This works:
On the first or second day of class I have my writing students write me a letter with the prompt:
Tell me whatever you think I should know about you?
The answers range from personal passages to simple stories about their education. Pouring over this first piece of writing is one of my favorite parts about the beginning of the semester. Listening to and critiquing students' realities can lead to self-reflection and critical consciousness of differences as an increased sense of agency for students and teachers.
In her article, "Revisiting the Promise of Students' Rights to their own Language: Pedagogical Strategies," Valerie Kinloch proposes that "writing teachers are responsible for what our teaching does to the self-image and the self-esteem of our students"(2).
One of the proposed pieces for developmental writing is to spend time helping students develop their ability to read and write texts. Teaching critical and deep reading skills, which I refer to as micro-reading, is a must in developmental writing. Devoting a class period to proper study skills is also something that I have discovered helps the students teach one another. Students can learn from other students. What helps you to be a successful student? Pose the question and spend the hour having the students teach one another.
Teaching reading and response strategies should be done during the second-third weeks of class. Giving the students a strong foundation to stand on will ensure success, or at least help them realize that their is a common starting point for growth.
I keep coming back to the idea of having students read a non-fiction piece of writing, a book, so that we can discuss what writing looks like. It might be nice to gather in, literally circle in, once a week and discuss writing, which after all, is the discipline that we are trying to teach. If students believe that we care what they think, and what their thoughts and reactions to texts are, then this will surely empower them to believe that they are a meaningful piece of the classroom community. Maybe the deeper question is Who are basic writing teachers?
Friday, May 28, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Sustaining our Writing Students
"To be asked to write in college is to be asked to see farther, wider, and deeper, and ultimately to develop one's own lenses through which to see the world. Writing does not shape a student's education in one course or one year. It is the cumulative practice and sustained instruction...that gives students opportunities to participate in the world of ideas first as novices and later as experts" (Sommers 2004).
In the fall 2004 issue of College Composition and Communication, Sommers and Saltz identify the novice writer as an expert by these key pedagogical theories and practises:
1. Help students see in writing a larger purpose than fulfilling an assignment.
2. Try this in the classroom: Have conversations with students about why writing matters. Ask direct questions like: Why do you think faculty assign writing? What is missing from so many discussions about college writing is the experience of the students. Do students experience writing as learning and thinking and, if so, under what conditions? It might be a nice idea to start the first week or two with this conversation of writing. Readings could be grouped where students read literacy narratives about how other learned to write and value the process of learning itself.
3. Students who see writing as something more than an assignment, who write about something that matters to them, are best able to sustain an interest in academic writing throughout their undergraduate careers.
4. Experiment with different types of writing.
5. Try this in the classroom: At the opening of the semester, have students reflect about the role of writing in helping them make the transition to college. Give them the confidence "to speak back to the world." A literacy narrative might be a more meaningful assignment rather than just an autobiographical assignment. What has shaped the student and who they are today? Perhaps this might be another nice prompt for the first or second day of class as a diagnostic essay. Possible idea: Looking back at your years as a student, where have you been with your writing? What experiences have shaped the writer you are today? How do you plan to move forward as a writing student this semester? It calls for specific answers and organization, which might be a nice way to find out the individual strengths and weaknesses of each student.
6. As writing teachers we should remember that writing serves many functions during the freshman year, both academic and social, to engage students with their learning. Don't you love the word engage?
7. When faculty construct writing assignments that allow students to bring their interests into a course, they say to their students, this is a disciplinary field, and you are a part of it. What does it look like fro your point on the map?
8. Freshman need to see themselves as novices in a world that demands something more and deeper from their writing than high school. This is the beginning place of growth.
9. Writing allows students to bring their interests into a course but also to discover new interests, to make writing a part of themselves.
10. Writing papers lets students think and show them how they are thinking.
11. Learning to write well is a slow process, infinitely varied, with movements backward and forward, starts and stops, with losses each time a new method or discipline is attempted. The surprise is that some students are able to sustain an interest in academic writing throughout college, while others lose interest.
12. Students who initially accept their status as novices and allow their passions to guide them make the greatest gains in writing development. As teachers this is where we come in. It is key that we help our students understand the relationship between writing and learning. College is a time for students to learn how to think broadly and deeply, to ask questions and be questioned. The classroom should be a place where students can discover that academic writing can be an exchange of sorts.
13. Writing will help students find or discover their identity.
In the fall 2004 issue of College Composition and Communication, Sommers and Saltz identify the novice writer as an expert by these key pedagogical theories and practises:
1. Help students see in writing a larger purpose than fulfilling an assignment.
2. Try this in the classroom: Have conversations with students about why writing matters. Ask direct questions like: Why do you think faculty assign writing? What is missing from so many discussions about college writing is the experience of the students. Do students experience writing as learning and thinking and, if so, under what conditions? It might be a nice idea to start the first week or two with this conversation of writing. Readings could be grouped where students read literacy narratives about how other learned to write and value the process of learning itself.
3. Students who see writing as something more than an assignment, who write about something that matters to them, are best able to sustain an interest in academic writing throughout their undergraduate careers.
4. Experiment with different types of writing.
5. Try this in the classroom: At the opening of the semester, have students reflect about the role of writing in helping them make the transition to college. Give them the confidence "to speak back to the world." A literacy narrative might be a more meaningful assignment rather than just an autobiographical assignment. What has shaped the student and who they are today? Perhaps this might be another nice prompt for the first or second day of class as a diagnostic essay. Possible idea: Looking back at your years as a student, where have you been with your writing? What experiences have shaped the writer you are today? How do you plan to move forward as a writing student this semester? It calls for specific answers and organization, which might be a nice way to find out the individual strengths and weaknesses of each student.
6. As writing teachers we should remember that writing serves many functions during the freshman year, both academic and social, to engage students with their learning. Don't you love the word engage?
7. When faculty construct writing assignments that allow students to bring their interests into a course, they say to their students, this is a disciplinary field, and you are a part of it. What does it look like fro your point on the map?
8. Freshman need to see themselves as novices in a world that demands something more and deeper from their writing than high school. This is the beginning place of growth.
9. Writing allows students to bring their interests into a course but also to discover new interests, to make writing a part of themselves.
10. Writing papers lets students think and show them how they are thinking.
11. Learning to write well is a slow process, infinitely varied, with movements backward and forward, starts and stops, with losses each time a new method or discipline is attempted. The surprise is that some students are able to sustain an interest in academic writing throughout college, while others lose interest.
12. Students who initially accept their status as novices and allow their passions to guide them make the greatest gains in writing development. As teachers this is where we come in. It is key that we help our students understand the relationship between writing and learning. College is a time for students to learn how to think broadly and deeply, to ask questions and be questioned. The classroom should be a place where students can discover that academic writing can be an exchange of sorts.
13. Writing will help students find or discover their identity.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Nesting Assignments
Nesting writing assignments might bring a bit of safety to writers in a developmental writing class. Think of the image of a nest with three Robin's eggs in perfect hue. Or nesting dolls bring this same image of being gathered in. There is something safe about watching a familiar piece of writing grow into expanded words and thinking.
Try this in the Classroom:
Try this in the Classroom:
- Have the students write about writing in 100 words.
- Have the students write a journal about how they see themselves as a writer. What is their story, backward and forward?
- Have them take these two pieces of writing and use them as the foundations for a literacy narrative.
- An added bonus would be to have them read a narrative literacy so that they can evaluate the structure and language of a polished piece of writing. Karen S. Ueling from Boise State suggests that "reading a challenging nonfiction book is also critical because a text that forces a reader to stop, look, and think about language helps develop awareness of language and the kind of seeing required for effective editing" (Berstein 31).
Let the Writing Begin
Referring Reading: An Introduction to Basic Writing; Mina Shaughnessy College Composition and Communication. Oct. 1976 pp. 234-239.
"Basic writing, alias remedial, developmental, pre-baccalaureate, or even handicapped English is commonly thought of as a writing course for young men and women who have many things wrong with them" (Shaughnessy 234).
What's interesting is that Shaughnessy talks about the significant measure by which we should look at ourselves as instructors of developmental writing, rather than placing the emphasis on looking at our students abilities or inabilities.
"We cannot say with certainty just what progress in writing ought to look like for basic-writing students" (237). When we tell students to be specific in their writing, to some, this might not make sense. "What is your point?" might be a difficult question for some students to answer.
Think of a sentence as a branch. One sentences branches out into another or one idea engenders another, gradually giving a sense of direction or purpose.
Key quote from article:
"Teaching at the remedial level is not a matter of being simpler but of being more profound, of not only starting from scratch, but also determining where 'scratch' is. By underestimating the sophistication of our students and by ignoring the complexity of the tasks we set before them, we have failed to locate in precise ways where to being and what follows what" (238).
"Always assume that there is one silent student in your class who is by far superior to you in head and in heart." ~Leo Strauss
Try this in the Classroom:
"Basic writing, alias remedial, developmental, pre-baccalaureate, or even handicapped English is commonly thought of as a writing course for young men and women who have many things wrong with them" (Shaughnessy 234).
What's interesting is that Shaughnessy talks about the significant measure by which we should look at ourselves as instructors of developmental writing, rather than placing the emphasis on looking at our students abilities or inabilities.
"We cannot say with certainty just what progress in writing ought to look like for basic-writing students" (237). When we tell students to be specific in their writing, to some, this might not make sense. "What is your point?" might be a difficult question for some students to answer.
Think of a sentence as a branch. One sentences branches out into another or one idea engenders another, gradually giving a sense of direction or purpose.
Key quote from article:
"Teaching at the remedial level is not a matter of being simpler but of being more profound, of not only starting from scratch, but also determining where 'scratch' is. By underestimating the sophistication of our students and by ignoring the complexity of the tasks we set before them, we have failed to locate in precise ways where to being and what follows what" (238).
"Always assume that there is one silent student in your class who is by far superior to you in head and in heart." ~Leo Strauss
Try this in the Classroom:
- Try to help the students from reaching closure on their ideas. Give them the instruction and guidance that there can be a "suspended" conclusion.
- Ask the students to write on a subject that they can show their conviction.
- Get to know your students better. Our ignorance of them is a great barrier.
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