Five Things
Purpose: This exercise is designed to get the students more engaged with the assignment prompt early in the revision process and to give them specific things to look for in one another’s papers during workshop.
Description: The exercise is probably best for workshopping an earlier draft of a paper. The instructor should have the students reread the assignment prompt at the beginning of the activity. Then, the instructor should either list off five major things or invoke five major things from the students that the prompt requires of the assignment (critical analysis of a particular thing, a description of one aspect or another, etc.). This helps students review and process the assignment's criteria. Once the five things are established, the workshop begins and the students should look for those five things and comment on their effectiveness, strength/weakness, absence, etc.
Suggested Time: 30-45 minutes
Procedure: The idea of this exercise is that the students will have something to comment on while they are workshopping one another’s papers and that they will engage more thoroughly with the assignment prompt. It will help steer them from making short comments or comments limited to grammar, punctuation, etc. It’s a pretty straightforward activity, and it’s not super exciting, but it is effective. In addition to making workshops more productive, it also makes students think about the things that they may have neglected to include in their own drafts. At the end of class, students might share writing that were shining stars in one of the five categories so you can discuss effective strategies for improvement.