Welcome to the Writing Exchange! Today's English class was all focused on getting started with this awesome opportunity. Mrs. Troester has been doing the Writing Exchange for several years with her students and this is our first chance to be a part of it. Also named "SPUR," (Suburban, Preservice Teachers, Urban, and Rural) this project connects four classes of different aged students in online writing forums to exchange ideas and feedback to help develop better writers. The three other schools we get to work with include University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln East High School, and Omaha Burke High School. In the forums our teams of students are already set up and we can meet our group for the semester. So, our first task is write an "Author's Bio." We need to include interesting information that someone who has never met us should know about us. We are composing these short bios and saving them on our computers to our "Writing Exchange" folder and we will post to the forums on Thursday.
We also learned about the purpose of an "Author's Note." Added to the beginning of every piece of writing we publish to the Writing Exchange, this paragraph should include the following information:
- Where you are at in the process of writing/How this piece of writing came to be.
- Your assessment of your writing so far (What you think about it).
- What feedback you are looking to receive from others who read it.
In the writing exchange we will use a two-week cycle. One week we will each post a piece of writing; the next week we will all respond to our group members with feedback. If money can be found, we may get to meet the others in the Writing Exchange in person before Christmas. Regardless, we will culminate with a "Virtual Coffeehouse" where we share our best writing of the semester with all the students involved in this project.
This should be an exciting journey in 8th Grade English class... one of which there surely is more to tell as time goes on! Stay tuned!
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