And don’t forget: let the peer review on the formal recommendation reports begin, too!

You have already been working with the classmates in your peer review group for a while now, ever since I set these groups a while back. But here’s a post to get you started on the peer review process for this last big assignment, The Formal Report and Recommendation. Also, I talk here a bit about a schedule change for the last week of class! The short version is I will give everyone a little more time to finish up revisions to their report during the last week of the term.

First off, a reminder of the groups. They are:

• Group 1: LeeAnne Baumdraher, Chelsea Idzior, Natasha Wickenheiser, Jessica Kane
• Group 2: Kourtney Lovett, Carly Woldring, Nijea Wilson, Kristen Smith
• Group 3: Elyse Cawetzka,Melanie Waller, Brian Gardner, Sabrina Gissendaner
• Group 4: Latasha Davis, Justin Trudell, Leah Touchstone, Ashleigh Swinehart

This is the seventh (and last!) peer review experience we’ve had this semester, so by this point, I’m hoping that you have all seen the point of this process and you’ve learned something from it. If you leave this class having learned only a few things, I am hoping that one of those things is the importance of getting feedback on your writing– all kinds of different types and genres of writing– from interested and capable readers. And those readers have to include people who aren’t “the teacher” because when it comes to writing that you will do in the professional world and beyond college, “the teacher” ain’t gonna be there.

Anyway, as has been the case before, a good place to begin this project is by reviewing the assignment itself. If it has been a while since you’ve read it over, take another look at it.

Everyone needs to have a draft of their report posted by the end of the day today, Monday, December 1. This is really important for this assignment because these reports are a lot longer than the other things we’ve written and discussed this semester and you need to give your peers the time to read over and provide feedback.

Complete the peer review process by Wednesday, December 3. This is also important because what I’ll be doing (probably starting in the middle of the day on that Wednesday) is following your peer review with some comments of my own. I’ll (hopefully!) be done making my comments by Friday of this week.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I made some slight changes to the due date of the final version of the report and your votes! Check out the schedule, but to repeat it here:

Wednesday, December 10:

• The final version of your formal recommendation report is due! By the end of the day Wednesday, you will need to hand in all the materials for your formal recommendation report and the writer’s memo for the assignment.
• Final/second half of the term participation grade discussion. By the end of the day of Wednesday of this week, each of you needs to send me an email about your participation for the second half of the semester.

Thursday, December 11:

• Your votes for the formal recommendation report pitches and slide shows are due! By the end of the day Thursday, you need to finish your voting for the best recommendation report based the pitches and slide shows you reviewed.