Crafting Writers 1-6

How can a person critique someone else's piece of writing when they are a poor writer their self? In high school we peer edited each other’s writing. I always found a few grammatical errors, but nothing more in a peer’s work. I wasn’t capable of finding anything else at the time. Once my paper was returned to me, all I could see was red pen. Punctuation wasn’t my problem, for the red marks were in the margins stating that I lacked content and clarity. I always wanted to pour my heart out into my writing, but never got into a groove where everything flowed together nicely. I lacked detail and even when I tried to use some strong vocabulary, other aspects of my writing would suffer. I couldn’t seem to reach a balance. Crafting Writers is a blessing because if I had read this book in high school I wouldn’t even k now what red pen looks like. The book is laid out well with many tables of useful information. Much of it was review from writing tactics I learned at IU in undergraduate classes; However, I found the organization of the concepts easy to comprehend and apply to my own knowledge. I feel that I have better insight to how to write than ever before. I’m actually excited to apply these crafts to my writing. Improving my skills will make me better able to teach children how to write well. Although chapters 1-6 were lengthy, I felt them to be so engaging that it went rather quickly. Sometimes I find myself victim to skimming; consequently, I was sucked in from the beginning and didn’t miss one detail. The writing samples in the book were precious to me. There’s so much to look forward to in grading papers written by children. Their imaginations are so vivid and soar with creativity. I’m hoping their ideas will rub off on me!