Storyworks Review Writing Residency (South Toe Elementary)
3rd and 4th Grade South Toe Elementary Students both composed a collaborative review in October 2013. We began by developing a list of criteria by studying reviews written by students and published in Storyworks magazine:
We’d read several picture books, and each class chose one that fitted them perfectly. The 4th grade, a heart-strong class, decided on Meg Kearney’s Trouper. The 3rd grade, a humor-loving bunch, picked Aaron Shepard’s Carnivores. Then we chose the criteria that best fit the books we were reviewing and organized the important points with the help of the Review Writing Skeleton. We used Story Skeleton to help us construct the first draft of our written review.
At first, we thought we’d done a marvelous job. But then we did some serious reworking in Draft 2 using the three secrets for editing success:
Because we wrote a collaborative review, it belonged to no one and everyone. A group-composed manuscript helps the whole class dig into it to improve our collective work. See how many marks there are:
You can see at a glance we improved it markedly—and surprising to all of us, the next draft was almost as messy. I left both grades with Draft 3s that they’re hoping to take at least to Draft 4 before they submit them to Storyworks, bringing us full circle.
