Five Steps to Revision: Warm & Cool Feedback Transcript

Erin Gilrein (in class): Hi everybody. Today, we're working on warm and cool feedback.

Erin Gilrein: The overview for this lesson is for students to work together in peer review utilizing the strategy of warm and cool feedback.

Erin Gilrein (in class): Warm and cool feedback is the feedback system where you give constructive feedback to your partners.

Erin Gilrein: After this lesson, students will take the feedback that they have given to each other and revise their essay and they specifically revising to show growth on the goals that they made over the course of this lesson.

Erin Gilrein (in class): You have your Siddhartha essays already on your desk and you have the yellow warm and cool feedback sheet.

Erin Gilrein: Before this lesson, the students completed reading Herman Hesse's novel, Siddhartha. Now, they're writing an explanatory essay analyzing Siddhartha and his identity as they are shaped by his values and beliefs. Students have a few things in front of them. They have their essay for Siddhartha in front of them which they have already written. They have their warm and cool feedback sheet that says explicitly, step by step, what they need to be doing and they also have the six traits of effective writing rubric on front of them.

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Erin Gilrein (in class): Step one. You need to think back to those goals that we made last week - the writing goals.

Erin Gilrein: The students remember what their goals are and they writing their goals onto the warm and cool feedback sheets so that their partners are very much aware of what to look for in the revisions.

Erin Gilrein (in class): Now, when you write it down, if you're just writing down one of the six traits, can you be more specific.

Erin Gilrein: The six traits of writing is a way of discussing effective writing. And the students have in front of them a very clear six traits rubric that explains what a high level of all of the six traits looks like. All the way down to a low level. In that rubric, they can see the key language for discussing each of the six traits. I find that it's very helpful for them to use the key language off the rubric in discussing the elements of writing that they see in each other's essays.

Erin Gilrein (in class): Great. Our next step, you're going to turn to your partner and share what you'd like feedback on. Partners, if your person who's talking - say, specifically, sentence fluency - ask them what about sentence fluency - would you like me to look for. Okay? All right, go.

Student: I want you to give me feedback on how to enhance the central idea of what I am writing.

Student: My word choice. Sometimes I use gotta or I use slang and I want to get out of that habit.

Erin Gilrein (in class): Okay, so here comes the sharing part. You grab your yellow sheet. You grab your essay. You put 'em together and you give both to your partners. So, your partners going to write on your yellow sheet and you should write on theirs.

Erin Gilrein: Students pass each others' essays to each other and I have them read the essays silently.

Erin Gilrein (in class): As you're doing this, remember, the goal is to give the feedback.

Erin Gilrein: I personally find it distracting when I'm reading so I choose to have the students quietly read each other's work as they're trying to focus on analyzing and finding evidence in text.

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Erin Gilrein (in class): If you're ready to start with the as you read, you can do that. Remember, the warm feedback is stating exactly what people would want feedback on.

Erin Gilrein: As they're reading, they're looking for evidence of effective writing. Maybe they're noting a great thesis, maybe they found thoughts they had never even thought of themselves.

Student: Her thesis alluded to an opinion without having the word, "I" in it so that improved voice switch is one of her goals.

Student: In your conclusion, there was evidence to show how your piece came together as a whole instead of just random pieces sticking out. it blended together very nicely.

Erin Gilrein (in class): For a moment, here, it would be helpful if I could have everyone's attention so we can talk a little bit about cool feedback and then you'll work at your own pace. As you can see, the cool feedback is when you're asking the guiding questions. You're asking those probing questions to get your partner to see how he or she can improve. Right? So, instead of just telling your partner how to improve, you wanna find a way to ask them so that they can see what you're noticing and they can find out how to grow on their own.

Erin Gilrein: The first time I did this, I didn't give any sort of additional assistance and I found that the students really struggled to figure out what questions were appropriate. There is a power point slide in the background that has the cool feedback ideas for questions. I give them the baby steps with the sentence stems so that the feedback happens and it is authentic and rooted in exactly what we want them to do.

Erin Gilrein (in class): If you want to look back in your writing folder and pull out that rubric that has questions on it to help you create questions that are in line with that persons goals. Grab a rubric out of your folder and check out the key words for that trait and form it into a question. You’re trying to ask them a question that gets them to think and gets them to grow.

Student: How can you choose better words that can help the reader better understand what you were trying to explain?

Student: Can you read the words and phrases flow together as you read the piece out loud?

Erin Gilrein (in class): Can you check out the six on the rubric for voice and see if there are any key words in there that you can pull out and maybe give her.

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Student: Voice is appropriate for the topic, purpose and audience deeply committed to the topic...

Erin Gilrein: As they learn more about the different six traits, they can discuss their own writing in terms of the six traits, make goals in terms of the six traits and speak with other teachers about writing in a way that shows that they understand the elements of effective writing.

Student: Were you engaging and sincere in your writing?

Erin Gilrein (in class): And then ask her the follow-up: "how do you know?" So then, she knows to go back and root her revisions in what? Excellent.

Student: Thank you.

Erin Gilrein (in class): We're gonna share with each other. Wrap up whatever you're writing. Put your yellow sheet on top of their essay. You're gonna turn to your partner and for two minutes, you're going to share your warm and cool feedback - very specifically, with your partner. Partner - it's not your job to defend or qualify or say, "but I did it! It's over here!" Not your job, right? Your job is just to listen and to hear what your partner has to say. You ready? All right, let's do it.

[00:06:28.27]

Student: For your warm feedback, I said that your thesis was supported by your information. And you had a lot of good quotes from Siddhartha and you explain them with well and it's really neatly organized.

Student: You also used quotes that were very good from the book and you explained what was happening - what was going on at the time.

Student: For cool feedback, you overused words that repeated throughout the essay because I saw in the essay, you wrote "which" a couple of times in each sentence so that was one question.

Student: What might happen if you were to use stronger, more sophisticated words to help the reader better understand what your intention was and what else can you do to make your essay more interesting?

Erin Gilrein (in class): So, check out step five - writer's reflection. The last thing. Grab your paper and your yellow sheets, swap with your partner so that your have yours back. Turn to your writer's reflection. And now you're going to think of new goals for this essay, right?

Erin Gilrein: The students create new writing goals based on the feedback they received from each other. These goals may be similar to their initial goals or - hopefully - their goals have changed as a result of the feedback that they have received and their goals, now become rubric points individualized that I pull in when I consider their grade as I grade these new revised essays.

Student: My goal is to not summarize my quotes when I introduce the quote, I should - instead of summarizing what happened, I should analyze how they - what effect they had on Siddhartha over all.

Erin Gilrein (in class): Nice. Which one of the six traits are you talking about when you say those things?

Student: I'm talking about voice somewhat and ideas and content development.

Erin Gilrein (in class): First, tell me, how was that idea and content development.\

Student: I'm developing the quotes.

Erin Gilrein (in class): There we go. So you're developing your analysis. Right?

[00:08:26.07]

Student: I wanted to eliminate dead weight within some of my sentences and clarify meaning.

Erin Gilrein (in class): Eliminate deadwood in your sentence. What does that mean?

Student: There are some words that I use that have extra information that wasn't necessary so I could take that out and I could clarify the meaning better so I could kind of get to the point.

Erin Gilrein (in class): Excellent. You're eliminating that dead wood. Those excess or overused phrases. Lovely. All right. Take your essay and your yellow sheet, fold it into your folder. Tomorrow, when we come back to class, we will take it back out and work on revising the essay.

Erin Gilrein: Revision is so difficult for students because it's hard to instill in students the value of revision. They often find that as soon as they're done with a piece of writing, that they are done! I've tried the one on one conferencing, extra credit, allowing them to take it home to work on it and I find that the warm and cool feedback gives them a system for revision. They know that the feedback is real and authentic and coming from someone at their level. I find in that sense, they are very likely to take the feedback, take it home and think thoughtfully about it to grow.

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