Sometimes, the weirdest activities are the most helpful.
A couple of days ago, I had my students try one of my favorite ways to understand something I’ve written: color-coding their drafts.
Students always see this as a weird activity, and I’m sure that some of them just do it and get it over with. But it’s quick (seriously, like ten minutes tops, usually!) and it can be really helpful if students just look at their drafts and understand what the colors are showing them.
Right now, we’re finishing the researching phase of our semester-long projects and getting ready to move into drafting. In yesterday’s classes, we spent the day working on their research proposals, a short paper in which they explain a number of aspects of their research project: the topic and how/why they selected it; the conversations they are seeing about their topics in their research; the sources that are most informing their opinions on the topic; the questions guiding their research or that they can address in their papers; their audiences; and their purposes for writing to those audiences.
That’s a lot to do in 2-3 pages, and it’s easy to forget parts of it, especially if you are really wrapped up in their research.
And it’s easy to be “really wrapped up in research” when most students associate writing about their research with reading and regurgitating information.
In class, I asked students to highlight every word of their draft with a certain color in their word processor. Each color stood for one of the requirements of the paper.
The goal here was, first, to make sure that students had something for every color listed. Then, to see if they were focusing more on one aspect of the assignment than others.
I also asked students four questions along with this activity:
- What color do you see the most of? Do you think this is a good or bad thing for your paper?
- What color do you see the least of? Do you think this is a good or bad thing for your paper?
- What does this activity tell you about the content of your proposal?
- What revisions can you make to improve your proposal?
On the whole, it seems like students were already heading in successful directions for their proposals. I was also surprised that few students said they saw organizational issues, but that may be because that’s usually what doing this activity shows me.
One of my favorite things about this activity is how flexible it is. I’ve done it with longer, research-based papers (and will be doing it again this semester) to help students see where they are summarizing, paraphrasing, or directly quoting a sources; following up with their own ideas or comments; or using examples from their personal experiences. Sometimes I do it to look specifically at summaries and paraphrases of sourced information verses direct quotations.
It could also be adapted to fit a lot of other kinds of activities. I also do reflections in all of my classes; it might be helpful to have students highlight general statements (such as “everyone feels differently about group projects”) in one color and personal statements (such as “I dislike group projects because. . .) in another color to see how well they are focusing on their personal experiences in the reflection.
I would also like to do this on some of my creative writing. I feel like it would tell me something about how I use exposition and dialogue. I think I would probably just see that I tend to rely on “telling statements” and I need to work on “showing” more.
But I buy into this activity because it’s just something I do. It genuinely helps me. And I really think it could help other writers and learners to understand their drafts and their writing, much better than reverse-engineering a draft ever worked for me.
Have you ever tried an activity similar to this in your writing? What works for you?
What a great idea! I was adamant about color-coding all my files when I worked in publishing, but I never thought to transfer the concept to my current writing. And I’ll admit this too, when my daughter was born, I color-coded her toy baskets (somewhere I decided it was either my sanity or throwing toys in baskets every two seconds) so I ceased using different baskets and threw all toys into one.
I am going to use your coding idea for my writing. Thank you so very much for sharing your brilliantly colorful concept.
AnnMarie
Eep! I thought I had responded to this already, but apparently not! It seems like color-coded toy baskets would be a great way to teach organization for young kids. I was always a walking tornado, so I wonder if this would have helped me? 🙂
No worries – I often get accused by my own children of not responding right away.
I think perhaps, I’m guilty, especially since I started blogging. I’m trying to find the happy middle ground which might possibly include color coding 😉
AnnMarie
Have a great day 🙂
I haven’t used it before, but this concept isn’t new to me. I hadn’t thought of how to adapt it for what I have my students do until this post, though, so thank you.
No problem! I don’t recall where I first discovered it–someone probably made me do it, and I probably thought it was dumb. But now I love it! 🙂
This is a really good idea. I’m totally going to try this out on the paper I’m supposed to write (if I ever get around to writing it.)
Thanks! I hope it helps you! 🙂
Thanks for posting this exercise. I anticipate incorporating it into my writing courses. Actually, your post inspired me to think of a new revision exercise that I tried out on my students this past week. They came in with digital copies of their current essay. I then asked them to cut and paste just their introductions into a separate Word Doc. I then had them exchange places with their peer-reviewer. The peer-reviewer’s task was to read the introduction and come up with 5-7 questions they think the author will answer in the body of the essay. Students then went back to their computers. They then cut and pasted the questions that their peer-reviewer came up into their original draft and color-coded each question. The final step had students going through their draft and highlighting in the corresponding color where they answered the question. Now based on the questions they had not answered, my students were able to know where to take their drafts next.
I really like this! I might actually use it in class on Wednesday. What perfect timing! 🙂
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