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The Writing Process: Ideas for Responding
building a community of responders in your classroom of writers

Welcome to WritingFix's Response Resource Page! I am Campbell Valle, a middle school teacher and a Teacher Consultant for the Northern Nevada Writing Project.

Why response? With very few exceptions (such as diaries or some poetry), writing is a tool for communicating with others. How can students be expected to create something expressive and worthwhile if they never have an opportunity to share?

Unfortunately, however, in many classrooms, response is the most easily dismissed or forgotten stage of the writing process. Like me, you may have experienced disappointment or frustration with response in the classroom. Too often we have students conference with peers, often guided by a checklist, and see little application of the feedback in the revision stage. Final copies are identical to rough drafts.

In “Responders are Taught, Not Born,” Jay Simmons found that the solution to this problem is explicit instruction in response. Without instruction, students are likely to find mostly surface errors. With instruction, though, they point out a writer’s strengths and what can be done to address a paper’s weaknesses. When students respond, they spend more time truly thinking about the process of writing and what makes a piece worth reading. As a result, they not only help their peers, they also become better writers themselves!

Furthermore, in order to be effective responders, students must become part of a community of writers with a common vocabulary and goal. Community-building becomes both a means for, and benefit of, response!

On this page, I hope you will find useful tools for building this community of responders and helping students learn to respond in a variety of ways.

Response Resources and Ideas from the
Classroom of Campbell Valle

Resources from the NNWP's
Elementary Writing Guide

  • My Hats With this activity, students can visually process and share the differences between thinking as a reader and thinking as a writer. This will form a foundation for the types of response they will need to do.
  • Responding as a Writer With this activity, students consider their strong and weak traits before supporting one another as fellow writers.

More response ideas coming soon!

In 1995, Teacher Consultants from the Northern Nevada Writing Project worked together to create the NNWP's first print guide for teachers: The Elementary Writing Guide. The Washoe County School District generously agreed to print 1500 copies of this 400-page resource to distribute among every elementary teacher in Northern Nevada's largest county.

In 2000, the EWG underwent a revision, which aligned the guide's original content to Nevada's new academic standards. The WCSD again agreed to generously pay for the re-printing and distribution of the new guide.

In 2007, the guide was printed for the last time. The rising price of paper inspired the NNWP to began posting the EWG's contents on-line here at WritingFix. Below, you will find two resources from the guide's response section for you to open, print and use. More will be coming.

An Offer for WritingFix Users
Who Believe in Sharing:

Response Resources from the NNWP's
Secondary Writing Guide:

The NNWP's Elementary Writing Guide and Secondary Writing Guide were printed for the last time in 2007 because of the rise in paper prices. It now costs the NNWP between $15 and $20 to print and bind each guide.

Eventually both guides' contents will be completely available and free-to-use here at WritingFix.

In the meantime, we are letting you in on a little secret: we have in our warehouse about 100 final copies of each guide to distribute to teachers who use WritingFix.

We are looking for original, teacher-created response handouts and activity write-ups that we can share here at this page. If any K-12 teacher reads our submission guidelines, then sends us a one- or two-page resource we can share here, we will send you one of the last available copies of either Writing Guide.

Contact Campbell Valle, this page's host, if you have a response resource to share that you believe matches our submission guidelines.

In 1998, Teacher Consultants from the Northern Nevada Writing Project worked together to create the NNWP's second print guide for teachers: The Secondary Writing Guide. The Washoe County School District generously agreed to print 500 copies of this 450-page resource to distribute among every secondary language arts teacher in Northern Nevada's largest county.

In 2004, the SWG underwent a revision, which aligned the guide's original content to Nevada's new academic standards. A generous grant from the Walter S Johnson Foundation paid for the revision and distribution of the new guide.

In 2007, the guide was printed for the last time. The rising price of paper inspired the NNWP to began posting the SWG's contents on-line here at WritingFix. Below, you will find four of the revision section's contents for you to use. More will be coming.

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