Turning in Memoirs: Day 29

Posted on by garvoille

Today, students were ready to turn in the final draft of their memoir (long-awaited day!).

1. Organizing Papers. Students got out their papers for this project and organized them like this:

  • Final draft
  • Reflection (on notebook paper)
  • Complete rough draft
  • Any checklist or to-do list from complete rough draft
  • Writer’s Workshop #2, #3
  • Any other random rough drafts
  • Memoir Planning Sheet

2. Reflection. Students spent fifteen to twenty minutes answering the following questions about the writing process to help them reflect on their progress:

  1. What parts of your memoir are the best?
  2. What parts are you still not confident about?
  3. What literary techniques helped your writing most?
  4. Which literary techniques are you still not sure how to use well?
  5. What were the most difficult parts of the process?
  6. Tell about your Writer’s Workshop Group (or Partner). What did they do well? What more did you need from them?
  7. What did you think about the visiting editors (Duke students and upperclassmen)?
  8. What have you learned about writing?
  9. What grade would you give yourself on this project and why?
  10. If we could go back in time, what could we have done differently in class to make you more successful on this project? More time in the lab? More work on symbolism? More time in writing groups?
3. Publication. I shared information with the students about the option of entering their memoir to be published in our class book in the Going on 15 series. Students signed up to be published, gave a pen name if desired, and–hopefully–we’ll have the vast majority of students in our next book!
DSA Publishing Club will edit the memoirs and make the book, so you don’t need to do anything. But if you want to be in the club, we will be meeting Mondays and Wednesdays from 4:00-5:00 in my classroom. When we have early release days or no school on Mondays, we will meet on Friday as our make-up day. I hope to see lots of new editors at our first meeting on October 10!
HW: None. You’ve done a lot of work this week already.

Published by garvoille