Bean there, done that.

Considering that this is the last week of class, I couldn't resist one last pun on Bean's name. This week, I again found Bean's suggestions useful, particularly in his advice on how to make the most of the time we have with our students.

I appreciated his suggestion to use models feedback on some assignments (p. 236); I anticipate using this on some of my shorter assignments. For example, when they write their research paper, I intend to have them do an annotated bibliography beforehand. This seems like a good assignment to do models feedback on.

I thought the idea of group conferences (p. 234) was interesting, but I must admit that I can't really picture how this would work. Does anyone else have ideas? What kinds of "common writing problems" would be useful to work through in this way?

This is unrelated to our readings, but I wanted to mention it anyway, since I found it encouraging. I was talking to a couple of friends earlier today, and they both commented that their freshman writing classes were a couple of the most useful classes they'd ever taken--in preparation for both other classes and for life in general, according to one of them. One of my friends commented that he hated his writing teacher by the end of the semester but that, looking back, he's really grateful for all of the work she made him do. I'm kind of hoping that my students don't hate me, but I guess the moral of the story is that it's okay if they do.