Day 4 Reflection

Happy Monday! Today I decided to keep a running log of reflections throughout day 4 of our Writing Project Summer Institute. Enjoy, sweet friends....

"Writing into the Day"

Steve Fulton provided the following prompt for our "Writing into the Day" activity this morning.

Revision is hope. We live our "one, wild and precious life," as Mary Oliver calls it, only once, but we get to reconsider it dozens of times along the way. We can change our clothes, hair, interests, friends, and mates, if necessary. We can change careers and neighborhoods. We can change our minds and beliefs. We can even change identities, especially as we write about ourselves in a memoir.

Revision is like the layers of soil in Italian vineyards, like the layers of ancient civilizations beneath modern cities, like the layers of DNA in the oldest variety of grape, grafted by vintners over centuries into new varieties of grape, always in pursuit of the finest wine. 

Revision is a second, third, fourth, even a twentieth chance.

We can revise our life. We can revise our teaching. We can revise the way we operate in the world. Think about revision in the largest sense, of imagining things as if they could be otherwise, as Maxine Greene says. 

Revision is forgiveness.

Katherine Bomer - Writing a Life.

And...I wanted to share my thoughts on this...

I love this! So often my students are fearful of writing because they feel as though whatever students say, write, type becomes set in concrete the minute their words are formed. As educators, what have we done to shape this thinking? How do we reverse this way of thought and erase the fear? What can I do? How do I create an environment that doesn't promote this fear but rather engages students in a safe, fear-free, forgiving writing environment? In order to promote lifelong, recreational readers and writers educators must create an environment that fosters a safe place to read and write.

I'm eager to hear how educators create this kind of environment in the classroom. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Mary Ellen's demo on "Re-seeing and Repurposing Texts"

As a way of processing and summarizing texts students work with, how cool would it be to have students-individually or in groups-to repurpose big ideas within the text in visual, creative ways. For example: piktocharts, infographics.

Another great idea she had was having students tweet a text. Having students practice summarizing by having to decide what are the big ideas they need to convey as well as incorporate technology they already use all the time seems like such a fun activity. Check out this tweeting summarization of good ole' Abe's Gettysburg Address:

How cool is that?

I'd love to do this activity with my students as a "tweeting-out-of-the-day" / ticket out technique. Possible after reading various acts of Macbeth? Maybe summarizing Shakespeare's sonnets to gauge for comprehension? How would you incorporate tweeting texts into your classroom and curriculum? Have you used it before? How can you use tweeting or technology as a revision tool? I'm so, so curious...

Revising

We had a discussion and workshop today focused on various ideas regarding revision. There were a few quotes addressing revision from Cindy Urbanski that I wanted to share.

"Revision is reseeing your writing, page by page, paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, word by word, with you audience in mind." 

[my loose paraphrasing] Revising = Reseeing. Just because you revise doesn't mean that it's better. Sometimes revising isn't about making a better alternative, but reseeing and, therefore, rethinking your work can sometimes [I'm summoning some of Nick's response as well] solidify the original. Wrestling with, and keeping, the original may, in itself, be the best part of revising. 

[again, my loose paraphrasing] Revising toward something, a real audience with a real purpose, gives students more direction and, in turn, may make writing easier.