This assignment challenged me to re-work an assignment I use in my classroom regularly so that it contained a collaborative component in order to increase engagement. The assignment that I chose was a writing assignment that assessed the students' argumentative writing skills. After reading the short story, "A Retrieved Reformation" by O. Henry, students had to answer the following prompt: Was Ben Price justified in his decision to let Jimmy Valentine walk away and continue his life as Ralph D. Spencer?
Students then had to use the writing format ACES (Assertion, Citation, Explanation, Summarizing Statement) to argue whether or not they felt Ben Price was justified. Initially, this assignment did not contain a collaboration piece in the rubric, however through this module I learned how important (and easy) it is to add this component. So, I added to the assignment that once the students completed their written response, they were to share their document with the members of their writing group. This assignment was pushed out as a Google Doc, so it is very easy for students to hit the Share button and add their group members to their Doc. They then had to make comments on each other's writing with suggestions or specific pieces of praise they found the writer did well. This was a fast and efficient way for the students to peer edit the work of the others in their writing group.
Once they were done peer editing, then they were able to officially turn the assignment in for me to grade it. I found that adding this one piece of peer collaboration and feedback added more meaning and engagement to the overall lesson and assignment.
Link to assignment:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nUibflZGHbnuqaCR4cr1nQtt_QmAhHvnYiSr7b6pqq0/edit?usp=sharing
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