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Practice: Similar to successful politicians who weren't elected in their first race or don't get their exact legislative packages passed as submitted, so students must learn to persist in and tweak their academic efforts. One victory cannot ensure all future victories, and good research skills and civic habits can't be exerted once and then left behind. They must be practiced on a continuous basis. Students should practice editing their own work, of course, but additional opportunities should be provided as well. Students can edit samples of anonymous work collected by teachers from previous years or from different classes. They can engage in peer editing. Teachers can also construct educational examples of work for students to edit as a group lesson. ne more students practice inquiry, critical analysis and revision, the more effective they will be in moving from passive learners to active, competent thinkers and doers.

Consider What's NOT There: Many students enjoy and benefit from lessons where they're expected to analyze advertisements. This process should apply to consumer ads, political propaganda and student work! Not only should students focus on what's effective in the piece being examined, but they should also practice thinking about what's not included in the piece. In public and commercial work, the omissions are probably intentional and purposeful; in student work, there may be inadvertent omissions. Students can improve their work if they routinely reconsider both sorts of omissions.

Even when students use an outline, it's hard for them to include all their points when they're in the middle of the writing process. That's one reason to do a draft, let it sit for some time, and return fresh to re-see it.

It also helps to try to adopt a different perspective when re-reading the work. For example, try to see it from the perspective of a different gender or ethnic group. Or try to look at the work from the perspective of a different professional field, perhaps raising different questions that a scientist or an economist might bring to a discussion on the work.

See Models: just as human beings don't learn to speak properly without hearing speech, it's hard to imagine how typical students can improve their work without studying a range of examples of quality products relevant to those they might aspire to produce. Where are such examples 4 civic participation? KAT is not the only collection of such models. American history- is full of them; so are professional journals, newspapers and public meetings. Furthermore, educators can work with representatives of their local governmental institutions to create such models for children to study. Once the process gets started, it's self-propagating. Students will be producing models for successive peer groups.

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Kids Around Town
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