Reading Response 2
You will complete this Reading Response during Tutor Training Day on October 3 and hand it in during
class on October 8. Simply jot down your ideas as you talk with other writing tutors. You need not type
this particular reading response.
The purpose of this reading response is to enable you to engage in thoughtful and productive discussion
with more experienced writing tutors.
It is also our goal that you will take home notes that will the helpful to you as you plan and implement
your first few weeks of sessions. Being an educator is very rewarding, but it can also be very
challenging. Sharing ideas with other educators is often an invaluable process.
Step 1
Go to the LSS web site and click the link to letters to new MSI tutors and Learning Assistants
from previous tutors and MSI Learning Assistants. Select a letter from a writing tutor and Print
the letter and bring it with you to Tutor Training Day on Saturday, October 3. We suggest that
you print a letter from a writing tutor in your academic discipline.
Due Date, Saturday, October 3.
When you are divided into groups, share your letter with other writing tutors and discuss why it is
interesting, and perhaps helpful to you.
Step 2: in your groups of writing tutors, discuss the questions listed below.
Discipline Specific Learning Goals, Strategies and Struggles
Be sure to jot down discussion notes so that you can reflect on the ideas as you prepare for your
tutoring sessions.
The purpose of this handout is to stimulate discussion between new and experienced writing tutors.
Much of the focus of Stevenson 96, the writing intensive tutor training class, is focused on assisting
writing tutors to develop interactive strategies to engage students in metacognitive and critical thinking
and confidence building to increase their academic self-efficacy and their thoughtfulness and
communicative effectiveness as writers.
The aim of the questions and discussion topics listed here is to give new writing tutors an opportunity to
talk with their more experienced peers regarding the specific strategies that are helpful within specific
tutoring situations. Please use the following topics and questions as a guide to stimulate the most
effective session planning and implementation strategies to assist student writers.
1.
New tutors, ask your more experienced peers how they engage students in dialogue to discuss
their writing goals, the essay prompt, the relevant class discussion and readings, the logistics of
the paper such as length, organization, style, and all other aspects of the writing project. Then
ask the experienced tutors how they guide the discussion in order to engage the student in the
writing process with an emphasis on the importance of critical and metacognitive thinking.
2. Ask the experienced writing tutors what student writers seem to find most difficult and how
they address these difficulties within their sessions.
3. Ask any other questions that you have about how the writing tutors handle students’ writing
challenges within their sessions.
Here are some specific questions for you to discuss:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
What techniques do the experienced writing tutors use to assist students to understand a
writing prompt, generate ideas, and develop some sort of a plan for a paper?
When a student brings a paper draft, how can a writing tutor engage a student in the multiple
levels of the revision process, purpose and idea content, main claim/thesis, idea organization
and presentation of evidence, intermingling the ideas of others with appropriate writer’s
analysis, sentence level style and grammar, and other issues?
What do tutors do when writers are suffering from writer’s block, panic, lack of self-confidence,
etc.
How do tutors approach a situation wherein a student has a paper that an instructor has
marked, that the instructor did not find successful, and that the student must revise and
resubmit?
How can writing tutors challenge students to think differently without giving students ideas or
influencing the students to write what the tutor thinks but not, necessarily, what the student
thinks?
Step 3: Ask the experienced writing tutors to describe the most challenging and most rewarding
experiences that they have had as writing tutors.
Ask which Ask what the writing tutors will do differently now that they have become more experienced.
Be sure to jot down notes as you all discuss each question.
Step 4: Using one of the following three potential writing tutor situations, jot down a brief session plan
on a separate piece of paper.



Assume that you have a student who has brought an essay prompt that is tied to course reading
and class discussion. The student needs to produce a brief essay plan including a possible thesis
statement.
The student brings an essay draft that must become ready to be turned in by the next morning.
The essay seems to have need for improvement regarding the idea base, the organization, and
the sentence-level correctness.
A student brings an essay that he/she must rewrite within the next week. The instructor has
made comments but not many suggestions. The student needs guidance regarding the revision.
You will hand in this reading response in class on Thursday, October 8. Please be sure to include your
letter from a previous writing tutor, this reading response handout ant your notes, and your brief
session plan.
Due Date, Thursday, October 8