Digital Writing = Thinking in a group

I really enjoyed the part of the reading that dealt with collective intelligence this week. To me, this is such an important skill, and I feel like it is very resoundingly discouraged by our school systems today. As the Jenkins article points out, schools place a heavy emphasis on each student proving that his or her work is their own and not someone else's. Since this whole idea of collaborative, community-based learning experiences is one heavily perpetuated by the U, it is something that I have thought about a lot. I wonder how we can motivate kids to participate in their groups, how we can prevent social loafing, etc. As the Jenkins article points out, kids seem perfectly able to work in collaborative "knowledge communities" when they are engaging with pop culture (i.e. video games), but they seem very eager to push work onto someone else when that work is for school. It would be interesting to see what would happen if we allowed kids to form their own knowledge communities, and if we then used those communities to teach essential skills such as critical thinking and problem-solving. I think that part of the problem, as a teacher, is knowing just what the kids will get excited about. For me, it seems strange that kids would get completely involved in Japanese culture, so much so that it would motivate these kids to actually learn the language. Not that there is anything wrong with Japanese culture, but it just doesn't jump out as a topic that would be consumingly interesting to teenagers. I'm so curious about how to make my classroom a knowledge community! I am thinking of attempting such a thing in my student teaching. One of the novels I have to teach is very centered around storytelling, and so I am thinking of using a wiki to create our own sort of "story corps".
I am hoping that the students will get really excited about maintaining the wiki and writing the stories. I don't know yet if this is technologically feasible at Como Park, but we shall see.

Also, in case you need some inspiration, here's a little slam poetry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxsOVK4syxU

How do we assess writing?

I enjoyed the reading for this week as much as a direly sick person can. I am incredibly interested in exactly what writing I should assign for my future students and, further, how to assess that writing. It seems that the balance that one should strike as a writing teacher is the balance between feedback and assessment, which are clearly two different things. I have had writing teachers who assess (as opposed to merely evaluate) every piece of writing they recieve from students. As was predicted in the Dornan text, this encourages students to write for the teacher, and ultimately, for a grade. This can be especially detrimental with rough drafts, which, while it is important for students to work diligently on them, it is equally if not more important for the teacher to comment upon them in such a way that encourages deeper thinking.
On the other end of the spectrum, I have had teachers who only give feedback on my writing, and never grade anything. While I immediately saw these teachers as easy marks for "A's", I was also frustrated that I never knew exactly what these teachers thought of my writing. Although the feedback was copious, I knew when I was being handled with "kid gloves", I still know it, and I have resented and still do resent it as a writer. Sometimes grades, or negative constructive criticism, are the only ways to challenge students to improve as writers.
Lastly, I had one writing teacher who was able to balance feedback and assessment more adeptly than any of my other writing instructors. She had us write one piece every week and we had to include our "writer's notes" with this piece when we turned it in to her. In turn, we would email copies of our work to each of our peers, who would print off and comment on them. Class time would be spent discussing our pieces in small peer-editing groups, and by the end of class, we would each walk away with plenty of commentary from our peers, and a detailed feedback from our teacher. This class was strictly limited to fifteen students, so the teacher had time to comment on everyone's work in-depth. This in-depth feedback, although it was often BRUTAL, is what helped me to grow as a writer. She graded us on whether or not we handed things in, how well we commented on other people's work, how well we participated in peer-editing groups, whether all pieces were present in our final portfolio, and finally, an analytical writer's statement we wrote to preface our final portfolios. I knew how well was doing in the class, and yet it did not encouarage me to write solely for the teacher. In fact, her somewhat brutal feedback actually pushed me to write more for myself than for her; I became almost defiant and it was then that I truly found my voice.

I can't get my internet to work very well, and I think I just coughed up my right lung, so, here's a link from way back in Eva's class, one which you all know about, but that I'll bet you haven't checked out in a long time. You know this will help you write your units! You know it will!

www.readwritethink.org

Ah, the internet I "use" isn't coming in correctly

So, just in case this ends up being late, I would like everyone to know that it's not because of my procrastinating this assignment so much as it is my unwillingness to pay for something that I can generally get for free.
Anyhow, on to the (rather extensive) reading we did for this week. I must say that it is interesting to observe a creative writing teacher while reading these books/articles and taking this class. I think that witnessing the implentation of the 6+1 traits really colors whether I agree with the philosophy or not. On Monday, I again witnessed one of my potential cooperating teachers try to teach the first trait (Ideas) to her junior and senior creative writing class. She used overheads of pages she had copied directly out of the book, even using the writing examples that the book gives, and then instructed her students to come up with a "fascinating idea". The students, at this vague instruction, took out their cell phones and began to text. I wandered up to the teacher's desk and asked to see her lesson plan, thinking perhaps I had missed something. Her lesson plan consisted of a heading ("Monday"), and below it, three bullet points (1. Diction Worksheet, 2. Ideas Lecture, 3. Kids come up with fascinating ideas). So, my problem with the Culham text then is that it allows teachers to think that they are teaching. Even though the text does give some great ideas for lesson plans to develop these traits, the traits themselves are so unwieldy that to teach the "system" and the actual essence of the traits seems impossible, especially when you have to give kids class time to write.


Also, I was given this address today by a student who says that she uses it to help her find names and things...I'm not sure if it's a good thing, but it is interesting to see what the kids are doing these days. www.seventhsanctum.com

The Five Paragraph Essay or How I learned to stop worrying and let go of creativity

This week's reading really has me going, and although I know we will get into this pretty good in class, I will try to use this space to set up my argument. First, let me say that in general I agree that formulas and tricks and do not work for writers. I agree with this whole-heartedly, and this is why I cringe as I watch the creative writing teacher I am observing pull out and explain the 6 +1 traits. She goes so far as to have the students learn the difference between a 1,3, and 5 point paper, practice scoring the fake papers in the book, and THIS IS A CREATIVE WRITING CLASS. I can't think of anything less creative than the five paragraph essay or the 6 + 1 traits, or frankly, any other formulaic thing that teachers who don't know how to teach writing love to throw at kids and that testing companies love to assess. 

That said, I am one of those teachers. I have an idea of how to teach writing, but it only consists of how it was taught to me, and I, yes I, was taught to write using the five paragraph essay. Now, I know that it's extremely difficult to tell that I once lived inside that five-sided writer's cage especially given my seemingly God-given talent, but alas, everyone must come from somewhere. I was kidding in that last sentence, but only in part of it (Guess which part). It seems that these formulas, given their widespread use, and given the number of good writers that manage to squeak their way through, can't be all bad. Surely, they are restricting, and for those who are not good at "toeing the line" as they say, they may be debilitating. But, as the other adage goes, you have to learn the rules before you can break them. 

Therefore, maybe the answer is to teach the five paragraph essay in middle school and switch to a more sophisticated form around 10th grade? Or perhaps we just need to get the kids reading more and throw out this entire business about "teaching" writing to begin with. 

www.loft.org- this is a website for a writing center in Minneapolis called The Loft Literary Center. They offer classes for adults and for students, and this would be a great way for students to pursue their writing outside of school AND for future writing teachers to pick up some methods.