Using university–school partnerships to facilitate preservice teachers' reading and responding to student writing

Abstract

Preparing future teachers to read and respond to student writing is an important part of learning to teach writing. However, preservice teachers (PSTs) often do not have authentic opportunities to read and respond to student writing in methods courses. To create and provide more opportunities for reading and responding to student writing, I partnered with a local high school teacher and her student writers. In this article, I share why it is important for PSTs to have opportunities to read and respond to student writing, a university–school partnership designed to foster these opportunities, and observations from year one of implementation of the partnership. I end the article with important considerations for creating a partnership to foster opportunities to read and respond to student writing.