Dear Dr. Jones: A student's reflection

Dear Dr. Jones,

Now that we are nearly at the midpoint of the semester, you have asked us to reflect on LTED 618: Reading Improvement through Written Expression. I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect in this class. When I saw we would be reading Hicks' Crafting Digital Writing, I was excited because as a professional communicator, I am accustomed to writing copy for digital means (web copy, blog copy, and social media copy). When I saw we would also read Tompkins’ Teaching Writing: Balancing Process and Product, I started to infer that this class would be about teaching writing. What I didn’t expect is that we would learn through writing. In my third blog entry for this course, I elaborated on “writing as a medium to think,” and I have been surprised at how quickly my knowledge on teaching writing and the elements of good writing have expanded thanks to these weekly blog assignments.

My writer's notebook from 8th grade

In Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing developed by the Council of Writing Program Administrators, the authors say that students need to develop certain habits of mind (ways of approaching learning) in order to succeed in college and beyond. While I talked about metacognition and persistence as key habits for me in this course in blog 3, I recently had a breakthrough in the creativity realm. After several weeks of struggling to make connections from the weekly readings to my past life as a student, I decided to look through old writing assignments from my childhood. I located a writer's notebook from eighth grade that my English teacher assigned as part of a weekly writer’s workshop. I read through a year’s worth of journal entries ranging from personal experiences and creative works of fiction to my analysis of current events (this was the 1998-1999 school year and you can see my 8^th-grader reactions to President Clinton’s impeachment and the shooting at Columbine High School). Reading this notebook was eye-opening. Even though I consider myself a writer, I often struggle to get a draft down quickly because I don’t allow myself to freewrite. However, my 13-year old mind wasn’t afraid to just write without stopping. Sometimes there were mistakes, but I was amazed at the variety of stories that I wrote that year during those writing workshops. I’ve recommitted myself to freewriting for this assignment, which requires both creativity and persistence. Following the freewrite, I go back and revise/edit as needed, but I’m no longer writing sentences and deleting them to start again. I believe this breakthrough has given me back a lost “mojo” when it comes to creative thinking and critical analysis, and I hope that carries through to composing in multiple environments.

As a potential future library media specialist, I’ve really enjoyed Tompkins’ frequent lists of mentor texts to aid in the process of teaching writing and understanding the genres. I like that Tompkins’ lists aren’t just geared towards elementary learners and I want to stock my library with some of these texts to use in book talks or for teachers to use in their genre lessons.

Since I know a good library media specialist should excel in teaching digital literacy, I have really enjoyed Hicks' book. In this week’s readings, Hicks talks about how to write/analyze quality social media content and how to create standout presentations. If I was in a middle school or high school library, I would love to create lessons plans for both of these topics and offer them to teachers. These are both important topics for digital writers, but not something most teachers would have the time to teach. I would love to work with students on these important topics that would also help develop their rhetorical knowledge!

While I was initially struggling with this particular assignment, I feel like between the weekly readings/class discussions and finding examples from my own writing past has made the assignment easier. I'm looking forward to the genre expert presentations to enhance my learning of the genres. I'm still feeling a little unclear on other two major assignments for this course, but expect the details to become more clear as we progress through the semester and meet with our writer's groups.

Sources outside class texts

Council of Writing Program Administrators, National Council of Teachers of English, & National Writing Project. (2011). Framework for success in postsecondary writing. Retrieved from  http://wpacouncil.org/framework/

How do you teach students to revise their work?

How do you teach young writers (or any developing writer) to revise their work?

For this week's readings, we were asked to read Giving Feedback: Preparing Students for Peer Review and Self-Evaluation, by Zoi. A Philippakos, and Chapter 4: The Writer's Craft from Gail E. Tompkins' Teaching Writing: Balancing Process and Product. 7th ed.  Philippakos provided useful advice for teaching students to revise their work. Tompkins reviewed the writer's craft and the various elements that make up strong writing.

When I was completing my undergraduate degree, I worked in the writing center at Nazareth College. My job was to help students review their papers and offer commentary. Many of them didn't know they needed to  revise their work to make their papers stronger. They were looking for a proofreader, someone to review their citations, or to check that they had fulfilled the basic requirements of the assignment by reviewing an assignment sheet. One way I helped them revise their work was by asking them to locate their thesis statement, or main point of the essay. No matter the subject matter, the thesis statement should have been located near the beginning of the essay or in the introductory paragraph. After they located this statement, we would then review the rest of the essay to see how they used the writer's craft to prove/maintain their thesis. I would help them identify weak points by asking questions that went beyond conventions, and provide suggestions for revisions. 

According to Tompkins, during the revising stage, "the focus is on making changes to communicate more effectively" (p. 56). That was my goal as a tutor in the writing center was to help my students communicate more effectively. Even though I didn't always understand the subject matter of their papers, by asking them questions that related back to their thesis and how they used writer's craft elements like ideas, organization, and voice, the students were equipped with ideas for revising.

Since all teachers don't have the time to work in-depth with each student on revisions 1:1, Philippakos recommends peer review. Philippakos cites several studies that prove a symbiotic relationship through peer review: the writer benefits by understanding the reader's needs, and the readers are exposed to more examples of writing which will positively impact their own approach to writing (p. 14). Of course, teachers need to first model what peer review should look like, possibly by doing a think-aloud with various samples of writing to show stronger and weaker papers (Philippakos, p. 14). I think this is a great idea and one I would implement should I ever need to work with a group on revising their writing. 

Philippakos also recommends creating specific evaluation criteria (and genre-specific criteria) so students know what they should look for when reviewing their peers' essays (p. 17). In class this week we developed genre-specific criteria for evaluating narrative texts as a group before taking the time to do some narrative text review. I think it's a great idea to empower students to create their own evaluation criteria (under the guidance of the teacher). It activates their background knowledge on the topic, and empowers them to feel confident during peer review time. A popular project in middle school libraries today is a "fake news project," where students are asked to review several articles and determine what is more likely to be credible and what is more likely to be fake based on the sources provided. If I had the opportunity to do a project like this in my library, I could start by asking the students to help me develop criteria for what constitutes a credible source. While students wouldn't be revising a writing project, they may "revise" their choices after reviewing their own student-created evaluation criteria.

I enjoyed this week's readings, and it was a good reminder to me that revising and editing are truly two separate parts of the writing process. I will be looking at my own writing for this course more closely so that I can question, elaborate, and clarify when needed! 

Sources outside class textbook
Philippakos, Z.A. (2017). Giving feedback: Preparing students for peer review and self-evaluation. The Reading Teacher, 71(1), 13-22. DOI: 10.1102/trtr.1568

Writing as a medium to think

"Writing is, after all, a medium for learning to think." - Donald Graves

Through the writing of this blog, I am making connections to our class readings and my own life experiences as a student. My writing will serve as a repository of information that I can refer to in my future endeavors (when teaching students about the journal genre for example), and my writing has allowed me to think critically about our class readings.

This week, we were asked to read Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing by the Council of Writing Program Administrators, and Counterpart strategies: Fine tuning language with language by Stephen B. Kucer and Lynn K. Rhodes. Both emphasized that students need to learn how to write well for success in college and beyond, and that reading and writing are interconnected processes. 

In the first article, the authors emphasize that teachers need to develop rhetorical knowledge in their students, "the ability to analyze and act on understandings of audiences, purposes, and contexts in creating and comprehending texts" (p. 6). I feel that my teachers often taught context (for example, understanding the time and place for a historical fiction work), and also taught purpose, but we did not focus on audience. The books we read in school were part of the curriculum, so beyond thinking they were geared towards our reading level, I didn't take much consideration for the audience of the works. 

Today, I understand the importance of knowing your audience. For example, when I write marketing copy for my job in the Nazareth College Arts Center, I know my audience is likely to be college-educated, arts-minded, and local. It's crucial that I tailor my copy to my intended audience for success. If my audience doesn't enjoy/relate/understand my copy, then they won't be motivated to act and buy tickets to see a show. I completely agree that students need to understand the important of audience when reading/writing, and this is something I would emphasize when discussing books in my future library or when working with students on developing their own compositions.

Since understanding audience, purpose, and context is key to my professional writing, I believe that I do allow myself the time and rhetorical space to think when I write. I believe that I am an exception when it comes to approaching writing, but it's how I make my living and is necessary for success. Most professions require daily writing, even if it's just through the practice of frequent emails. While these individuals are aware of their audience, they may not consider the purpose for their writing, and seldom use writing to re-consider or clarify because we are in a fast-paced world. I think it's important to teach young people the value of taking time with their writing, even if it's just an email, so that they are effectively using the medium to question, clarify, or synthesize thoughts and ideas.

Through the writing of this blog, I am approaching learning with an active stance. In the Framework for Success article, the authors say that active learning occurs when the writer employs "habits of mind," which are ways of approaching learning that are both intellectual and practical (p.4). In order to fully engage with this assignment throughout the semester, I need to continually engage certain habits of mind.

Unlike my classmates, I am taking this course independent of a graduate program. Content can be challenging when I don't have current classroom experience that I can draw from and make connections to and from. I need to rely on the role of metacognition in my writing, which the authors of the Framework article describe as "the ability to reflect on one's own thinking as well as on the individual and cultural processes and systems used to structure knowledge" (p.5). I need to work harder to make connections to the weekly readings and class discussions, drawing on information from my own life experiences. I also need to remain persistent (another habit of mind) in my goal to succeed in this assignment. Luckily, my natural curiosity and interest in creative projects (two more habits of mind!) will help guide me along my path.

References
Council of Writing Program Administrators, National Council of Teachers of English, & National Writing Project. (2011). Framework for success in postsecondary writing. Retrieved from  http://wpacouncil.org/framework/

Kucer, S. B. & Rhodes, L. K. (1986). Counterpart strategies: Fine tuning language with language. The Reading Teacher, 40(2), 186-193.

The journal writing genre

"When people write about something, they learn it better." (Fulwiler, 1987, as cited in Tompkins, p. 100)

For my blog entry this week, I will be writing about the journal writing genre. Tompkins encourages teachers to use journal writing across the content areas so that students can have more opportunities to write while using writing as a tool to assess their own knowledge/learning on a topic (p. 119). I think this is a wonderful idea. I remember using composition books in elementary school to keep a learning log for science class. While I can't recall at what stage we used the learning logs, I know we recorded our learning through note-taking and drawing in our notebooks.

In a school library setting, I could use learning/reading logs to help my students when they are doing research with non-fiction texts (I'm thinking of older students, perhaps upper elementary to middle school age). If students were brought to the library to review non-fiction texts for a project, I could supply them with a simple handout to record the most important details from the text (print or digital) for their projects, including page numbers or website address. The students could refer back to their writing while working on their project, and the log would serve as their notes on relevant source material.

Another type of journal, the double-entry journal, is another great way to use writing to deepen a student's understanding of a topic. The journal is divided into two parts and students write different information in each part. Tompkins says that "though this type of journal, children become more engaged in what they are reading and become more sensitive to the author's language" (p. 110).

A few ways to use a double entry journal (explained in Tompkins p.110-112)

• Student writes a quote on the left and  explains the quote on the right/makes connections to their own life or experience
• Students make predictions about a text on the left and actual outcome on the right
• Students take notes on a topic during a lesson (like in a science or social studies unit) and then ask more questions/make personal connections/post reactions on the right

I remember using double-entry journals in middle school as part of a regular writing workshop in my English class. We would pull quotes from books we were reading in class and write those on the left, and then write our responses on the right. I believe our teacher may have guided us in selecting the quotes. I loved this assignment because it deepened my understanding of the text and, if I was able to draw a connection to my own life, made it more relatable to me. Perhaps I could make a more interactive version of the double-entry journal in the library with a display, like a bulletin board. I could put quotes that tie to different themes (female authors? black history month? banned books?) on one side of the board and have students record a short response on a piece of paper and tack it to the board.  This might be stretching the definition of the double-entry journal, but I like brainstorming ways to get students thinking about writing in the library!

One of my favorite ideas for journal writing is a simulated journal, where the author takes on the point of view of a character from a story they are reading. As a creative-minded young person, I always enjoyed these assignments. I still remember taking on the voice of Johnny Tremaine, the 12-year old protagonist in Esther Forbes' award-winning novel, for a 7th grade project. I can't remember anything about this story other than that our class was so unsatisfied with the ending that our teacher asked us to write a final chapter from the perspective of the main character. The following year, I took on the voices of Ethan Frome, his wife Zeena, and lover Mattie for another journal project while studying Edith Wharton's famous novel. Both of these projects allowed me to go deeper in my understanding of the books and their characters.

When students are given regular opportunities to journal, they will not only become better writers, but also will learn how to express themselves through writing, an important life skill in our world of texts and emails. I look forward to seeing how I can encourage journal writing in the library.

Sources
Fulwiler, T. (1987). The Journal Book for Teachers in Technical and Professional Programs.
  New York: Heinemann.