Model Student Papers, Personal Culture Paper

Reviewing successful student papers as a model for your own writing ("mentor texts") can be a positive way to improve your own writing.  Today we'll review Bradford's paper in whole class peer review. Cooper's paper is also an excellent model of a successful Personal Culture Paper.  Both of these students took my class last spring. 

Bradford S.  "Box Alarm"

Cooper S. "Down the Rabbit Hole"

Peer Review Questions:

1.  What is the focus of the paper? Is this paper a "snapshot" with a focused lens? Do you feel as if you are there with the writer, experiencing what he or she is experiencing?  How can the writer improve on this?

2.  Which aspect of the writer's identity is explored in this paper?

3.  What words, images, and descriptive language are used well by the writer?  Identify 2-3 areas where descriptive language and sensory imagery (see, hear, smell, feel) is used effectively in the paper.

4.  In which areas is the writer struggling to use language well? Oftentimes you can identify these areas if you can pinpoint where you had to pause or where you felt confused by the writing.  (My rule is if you have to read a sentence more than once in order to make sense of it, something's probably going wrong.)  Help the writer see these places, and make some suggestions.



5.  Sample a paragraph for sentence variety.  Circle the first word in each sentence. What patterns do you see?  Where might the writer elevate his/her writing with some sentence variety?

6.  What is the strongest part of the paper?  What is the weakest? Why?