Lesson 43: Multimedia Civic Memory Brief, Peer Review and Revision

Think-Pair-Share

Present the Performance Task Rubric, reminding students that they used this rubric when they examined the exemplar Civic Memory Brief in Lesson 40.

Say these Directions: Review the Performance Task Rubric carefully. Reflect on which parts of your Civic Memory Briefs you feel confident about and which you feel like you need support with. Then, discuss your thoughts with a partner and be prepared to share with the class.

• I feel good about having a clear thesis statement and supporting details, but I feel like I need some support with adding more textual evidence and with my grammar and punctuation.

Invite a few students to share out two or three quick responses.

Transition: 

• Say: Now you know what areas of their performance task your partner wants support with. Today, you’ll keep that in mind as you read their work and help them find ways to improve it. Then you’ll each have some time to use each other’s suggestions to revise your work into a final draft.

Revising for Capitalization, Punctuation, and Spelling

Explain that conventions like capitalization, punctuation, and spelling are important in making sure your brief is readable and clear.

Present a sample portion of the Civic Memory Brief exemplar and model correcting it for these convention issues, thinking out loud as you go.

Say these Directions: Read the paragraphs below and notice any errors in capitalization, punctuation, or spelling.

• Before this event public lunch counters in nashville were segrigated. Black customers could order food to go, but they were not allowed to eat at the counter. John Lewis remembered this as “humiliating” (March, p. 83).

• Say: We could definitely use a comma to set off the phrase “before this event” because that separates the main action of the sentence from a phrase saying when it happened, so I can just add one. Nashville should have a capital N because it’s a proper noun, which I can change now, and segregated is spelled wrong, so let’s fix that.

Present a second sample, and allow students to point out errors and suggest changes.

• Ask: What convention errors are in this passage, and how can we fix them?

  • Protesters who participated in sit-ins at restaurants were attacked by locals and arrested by police. But they didn’t give up (March, pp. 98–109). The violence reached a new height when someone threw dynemite at the home of Z. alexander Looby. He was a well-known NAACP lawyer involved with the movement. Luckily Looby’s family narrowly avoided injury (The Tennessean, 4/18/2020).

    • Dynamite is spelled wrong and should have an a instead of an e. Alexander should be capitalized because it’s a proper noun. There should be a comma after Luckily.

Transition: 

• Say: If you’re good at catching and correcting mistakes in spelling, capitalization, and punctuation, you’ll be able to spend more time and attention on improving other parts of your partner’s essay.

Part A: Peer Review and Digital Collaboration (W.8.5, W.8.6, L.8.2.a-c) (15 minutes)

Explain to students that they are now going to engage in a peer review of each other’s briefs.

Model for the students on how to peer review for content, grammar, and conventions constructively and respectfully.

• Say: Now we’re going to do a peer review of each other’s work. That means you’re going to switch performance tasks with your partner, read each other’s work, correct mistakes as you see them, and most importantly, give each other advice on how to make the writing better according to the rubric. You can give feedback on the cover page, too, but focus mostly on the writing.

• Say: For example, I might look at my partner’s writing, then look at the rubric and say, “I think your thesis statement is really clear, and you have 4 paragraphs, so that’s all in the 3 row. But I also think you need some more evidence to support it. Do you have anything in your research notes that backs up this point you make in paragraph 2?”

Provide students with a copy of the Performance Task Rubric.

Teach: Digital Peer Review

• Say:. It’s important to use the technology to your advantage when reviewing your peer’s work online. If I’m reading my partner’s draft online, I highlight the exact sentence I’m talking about and leave a comment right there so my partner knows exactly where to revise. Instead of typing something general like “add more,” I name the rubric category and the next step, like “In paragraph 2, add one piece of evidence from your research notes to support this point.” I can also use the reply feature with a comment to ask a clarifying question or respond to my partner’s question or suggestions, so the feedback becomes a real conversation. If the brief includes a title, image, heading, or cover element, I can comment on whether those parts clearly connect to the main idea of the brief.

Say these Directions: Exchange your performance task drafts with the same partners you did the launch activity with. Keep in mind which parts of the performance task your partner already said they wanted support with. If you are working in a shared digital document, use the comment or suggestion tools to leave specific feedback tied to the rubric and to reply to at least one question or comment from your partner.

Begin a peer review of your partner’s brief.

Remind students that this review can also include advising on how to improve the writing, not just correcting mistakes. Allow them to take the rest of the time available to read their partner’s writing through the lens of the rubric and correct convention errors like spelling/capitalization/punctuation errors. After students have independently reviewed their peers’ work, instruct them to engage in a discussion about the feedback needed for revisions.

Part B: Revision (W.8.5, W.8.6, L.8.2.a-c) (15 minutes)

Now that students have given and received peer feedback on their briefs, allow them to spend the remaining available time applying that feedback to revise their work. Present the Explanatory Writing Checklist again, and encourage students to make sure their revisions are bringing them more closely in line with it.

Say these Directions: Open your draft in the digital platform you are using for the Civic Memory Brief. Review the peer comments or notes you received, and revise one comment at a time. Use your saved source links or the Internet to confirm quotations, names, dates, and any multimedia information you include. As you revise, use digital features like comments, highlighting, headings, paragraph spacing, or captions to show how your evidence connects to your thesis and to prepare your brief for publication.

Say these Directions: Revise your work based on the peer feedback you received on your Civic Memory Brief. Look at the Explanatory Writing Checklist below. As you revise, check your writing against the checklist and make sure your changes help bring your brief more closely in line with those expectations.

Explanatory Writing Checklist:

• Begin with an introductory paragraph, including a thesis statement that sets out the main point you want to make and previews what is to follow in the body paragraphs.

• Make sure your thesis statement represents information you can back up with specific evidence.

• Develop your topic by presenting and explaining evidence in two or three body paragraphs.

• Cite the sources that your evidence comes from, and make sure to either paraphrase or use direct quotations.

• End with a conclusion paragraph that restates your thesis statement and shows the evidence you used supports it.

• Use academic language from the texts, and maintain a formal style and tone throughout the writing.

• Use digital formatting features to present relationships between information and ideas clearly, such as headings, paragraph breaks, image captions, or other layout choices that fit your brief.

Remind students that receiving constructive feedback and revising writing accordingly is an important part of the writing process, even for professional writers.

Turn and Talk

Have students conclude with their peer review partners by discussing how their partner’s advice helped them revise their work and what types of changes they made.

Say these Directions: Turn to your partner one more time and talk about how their feedback helped you improve your work. Explain to your partner how their feedback helped you improve your writing.

• Your suggestions about where to add more evidence were really helpful. I went back to my research notes and found some really good evidence to support what I was saying.

Introduce the homework to complete before the next lesson:

Reflect in your Journals about what you found to be the easiest and most difficult parts of hearing peer feedback and revising your work.

If you have not completed your final draft, finish it for homework so you can be ready to practice presenting it in Lesson 45.