Gilmore - Chapter 3

This chapter was very informative for me. I was reading and thinking at the same time, "man, this stuff would have been awesome to know in high school." As a teacher, I think this gives me a lot of suggestions and great ideas to not only pick out writing that might not be a students' best, but also ways to help them look for things that might work really well in another person's work. I don't believe in giving students another student's work to read because even if you tell the current student's to only look for positives, it still gives the current students ammunition and the ability to make fun of a past student.

I had teachers give my work out in high school and it was not fun. If I mis-spelled one word or had one grammatical mistake, I was teased. I think teachers forget what it was like to be in high school once. That is one thing I want to make sure I never do; give students a reason to tease another.

Over my rant...now back to Gilmore. The suggestions for revision, reading in groups and picking out strong sentences and things that work well are excellent tools that I wish my teachers would have used with me in high school. By the time I got to college, I really didn't know much about revision and I think I was at a huge disadvantage; I didn't get the exposure to AP classes and I felt really left behind in my freshman year because I wasn't on the same level as some of my classmates.