aeanes

R4: Final Advice for the Bewildered

When I first realized that I would be submitting the first draft of my course materials before I had read the last four chapters of First Year Composition, I was a bit apprehensive that when I read those chapters I would run across ideas that would significantly change the direction of my course components. In light of all that we have been reading about the importance of being flexible with our ideas and our drafts and the need for major revisions, it would have been quite appropriate if that had happened. Given the time constraints of fitting in this course with other plans I had this summer (as well as a desperate need for some downtime to decompress from this past school year and to prepare for the upcoming one) I am relieved that I don’t feel a need to substantially revamp my course. Instead, I found several of the comments made by these authors to be helpful, and I can use some of them to enhance the plans for my course.
One of the gems that I was able to mine from these last four articles was the list of stated goals for the course shared by Howard Tinberg. His list could certainly serve as the core for a list of my own that I would like to share with my students. I am also thrilled that Tinberg described his assignment for the This I Believe program. I was feeling guilty that my original course plan did not include an assignment that would reach a broader audience. I am also embarrassed to admit that one of my former department members had raved about the This I Believe project that he had done with his sophomore students, but I had never taken the time to look into the specifics of the submission process. I had also never listened to any of the audio essays on the site and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to them. I am also glad that the actual written essays are available on the site as well. I have found several that I hope to use as models. I will also assign the students to choose essays to listen and respond to. There is something quite magical about hearing the writers’ voices sharing their experiences. I hope that my students will be inspired by the essays that they listen to and read. I also hope that they will be excited about sharing their work with such a broad audience. I also borrowed some of the wording from Tinberg’s course description to revise the About section for my course. Hopefully those revisions will make the focus of the course clearer.
In the chapter written by Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs, I was reminded of the appropriate use of both student and professional models. I agree that models can effectively be used to discuss possible revision strategies. Using models that are not written by members of the class can take away some of the initial anxiety about making suggestions for revisions. As Downs points out, I also believe that they can be used to discuss both the strengths and weaknesses of the pieces. I also liked Downs’s use of the term reader response instead of peer review. I agree that the term reader response adds another dimension to the value of peer sharing. It emphasizes that the reader will gain additional insight into how to improve his or her drafts and deemphasizes the perception that the reader is trying to catch errors or make a value judgment about the work.
Kathleen Blake Yancey provided another item that I can integrate into my own course. The eight habits of mind that she lists as essential for success in college writing can be used as points for students to consider as they write their final portfolio letter to me. They can reflect on and discuss how they have demonstrated these habits of mind throughout the course.
Some of the other ideas that I gleaned from these chapters validated my own basic beliefs and practices. For example, I agree with Victor Villanueva’s practice of assigning the most important assignment next to last in the schedule of assignments. Students are very stressed at the end of a semester and they would probably not give sufficient time and attention to a lengthy work too close to their exam schedule. That is one of the reasons that I did not schedule the integrated profile essay too close to the end of the course. I was also glad to read Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs’s discussion of the importance of scaffolding. That is one concept upon which I have always tried to base my teaching practices and assignments. I hope that my final course materials will reflect a definite scaffolding of skills and strategies.

R3: Adding to the Mix

This second set of articles from First Year Composition has certainly provided me with additional ideas for components of my own E110 course. However, I have to admit that I often feel like I am in a Chinese restaurant choosing some items from column A and some from column B. As the deadline for the initial outline for our course is rapidly approaching, I am apprehensive whether all of these components that I hope to integrate will come together in a logical and cohesive way. I am also beginning to wonder how the vast difference in the actual class meeting time and opportunities for individual and/or small group conferences between the typical collegiate setting and my own high school situation will affect the decisions that I will have to make in regard to course content, structure, and procedures.
Keeping all of these concerns in the back of my mind, I am intrigued by many of the course elements described by each of the four authors. I particularly liked Paula Mathieu’s name assignment, belief essay and extension, interview project, and letter assignments. I also feel that at this point her overall structure of revolving the assignments around the question, “To what extent is language powerful or not?” seems to be the most logical way to organize my own wide variety of course ideas. I agree with Mathieu’s contention that as James Zebroski points out there is “a need for teachers to model ideas of coherent thinking through the writing assignments we write.” I think that her name assignment would be an interesting one for the students to begin the course with even though many of them will have known each other for three years. It would also set the groundwork for understanding the nature of writing for a local audience. The “What Do You Believe?” assignment seems to be a natural extension of providing the students with an opportunity to write on a topic on which they should feel confident in expressing their thoughts and adds the additional requirement of supporting their opinions with specific examples from their lives and experiences. Adding visual description to either of these first two assignments, as Mathieu suggests, would be an excellent way to have the students see the value of and power in making substantive revisions to their writing. I also enjoyed Mathieu’s description of her storytelling unit. I like the idea of students gathering primary research through oral interviews and enhancing it with extensive background research. I don’t believe that the students will have had much experience with gathering primary material and I think that having them combine these details with their own background research will give them a greater sense of crafting the project instead of just regurgitating research material. Hopefully the assignment will also give the students a sense of pride because their writing will help to keep this oral history alive for future generations. I also hope to incorporate the last two elements of Mathieu’s course material: Writing a Letter You’ll Never Send and Portfolio Letter. I had a very profound personal experience with writing a letter to my husband’s best friend when he was accidentally crushed by two railroad cars while working for Amtrak. Being able to write the letter and slip it into his coffin (with the permission of his wife) helped me to deal with the intense grief that I felt at losing someone who had become like a brother to me. I like the idea that the students will write the letter and then will reflect on and report on just the process of writing the letter. This letter as well as the portfolio letter in which the students reflect on the work they have done throughout the course should certainly help to emphasize and make them more consciously aware of the power of writing.
Other possible activities that I have gleaned from this set of articles are the book review and research analysis assignments explained by Teresa Redd and the group presentations described by Jody Shipka. Since I assume that I will still be required to hold my students accountable for their required summer reading, the 500-word book review could fulfill that requirement. I also really like the idea of having the students submit the review to Amazon.com. This would provide the students with a real-world application of their writing skills. Redd’s interdisciplinary analysis assignment which requires the students to submit a 500-word analysis of one piece of their research data would also be a beneficial assignment to consider for my course. Finally, I am interested in considering a group presentation component that Shipka outlines in her article. I am a firm believer in allowing the students to lead the class in a productive and thought provoking way. I especially agree with Shipka that the presentation should require the students to extend or enrich the issues raised by the assigned readings through an in-class activity. The other elements of this project as outlined in the article: the conference with the instructor one week before the presentation and the follow-up individual reflection are also important to include. My only quandary is what assigned readings to require for this component. This will take some additional thought and exploration.
All of the articles from this text have certainly provided a wide variety of assignment suggestions and structural philosophies. Now I just have to solidify in my mind the direction and scope of my own future course. It won’t be the first time that I have taken a leap of faith as an educator and I am sure that it won’t be the last time either.

R1 The Need for Ruminating

Anne Marie Eanes

R1 Rewriting

What struck me initially as I read Rewriting was how vital each of the moves of coming to terms, forwarding, countering, and taking an approach would be to the development of confident and effective writers. I especially enjoyed the explanation of the importance of incorporating direct quotations in a way that will focus the attention on how the writer is utilizing an author’s work to express his or her own point. Too often students don’t fully understand that quotations can’t do the work for them in their essays. I try to stress with my students the importance of incorporating quotations to validate a point that they themselves have made about their topic and whenever possible to then take the comment made by that cited author one step further by expanding upon the author’s original observation. To be honest I have never really thought about the efficacy of considering and asking the students to explain the basis of the author’s point of view as well as their own perspective. I was also intrigued by the section on tracking revisions. I have often lamented that my students seem to be reluctant to substantially revise their writing. In fact, it sometimes seems as if they do not even devote sufficient time to proofreading what they have written to eliminate obvious grammatical and/or mechanical errors. Going through the process of visually tracking the revisions would be a wonderful way to empower the students to make significant revisions to their work. This would be especially effective when used in conjunction with peer conferences. Sometimes the students seem to need the additional impetus of peer feedback to realize that their writing needs expansion or clarification.

In regard to proposing an additional movement to the ones already delineated, I would suggest a preliminary move that must precede the stated ones. Perhaps there is an expectation at the collegiate level that students have already mastered my proposed move. However, in my experience with high school students, I have discovered that it cannot be assumed that they have honed this skill. The move I would like to suggest is ruminating. A student needs to fully experience and ponder the ideas within a text before he or she can truly formulate coherent and essential comments about it. Frequently students don’t even read a literary work or non-fiction prose selection completely before they try to write an analytical essay on the work. They resort to reading SparkNotes or other summaries of the text instead of immersing themselves in the experience of interacting with the entire piece. Because they have not solidified their own thoughts on the text, it makes the task of selecting appropriate sources to enhance their own ideas more difficult. The process of ruminating more deeply about the text will also give the students an opportunity to reflect on their own perspective as they approach the task. Understanding their own perspective may help them to seek out sources that will either have a similar perspective or will offer a totally different point of view. Adding this step at the beginning of the process will lay a stronger foundation for the remaining moves.