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Teaching with Writing: Ten Opening Premises
(Some of these may look obvious; others you might want to argue with.) 1. We naturally and unconsciously tend to teach as we were taught.
2. We teach in subject areas that are already predisposed--or not--to include writing activities as part of our courses. Students think they know what to expect.
3. Part of what we bring to any discussion of writing activities is our own histories as writers--our fears and confidences and failures and successes.
4. To write about a subject is to think about that subject. Asking students to write means asking them to think.
5. We are already busy people teaching (often) too many students per class. Any discussion of "new teaching techniques" needs to keep this fact in mind.
6. We are each uniquely able to understand and anticipate our own students’ likely successes and failures.
7. We are uniquely able to determine what kinds of thinking we want our students to do.
8. We are uniquely qualified to determine what writing activities will help guarantee our students’ intellectual development and engagement with course material, and we are uniquely qualified to evaluate written work according to the criteria specific to our own courses.
9. We’re pulled by conflicting allegiances. On the one hand, we want to honor and do justice to our discipline’s intricacy and elegance; this encourages us to lecture. On the other hand, we recognize that students learn by doing, and if we talk too much, all they do is listen.
10. Part of teaching involves balancing "breadth" or "coverage" with "depth" or "sophistication." This balancing act is difficult in a semester system, even more difficult with nine or ten week quarters.
A MODEL OF THE WRITING PROCESS
One model we might talk with students about looks like this:
COLLECT
PLAN
DEVELOP Remember:
• This is not the model of the writing process, only a model that may help us understand how writing is made.
• The model will vary according to the writing task. For example, an assignment may cause the writer to plan, then collect, replan and develop.
• The model will vary according to the cognitive style of the writer. Some students will naturally write faster than others. There’s nothing wrong with fast or slow, as long as the deadline is met.
• The model will vary according to the experiences of the writer. Many beginning writers who have to free-write a first draft and develop it through many revisions will move towards more planning and less revision when they become experienced with a specific writing task.
• The process model remains helpful because it gives teacher and student common ways of looking at writing, a logical procedure which can be adapted to the needs of the student once it is understood.
Students’ Responses to Teachers’ Comments
Spadiel and Stiggins’s study (1990) revealed how students misread and reacted to teachers’ comments (pp. 85-87).
“Needs to be more concise”
- Confusing. I need to know what the teacher means specifically.
- This is an obvious comment.
- I’m not Einstein. I can’t get everything right.
- I thought you wanted details and support.
- Define “concise.”
- Vague, vague. “Be more specific”
- I tried and it didn’t pay off.
- It’s going to be too long then.
- I try, but I don’t know every fact.
- You be more specific.
“You haven’t really thought this through”
- That is a mean reply.
- I guess I blew it.
- How do you know what I thought.
“Try harder”
- I did try!
- Maybe I am trying as hard as I can.
- Baloney! You don’t know how hard I tried.
- This kind of comment makes me feel really bad and I’m frustrated!
Source: John C. Bean, Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Publishers, 1996.
Writing-to-learn activities and strategies differ substantially in means and ends from traditional, formal writing. The following comparison highlights a few of these differences. | Traditional Assignments (Displaying Knowlege) | Writing to Learn (Processing Knowlege) | | | | | Conveys already “known” concepts or knowledge | Conveys thinking in process or discovery | | | | | Writing to test (is the student’s thinking right or wrong) | Writing to think (Intellectual engagement is goal; error is a natural part of learning) | | | | | Asks students to be sure about what they write (what’s your thesis?) | Allows students to voice and explore questions | | | | | Assigned as homework (often a relatively lengthy paper, report, or exam) | Process More Process (writing=thinking=more thought) | | | | | Students see writing assignments as penalty situations (writing is a burden and test of knowledge) | Assignments impromptu, often completed in class, may also be homework, often short (less than a page) | | | | | Graded on A/B/C/D/F basis by teacher (usually means heavy investment of teacher’s and student’s time) | Students see writing as a means or helpful to support thinking about new material | | | | | Focus on the grades, and what has already been learned, not the current process of learning | Usually ungraded, but credit given or not given based on clear criteria (i.e., less formal grading by teachers, and students focus on learning not grades) |
If writing IS thinking then constructing writing-to-learn activities serves our students’ learning by asking them to push beyond a surface understanding, by asking them to engage in a process of knowledge making, by asking them to think through a variety of perspectives, theories, or ideas, and by taking at least some responsibility for their own learning.
TIME SAVING STRATEGIES 1. Design good assignments.
Assign exploratory writing; consider using microthemes. Create assignment handouts specifying task, purpose, audience, criteria, desired manuscript form. 2. Clarify your grading criteria.
Create a scoring guide or peer review checksheet. Hold an in-class norming session. 3. Devote a class hour to generating ideas.
Create a small group brainstorming task. Have members of pairs interview one another. 4. Have students submit something to you early in the writing process.
Consider asking for a prospectus, a question-plus-thesis summary, or an abstract. Use these to identify students who need extra help. 5. Have students be the first readers of each other’s drafts.
Require peer reviews (either response-centered or advice centered).
To preserve class time, consider out-of-class peer reviews. 6. Refer students to your writing center (or lobby to start one). Recognize the value of writing centers for all writers, not just weak writers.
Stress the usefulness of writing centers at all stages of the writing process. 7. Make one-on-one conferences efficient.
Focus first on higher-order concerns (ideas, focus, organization and development).
Begin each conference by setting an agenda. Develop a repertoire of conferencing strategies. Consider using idea maps and tree diagrams. 8. Consider holding group conferences early in the writing process. 9. Use efficient methods for giving feedback on papers.
Comment on late drafts rather than final products (or allow rewrites).
Make revision-oriented comments, focusing first on higher-order concerns. When time is at a premium, use a grading scale or a scoring guide instead of making comments. 10. Put minimal comments on finished products that will not be revised. 11. Read John Bean's Engaging Ideas. Jossey-Bass, 1996. | | | |
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