Reflections on the Mid-Year C3WP Meeting in Atlanta: Revising for Commentary

by Deb Austin, Dunseith High School

Jameka, Robin, Lisa, and Deb in Atlanta

During the C3WP Mid-Year meeting in Atlanta Feb 8-10, I attended the Revising for Commentary Breakout Session facilitated by Jameka Thomas and Heather Payne. They started the session with a quote from Joseph Harris, “To understand a text you need, in a way, to rewrite it, to take the ideas and phrasings of its author and turn them into your own. Texts don't simply reveal their meanings to us; we need to make sense of them." This quote resonated with me and made me think of the Paraphrasing Strategy training I had taken years ago. This is the part my students were not getting, instead of paraphrasing they were summarizing.

The Revising for Commentary lesson is best taught after students have experienced the Ranking Evidence resource or during the revision process of a piece of work in which students have created a draft argument. Like all the C3WP resources it is very user friendly and creates thoughtful discussions. After participating in the Breakout, the Role of Commentary made more sense to me. Commentary helps connect to the claim, prove the value of evidence and extending our thinking.

The revising process became clearer as we worked through the process using samples of student work. We also addressed how we respond to someone's writing and how do we support someone in the revision process.  This also reinforced the idea of celebrating student writing and where they are rather than where they aren't.