You’ve finished the writing process. What’s next?
First of all, you should have a lot of stuff to work with — notes, drafts, final copies, reflections, metacognitive responses, etc., all related to the prompt.
Here is an example from a Google Classroom unit in September of 2018:
This was a two-week writing process that started in class with handwritten responses to a pair of prompts. Then there were two typed revision steps, some optional metacognitive writing, and plenty of notes and feedback. The goal was a second revision that combined the original two responses into a coherent essay.
What Do I Do with This Stuff?
The first answer, at least in school, involves assessment. You probably have to hand in the writing, so you follow whatever protocol exists for that. In here, you use Google Classroom to hand in copies of anything you’ve created. Most of your stuff goes into the evidence bin for GAP scoring.
In all cases, the final draft or final revision — the final piece of writing in the process — is critical. The summer reading work from September of 2018 ended here:
The final revision is heavily factored into the threshold mechanics for higher GAP scores, even if we value the process as much as the product. Sometimes the steps taken to get a final product are different, but there should always be a final product. Even a work-in-progress essay, for instance, is a final product in this context. (Note: If we’re using Turnitin, this is when you’ll upload a copy of your final piece to that site.)
Next, we need to consider how your writing might be shared beyond the small circle of teacher-to-student assessment. In other words, how do we get you a bigger audience?
Getting More Readers
Google does let us share our work, but that’s more for collaborative efforts. It’s how we revise and edit together. There are many other platforms that work better to broadcast your writing to a broader audience. We’ll always start, in our class, with Medium, which will be our place for digital portfolios:
You can register with your school account, use a personal account, and move between the two. What matters is that it is your voice. And then it matters what you say.
Every time you write, challenge yourself to share it. Ask yourself what would it take to make your words worth sharing with others. That example from September of 2018, for instance, was about community and empathy, which means pretty much every stakeholder — teachers, administrators, parents — has a potential interest in what students wrote. There is always an audience for that kind of introspection.
Posting a story, tagging it, categorizing it, etc., is simple on Medium, and adding images and other kinds of multimedia, as appropriate, is pretty intuitive. When you finish, you’ll have a piece of writing that can be emailed, texted, and posted to social media. You can get authentic feedback. Consider the students featured here:
Erin and Rachel, the two students featured first, attracted followers from the real world. They wrote about topics from Taylor Swift to publishing a novel. That kind of exposure and validation is possible for any student.
You should look elsewhere online for helpful forums and other publishing opportunities. Reddit is full of potential, and you can always use social media, including more visual sites like Instagram and Snapchat, to share links of your work and encourage readers. If it works, it works.