I’d seen Margaret’s very thorough peer tutoring notes forms for papers in CMC 100 and 200–with comments on themes in the paper, the complex thesis using them, the hook and conclusion, and formatting details. I was curious to see how she managed the reading, writing and talking in a session, so I observed her on Monday.
I was struck by how Margaret connected both with the client (“Oh yeah, that was a film class we had together”) and with the ideas she saw in the paper (“Dr. TIllman will love that.”) The client asked how to paraphrase, and Margaret showed her how she was doing it in her draft (“I see you’re using a lot of theory” and “You take a quote, introduce it, state it, restate it in your own words”). Lots of give and take, as Margaret made her way through the draft, section by section, reading silently but then commenting on this or that, reading a bit out loud, asking questions to get the client talking.
In our debriefing, Margaret said this client’s paper was not as far along as others she’d seen, so she had to spend more time looking at the themes the client had written in the beginning of the paper–the big picture. And the discussion of what was before and after a quote was to help her, since she had to do the same with the rest of the quotes she had in her outline–to make them her own. She had to spend more time with what the client would do in the 24 hours before the paper was due than she had with other people in the class, tweaking what they had already written.
I said I thought her use of the form was masterful–writing a bit about each little discussion before moving on the the next section. Thanks, Margaret! You certainly earned your $6.79 that hour. 
BTW, I gave Margaret the top copy of the sit-in form, which has some suggestions about what to look for, but also has lots of space to write whatever you want. If you observe someone, pls. use this form. It’s in the bottom left of the mail cubbies.
