traditional, more judgmental. You need to be very specific and descriptive in your responses here.

A. Is the piece descriptive? Do you experience what's there? Where is it the most descriptive? Where would you like more details? What kinds of details?
B. Are the people in the essay real and interesting? What could be done to make them more real?
C. Are there good ideas, insights in the essay? What are they? Where does the writer show the most understanding of the subject? Are the ideas supported with enough examples, evidence, details? Where would you like more supporting material? What kind of support would be most useful to you?
D. Organization. How is the essay organized? What guides the writer's movement from paragraph to paragraph? Could you follow it easily? Where did you get lost?
E. Sense of the Writer. Is there a sense of engagement or commitment to the topic? An appropriate voice and stance toward the reader? Where is it most obvious?

Other Options for Responding to Peer Writing You’ll find more ideas for responding at the following site: http://www.gsh.org/wce/wrtguide5.htm

You can also try this technique:

a. Read the title. Stop. What do you expect from a piece with this title? How does it establish and limit the subject? How does it set the voice or tone of the piece.
b. Read the first paragraph. Stop. What in that first paragraph makes you want to read further? What do you expect to follow? Describe the essay you think would follow from this initial paragraph.
c. Read the next 2 paragraphs. Are your expectations being fulfilled? Where do you feel lead astray? Where do you want more focus? What's working? Are you committed to the piece? Why or why not?
d. Read to the end of the piece. Each group member should take a few minutes and write down what they feel the thesis statement of the essay is. When everyone has come up with a thesis, compare that to the author's thesis statement. Do your statements match up? What's different about them? What does that tell you about the piece?
e. Does the essay remind you of any of the pieces we've read from our text so far this semester? Which ones? In what way? Suggest one technique that one of the authors from the text uses that the writer could incorporate into her or his essay.
f. Tell the writer what you would do with this essay if it were your essay -- which it's not.

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