Responding to Student Writers

Written from one teacher to another, Nancy Sommers’ Responding to Student Writers offers a model for thinking about response as a dialogue between students and teachers — and for thinking about the benefits of responding to writers as well as to their writing. Braddock Award–winning Nancy Sommers has taught composition and run composition programs for more than three decades; she currently teaches writing and mentors future teachers in Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. In this resource, which is based on her research and her travels to two- and four-year colleges and universities, she focuses on the roles that teacher feedback plays in writers’ development and offers strategies for moving away from responding as correcting. This is a free resource for instructors.