February 1 Readings

Once again, I felt as though the suggestions for teaching presented in this week’s readings make learner easier for students and teachers. Perhaps I’m just looking for easier approaches. I like the idea of multigenre papers, largely because of the wide variety of material you would get to read as a teacher. The thought of reading the same papers over and over with merely slight variations is sickening. Not only would a multigenre paper essentially eliminate the tedious work of reading the same papers, it also gives the students choice in their learning (which in turn leads to increased motivation). Obviously Spandel believes that writers should have a choice in order to perform well and I am inclined to agree. A good way to get someone to hate writing is to make them write about things that they have no interest in or possibly even hate. It is important that students get to write on a topic of their choice, but perhaps more importantly, like a portfolio, they can choose to submit the work that they feel is their best. Multigenre papers can be seen as providing countless ways to engage students in their assignment. They are also useful for discovering your students’ interests on your way to being a caring teacher. Once you know what your students like, you can better cater future assignments to meet their needs.

Closely tied to student choice in assignments is relevance. What I liked most about the Williams chapter were the assignments (the examples of “good” assignments) that were relevant to the real lives of students – events that would have a direct affect on them. I also liked the way in which he emphasized the importance of building assignments off of each other and writing a new assignment in comparison to what the students had done on the previous assignments. I think as a busy teacher, it would be easy to take for granted that your students know the differences or similarities from one assignment to the next. I think it is a great idea to spend a sentence or two comparing and contrasting them as way to clarify and review. However, it is getting harder to take positive aspects away from Williams’s book. I question how much of his knowledge about students comes from personal experience and thus I question the credibility of his advice.

Here’s a website that has some interesting ideas for multigenre assignments based on grade level. There are also links for many more resources on multigenre assignments. http://www.ncte.org/profdev/online/ideas/freq/114026.htm

Blog for January 25

It appeared to me that all three readings pointed to ways to ease the work load and stress from the teacher, while doing something that is also beneficial for the students. I found Carney’s article insightful as I had just spent Friday afternoon grading World Literature essays. It was very time-consuming and I had trouble pointing out all of the errors. I realize this was a waste of time for me and for the student trying to decipher my critiques. I should have focused on the high-order concerns and pointed to one or two issues I saw rather than trying to fix everything at once. Had I prioritized, it would have been far less overwhelming for both me and the student. The HOCs and LOCs are a tool I will definitely take with me into the classroom. I think the following website would be helpful to students to highlight important issues as they begin peer editing. You could have students focus on different aspects throughout different stages of revision.

http://coe.sdsu.edu/people/jmora/WritingRubrics/sld006.htm

I really like the idea of group or peer editing. I think Williams gives very clear and concise directions on how to approach this in your own classroom, which was very helpful. However, I think Atwell did a nice job summarizing it’s usefulness in the following quote: “In the past I relied too much on conferences with individuals as the forum for helping students reflect on and improve their writing, at the expense of discovering what we might accomplish together, and I put too much pressure on myself” (Minilessons, 151). When students work collaboratively to better each other’s papers they are learning to do far more than write. They are learning to articulate what good writing is and they are also learning how to accept and learn from peer criticism (in addition to numerous other benefits). All the while the teacher reduces her own stress load by allowing students to help and cooperatively learn from each other.

The other thing that resonated throughout the readings was going further in depth rather than covering more topics. It takes time to produce multiple drafts of a paper but it seems to greatly increase understanding which in turn makes that knowledge transferable to other situations. Ultimately, greater understanding is more likely produce independent learners, one of the fundamental goals of teaching.