We had our first demo presenters share with our group today. Wow! I am left with so much to think about. Joshanai prompted us to dive into memoir instruction; what makes a memoir a memoir and identifying themes in the genre. Kendra got us all thinking-with our student hats on-about what makes good writing. My mind is still reeling from her presentation.
Recently I have been "wobbling" with the concept of rhetorical awareness. I want to guide students toward "good writing" without dictating it through explicit commands or directive rubrics. Rather, I want to encourage "good writing" through engaging students in a conversation that allows them to inquire for themselves as to what makes "good writing" as it is specific to the situation at hand.
My plan is to adapt Kendra's plan for my own students' first writing workshop (which will take place every Friday). I want to begin a discussion around rhetorical awareness by having my students experience this activity. This is how it worked:
1. Students spent five minutes listing rules for "good writing" in their daybook. Their list can contain rules they were taught or simply what they believe makes for good writing.
2. Meanwhile Kendra passed out notecards with names on them. Once finished with daybooks, students formed groups based on the commonalities between their notecard name; authors, movie producers, music artists, cartoonists, journalists. (I may be wrong with the exact nature of each group, so if you remember forgive me!)
3. Within our groups (notecard names were now set aside) we collectively decided on the top five (yes, they were ranked) rules for good writing.
4. Once our rules were decided upon and recorded, we reviewed and categorized-best to worst-eight various pieces (all from different genres) based on our rules for good writing.
5. Finally, we reconvened with the class as a whole to share our rules and rankings of text.
Please don't assume I want students to toss everything they know about writing out the window. I simply want them to see that good writing is relative to different people and for different situations, audiences, purposes. This awareness of when technicality matters or when and creativity is most important is a greater service to my students than a well formatted rubric.
I do have some reservations...
Are students ready to have this discussion?
Are students prepared, mature enough, to question writing and the evaluation of writing?
Will beginning this discussion-by way of this activity-ultimately lead to a greater sense of rhetorical awareness?
Will I constantly be challenged when actually evaluating and grading student writing?
Please, share your thoughts.
A digital, and more complete, version of Kendra's presentation will be forthcoming.
You're making me jealous I'm not at unccwp with you! I did something similar to this last year... I like the tweaks here vs what I've done in the past (the notecards specifically). I wonder if we could work on this lesson as a team/ dept, featuring different writing excerpts for each grade level? Could be fun to see how the list differs between age groups.
ReplyDeleteKim, I really like your questions at the bottom of your post! I think that students do need to have these conversations, and like you said, think that Kendra's demo is a wonderful way to begin the school year. I think by showing importance to this lesson and by showing how much you, as a teacher, value this lesson, I think the kids will take it seriously. I think if we model our thinking on this topic, and even spark a brief conversation about it among students, and then jump into this lesson, it could be very influential.
ReplyDeleteAlong with your question, I wonder if the created "rules" would almost come back to haunt me later throughout writing evaluation. Would it be too much to create "rules" for various pieces of writing? Set of rules for persuasive writing, a set of rules for friendly-fictional writing? I think there would be overlapping rules, but yet small and important differences at the same time? Or would that be too much?
I think it's so cool, Kim that you are finding connections between your lines of inquiry and the TC demos. It seems like borrowing Kendra's demo would be a great way to get your students thinking about what makes good writing. The one question you included at the end that really resonated with me was "Will I constantly be challenged when actually evaluating and grading student writing?" I am assuming that you meant being challenged by the students with respect to the grade you assign their writing, but what caught me with this question is that I am constantly challenged whenever I put a grade on students writing. I just feel like the process works against actually teaching students to be writers. The last couple of years I've taken the approach of not attaching the grade to the writing piece...instead, I have students answer some questions on their process and through reflected through their writing, and I attach the grade to that. Definitely a move in the right direction, but I'm still feeling plenty challenged!
ReplyDeleteKim--I'm so glad that you liked the demo and that you are thinking about all the minutiae involved in making it work well for a particular classroom. One of the questions that you asked was about rhetorical awareness and I think that it really works very well to lead into a discussion about rhetorical awareness. Even if you don't want to go into all the details of rhetoric, being able to talk about audience and purpose is so important. You could also try out the idea of focusing on one genre with multiple examples or one topic in multiple genres through history (think of a telephone ad from 1950 in the magazine to 1980's tv commercial to a current web ad.
ReplyDeleteAs far as evaluation, I do something similar to what Steve wrote about in his comment. What I evaluate grade-wise is their explanation or consideration of those rhetorical moves. If they can explain what they are doing as a writer, then they are doing the thinking/writing in my book!