- What ideas are you toying with for writing in the remainder of this year or next year?
- What ideas do you have for giving kids the support they need and mechanisms for organizing their thoughts without creating writing robots or a never-ending first draft?
- Anything else related to extended writing assignments in your classroom that you want to share?
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
Write Boston Follow-up: High School
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I really liked the idea of using an image to teach argumentative writing. My group discussed how we've always used image analysis in our classrooms; in most cases it was a means to connect to reading--analyzing the mood or the imagery of an image in order to later be able to analyze the mood or the imagery of a text. I've also used it as a means to reinforce the parts of speech with my 9th graders--having them list nouns, verbs, adjectives, and so on in an image. I've never thought of it as a tool for teaching claim, evidence, and explanation. It's definitely something I intend to use this school year.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of using images to teach argumentative writing, here is a very interesting “read” and deep analysis and argument about the recent Time magazine cover of Trump:
ReplyDeletehttp://forward.com/culture/356537/why-times-trump-cover-is-a-subversive-work-of-political-art/
While it may take a little longer, I really was intrigued by the idea of having students write informative essays (maybe this could be a much shorter essay in comparison) as a step for learning to write argumentative essays. A common idea I found important from yesterday was having students find evidence before they even develop an argument in the first place, so I think this is something I'm going to emphasize in our 9th grade genocide project. Especially now that we have realized there wasn't much of a "argumentative" prompt in our project. I am not going to introduce the argumentative side of the project until students have started gathering their research and evidence, so in the end I think this worked out for the best.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of having students make notes about their writing while writing. Jesse suggested using [brackets] to write notes to yourself to come back later. I used *bold* in Word, and Jennifer suggested students could comment to themselves in Google Docs; students could also share Docs amongst themselves for peer-editing. I will also use the "Image Analysis" for start ups that tie into the day's lesson.
ReplyDeleteTo get students to not write robotic drafts, I will also implement the "Commentary" activity: where students write their claim, reason, and evidence, then write a Commentary that shows the connection between all three. If students can make their thinking visible, the actual essay should fall into place. The meat of the essay should be in the analysis of the evidence, not just in the selection of evidence itself.
My reflections:
ReplyDeleteSome ideas from yesterday that kind of support and reinforce ideas I've already been working with, which is nice encouragement to stick with them: (1) gathering evidence first, before a claim is formulated, letting the evidence lead you to a claim (2)
[bracket note-to-self: prep period over, finish another time...]
I adapted the Giraffe assignment, replacing their criteria with elements of Gothic literature, and students had to choose "The Raven" or "The Oval Portrait" as the better representative. The structure of the assignment really helped them provide good ideas, though their prose still needs a ton of work. So I went through their drafts and took sample sentences and revised them, according to specific aspects of writing (use of quotes, for instance). I'm going over the examples today and asking them to pick three sentences from their drafts to revise. My thinking is that they really need work at the sentence level. We'll see how that goes.
ReplyDeleteI'd also like to tailor the Giraffe assignment so that it deals directly with a text we're reading in class. I could see it working, as is, though, as I move my sophomores toward a unit on persuasion. I loved the competitive feel to it, and I know that each group would want to be "right" about predicting who actually won the Giraffe award. I also loved the photo activity - it's just a short, simple activity to get kids thinking about the importance of evidence to support a claim. Just like the Giraffe, these kids get fired up when they have to prove to someone that they're right, and this could be a good lesson to refer to as we move forward through persuasive writing and reviewing claims and evidence. I've actually been utilizing Google Docs a bit more since a prior Write Boston PD and I'm encouraged by the results (students are commenting on each other's papers and sharing with me, as well). I've already seen some improvement and I hope these activities help us to continue in the right direction.
ReplyDeleteI liked the idea of the thesis, reason, evidence, and then connect them. As I am rounding off Night, I am going to have the students write about the dehumanization present in the novel. I am going to definitely use this as a prewriting assignment. At this point, students have been gathering evidence as we have been reading, so now all they have to do is apply and connect the evidence that they have gathered.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I will be introducing the genocide research assignment soon, and with so many powerful images of genocide, I plan on using image analysis to introduce the idea of genocide. It is something I have done in the past, and I feel that it is very effective with students. It draws them into the subject matter.
I keep thinking that part of the reason students' writing takes so much work to improve is that they don't write for an authentic audience that they care about: they just write for their teachers, get it back from their teachers, and never really think about it again. I'm brainstorming ways to have them share their writing about authentic topics they care about for an authentic audience. Google Docs could help, but if we could find a way to move beyond the bounds of the classroom, I think it would help with student motivation and make the actual instruction much easier.
ReplyDelete