Discussion: Provide your classmates peer review for their Descriptive Essays

This week's discussion instructions

IMPORTANT: Before posting any replies to your classmates, first read "Editing Lesson: Peer Review" for important instructions.

Last Sunday, you posted your initial draft and your video reading to this discussion board. You now have more things to do on this discussion board this week, which have deadlines of Thursday and Sunday.

This week, you will be helping your classmates by providing constructive peer feedback about their Descriptive Essays (influential person). This process will help everyone revise their essays so that they can improve them as well as flesh them out to the full 500-word length required for the final versions to be submitted to the assignment dropbox next week.

For your initial discussion peer feedback, which is due by Thursday at 11:59 p.m., please choose at least THREE of your classmates' essays and write 50-100 words of questions or constructive suggestions that will help them improve their essays.

You will also need to return to the discussion by Sunday at 11:59 p.m. to write a 25-50 word reply with something substantive to say to each of your classmates who commented upon your essay. If your classmates have posted questions, you may answer them in your replies. If they have posted constructive suggestions, you could either discuss how you might incorporate the suggestion (or why you think it just will not work for your essay), or if you do not understand the suggestion, you could ask for more advice.

Of course, the best scenario would be if you checked the discussion board several times during the week and engaged in an organic back-and-forth of replies, similar to the comment thread conversations that most of us are familiar with engaging in on social media.

This week's discussion topic: Descriptive Essays

You can think about these questions to help you get started with writing your initial discussion peer feedback. You may choose to answer a couple of the questions, or you may have an inspiration to address this week's topic in a way that does not start with these questions.

Possible questions:

What stood out to you about the essay? (What was most memorable about it?)

Did you understand the essay? If not, what specific questions were you left with that need answered?

If there was more than one person in the essay, were you able to tell who was intended to be the subject of the essay (who was the influential person)? If you could not tell who the influential person was supposed to be, how could that be clarified in a way that uses the "show, don't tell" technique?

What little details helped you to imagine the scene so vividly that you could really "see" or "touch" it?

What little details do you think need to be filled in better so that you would be able to imagine the scene more vividly?

Do you understand why this person is influential to the author of the essay?

What were you left wondering and still wanting to know more about?

Do you think there are unnecessary details that could be deleted and not only would they not be missed but also would make the essay better if they were removed?

Are there any mechanical issues with the writing that really stood out to you, such as extreme grammar or punctuation problems that really distracted you from the subject of the essay?

Could the paragraphs be split up differently?

Are the verbs active or passive? Are the verbs present or past tense? Could the author improve the verb choices, and if so, how?

Does the author have a particularly strong sentence or paragraph in the essay? If so, what is it, and why is it strong? Did the student use one particular word repetitively, and if so, is the word used in a way that lends strength to the essay or in a way that weakens the essay through redundancy? Likewise, does the author have a sentence or paragraph that could be made stronger, and how would you suggest it be improved?

Helpful tip: Do you remember the tips for earning the maximum points from your discussion board postings? Reread "Discussion Board Tips" in the first module if you need a refresher.