What are Self Reviews?
NoRedInk Self Reviews support students with scaffolding, exemplars, and tips as they revise an essay they've already drafted. Self Reviews emphasize the importance of revision in the writing process. As students engage in self-directed revision, it frees up your time to provide more individualized instruction where needed.
💡 Before students begin a Self Review, we recommend that students complete a first draft of their essay. To support your students in their first draft, consider assigning a NoRedInk Guided Draft.
Assigning a Self Review
When creating a Self Review, you can choose from several essay types, which include the following:
- Argumentative
- Literary Analysis
- Persuasive
- Expository/Informational
When you select a specific genre, the assignment will provide students with different scaffolded tips while working. This will also create individual rubric items based on the genre selected.
Ready to assign? You can check out this article to learn how to create a Self Review!
Student Experience
When starting a Self Review assignment, the students will be presented with the steps they'll take from start to finish. Students will be asked to paste their existing essay draft. This could be writing that students transcribe from paper or that they copy and paste from a NoRedInk Guided Essay, Google Doc, or other source.
After adding their writing, students will be given a series of questions on the substantive content of their essay. Their answers will determine the types of revisions they’ll need to make. You can find out more in our article about the student experience of writing a self-review!
Grading a Self Review
Once students submit their work, teachers can view their submissions and drafts, as well as see insights on the revisions that each student made on the My Assignments page. Teachers can also provide feedback for the students to review.
Ready to grade your students' submissions? Be sure to take a look at this article to learn how to view and grade Self Review submissions!
Best practices and tips
- Make sure students have an essay draft ready to use. A corresponding Guided Draft is the perfect way to set students up for a Self Review assignment, but they can also draft elsewhere.
- Share and pre-teach the Self Review rubric with your students. You can project or screen-share the rubric and explain the criteria. Give students practice with less familiar parts of their essays by assigning Practice topics.