ch 5-7 Gilmore

Again, another checklist that Gilmore gives us that we can actually use in our classes. I loved "the ten or twenty or thirty" minute revision checklist. It gave all the things that you should be doing in revision, but in a way (from 1-whatever) to do step by step, and in a logical way. Obviously proofreading would be first, with strengthening your thesis statement almost right after it. These are definetly the first things you look to do when you are revising. I guess never thought to make it so simple for students as to give them a checklist to revise. If I am remembering correctly, only one teacher, a professor here actually, has ever given me a revising checklist of some sort. All the others just give us requirements for the paper and say "go to town."

I thought it was also great how he didn't just give us the checklist but explained each number/part to the readers, explaining why itwas important, what to say to your students, and in terms of his example at the begining of the chapter, AP classes.

I thought it was also interesting the "what DOESN'T count" sort of checklist after he explains all this. That poor handwriting, poor spelling, scribbles, and organization issues shouldn't count against the student. Pretty ironic to me since that is all I feel my mentor teacher is trying to teach his middle school students right now, and yea I do disagree with the poor handwriting. I got marked down for having handwriting like an 8 year old boy all my life because of the fact that nobody could read it. well I could read it, but that is the same reason why when I am grading papers for these middle school students, I don't know if they actually answered the question or not because of the fact I can't read their handwriting. I guess the difference in this is that these are middle school students and i'm assuming Gilmore is speaking of just high schoolers.

Are most of these books for high schoolers? I wish we had some books talking about middle schoolers... since I am sadly stuck in a 6th grade classroom and seem to have not many ideas for students that can't make a complete sentence.

On to more gilmore though, I also liked how he gave yet ANOTHER checklist for revising students timed essays. You would have never thought that it would be different grading students timed esays, but it seemingly is and he points this out. I liked how he wants the students to go back over their own riding though, rather than you just grading it giving it back to them and them crying about their horrible grade. Why not make this a learning experience and do read arounds (which he calls a pass-around activitiy) which is almost the same as the read around. More checklists from poetry to creative writing come up and I loved all of them. I would really come back to this if I was running out of ideas for revision. He does come up with some really cool thigns for revision!