Reach Teach!

Again, I found a controversy between readings. In Williams’ book Preparing to Teach Writing, he claims that every good writing assignment should:

• Be part of a sequence designed to develop specific discourse skills.
• Tell students exactly what they are expected to do. The mode of the response should be clear.
• Tell students exactly how they are expected to write the assignment….
• Tell students something about the purpose and the audience for the paper…..
• Tell students what constitutes success, including some statement regarding the criteria the teacher will use to assess the quality of response. (Williams, 288-289)

Williams believes in concrete assignments that give students clear instruction about the writing process and what is expected in their papers. He believes students are not fully capable of exploring without direction, “When assignments ask students to ‘discuss,’ ‘examine,’ or ‘explore,’ they may express a teacher’s understanding of what is expected, but this understanding is based on years of education and experience. Students seldom know what they are supposed to do when asked to ‘discuss’� (Williams, 288).

Tom Romano, in his book Blending Genre, Altering Style, suggests bringing a different writing style into the classroom: multigenre papers. This style contradicts Williams’ ‘specified assignments’ by giving students a chance to explore their writing styles while learning about themselves and the world around them. Students can learn about topics through the use of this exploratory form which Romano provides working examples of. Romano suggests giving students examples of multigenre papers before assigning them, but also encourages students to create their own example of an exploratory paper on a learning topic.

While I believe Williams’ idea of forming assignments with exact instruction and process are ideal for grading purposes, I believe it is restrictive for students developing their mode of expression. To gain a full learning experience through writing should not be restrictive, thus I strongly appreciate Romano’s introduction of multigenre papers in the classroom.

I also find it interesting that Williams takes no consideration of students who need abstract assignments to learn. Romano, however, does consider the fact that some students work better with expository writing and states that “we should give such students opportunities to refine and further develop their narrative thinking skills� (Romano, 56). Williams does not consider the possibility that while some students may indeed have a hard time knowing what to do when asked to ‘discuss’, others may know exactly what to do, and if given proper examples and direction more students may also benefit from ‘exploring’ assignments.

The link below will bring you to a website that provides a brief overview of multigenre writing, lesson plan ideas, links to other resources, and even an example grading rubric for a multigenre paper.

http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=279

As a personal aside, I did not know much about multigenre writing before reading Romano’s book, and I am so inspired by it! I want to write my own and definitely bring it into the classroom!

Posted by Rebekah Ignatowicz at 9:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

After reading different writings about the process writing and its corresponding group work, I found a discrepancy between two writers’ opinions on placing students into groups.

In Barbara Carney’s article “Process Writing and the Secondary School Reality: A Compromise�, she addresses the issue of pairing students to read each others’ writings and offer each other guidance in their draft work. Carney suggests three options for pairing students: pairing students with similar ability levels, allowing students to choose their own partners, and having opposite sex partners.

In James D. Williams’ book Preparing to Teach Writing, however, Williams suggests contrary views on how to pair students in the peer editing process. For example, he believes that students should not be paired by ability level, “It isn’t a good idea to have all strong writers in one group and all the weak ones in another because collaboration thrives on input from different voices� (132). Williams also does not agree with allowing students to choose their own partners for fear they will become off task, “Groups composed of close friends usually fail just as surely as groups composed of enemies� (133).

It is interesting to note these two obvious differences in opinion between both writers, because both give good support for their opinions through their own experiences. I believe that both writers are correct in their suggestions because I am almost positive that all of these situations can work and also may not work. One must look at the class dynamics and learn about the individual students before making a decision on how to place them into pairs or groups. Some students may not like each other but can still work constructively together, whereas others do not have that same temperament. Teachers may have to experiment to discover what works best for each individual student.

Click on the link below to read a description of peer editing in partners and how different students can collaborate their knowledge to make each others' writing more effective. This may come in handy for teachers as they think about the possibilities of pairing different students:

http://www.writingproject.org/cs/nwpp/print/nwpr/1984

Posted by Rebekah Ignatowicz at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Testing this blog to see how it works

Posted by Rebekah Ignatowicz at 8:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)