Introduction One of the biggest struggles that I have encountered throughout my eight years of teaching high school English has been getting students to make substantive revisions and changes to their written work throughout the course. I have observed students who need the most writing practice and help engage in behaviors that are counterproductive to their success in the classroom. From the available research, I know that student writing mode preference has an impact on how they feel about their final draft (National Center for Education Statistics 2015, Nobles 2015, Zheng 2013). Another significant determining factor in student performance in writing is through their willingness to make meaningful revisions instead of merely making surface …show more content…
I also knew that in order to get students to turn this corner, I would need to be able to re-examine the ways in which I used writing in my classroom. I needed to be able to determine some of the things that might impact students’ final drafts. I needed to look at how (and whether) the technology that students push to use while writing has an impact on their writing and revisions. One of the things that I implemented because of reading Gallagher’s work was the importance of modeling writing for students. I began working step-by-step through all of the writing process with students from brainstorming to transitioning to the final drafts. Every step of the process was detailed and exemplified for students so that they would be able to visualize the process. I have moved to working with students on a more individualized basis for their writing and drafting instead of relying on large group instruction and peer revisions to improve drafts. While these methods have allowed for students to receive more individualized instruction throughout the writing process, I still encountered a large number of students who did not complete drafts in a timely manner and many students continued to make edits to their drafts rather than substantive revisions. Once this began to happen, I started to allow students to determine how they draft essays in some of my classes during the fall