Blogging Pedagogy - process

The Adapted Lesson Plan

Meredith Coffey — Tue, 18 Nov 2014 20:27:50 +0000

Author:

Meredith Coffey

Image Credit:

Photo by Meredith Coffey, 2009

I love borrowing and tweaking a good lesson plan to meet my own students’ needs. From my first formal teacher training, when I received an enormous binder of lesson plans ready to adapt, to the DWRL’s encouragement to check out its amazing database of lab member-generated plans, I’ve been lucky enough to have regular access to other teachers’ excellent ideas. After years of reworking others’ plans, however, I’ve only recently come to terms with the fact that there is just no set formula or foolproof way to make these adaptations work flawlessly—just like any lesson plan I invent on my own.

Let me give you just two of many possible examples. Last year, I attempted to use Cate Blouke’s plan for using Prezi to introduce the course syllabus. Following her instructions diligently, I reserved plenty of time to prepare a Prezi that reflected my own course’s guidelines. When the big day came, everyone’s introductions ran long, and with limited time to spare—horror of horrors, the Prezi would not play. I tried the link I’d emailed to myself; I tried opening it through my Prezi account; I tried different browsers. Failure.

Of course, this type of technology hiccup can happen under any circumstances, borrowed lesson plan or not, but somehow it had always seemed to me that if someone had done it before successfully, then it should work smoothly in my class, too. A seriously flawed assumption, I know. So, with no Prezi to show for all that preparation, I had to make that move with which every teacher is all too familiar—I had to come up with an entirely different plan on the spot. I promptly directed the students to review the syllabus in small groups and then present key information to the rest of the class. It wasn’t a terribly exciting icebreaker, but at least they had to learn some of each others’ names, read the syllabus closely, and speak just briefly in front of the class. My takeaway from that experience, then, was that even when you think you’re relying on a tried-and-true plan, you still have to remain able to adapt, and keep adapting, as circumstances require.

My second example comes from just a few weeks ago, when I was teaching Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and decided to borrow from Andy Uzendoski’s Lit Genius close reading activity. I followed his guidelines closely: before class, I added five passages from assigned short stories to Lit Genius; I broke them into five small groups, one to annotate each passage; and I had them present their annotations to the class. Overall, this exercise went extremely well. Several of the students were already familiar with Genius (particularly Rap Genius), and something about the digital format made creating annotations seem exciting and novel. Some groups went beyond the exercise’s requirements, adding images to their annotations, for instance. Indeed, it was popular enough that for a later presentation assignment, one group elected to use Lit Genius to share their work.

Once again, though, an unanticipated challenge arose. By and large, the groups spent much longer discussing and annotating their assigned passages than I’d anticipated. The posted lesson plan had warned that the activity could take one to two class periods, but I imagined that if we began right at the start of class, we could manage the complete exercise (one round of annotations, a round of mini-presentations, and another round of annotations of another group’s passage) in one seventy-five minute class period. As will probably not be surprising to readers of this post, this estimation turned out to be overly optimistic. I wound up extending the activity to the next class session, which was not ideal but was certainly doable.

This time around, I couldn’t pin the plan’s failure on a technology problem. Instead, it was an issue of my not having revised the plan sufficiently to meet my timeframe requirements. Even though I knew that the plan could potentially take up to two class sessions, I didn’t sufficiently limit the length of the excerpts, the close reading questions to ask, etc., to make it work for my particular group of students. Sticking closely to script made the exercise an overall success, but further work on my end to hone the plan would have made the execution go even more smoothly.

Of course, the amount of revision necessary to adapt to a lesson plan varies significantly. Sometimes plans turn out to be too short instead of too long (rarely my problem, but it happens!). Indeed, all sorts of challenges can arise while constructing or implementing a lesson plan. All this is to say that I remain a huge fan of adapting others’ lesson plans to work for my own classes—and sometimes sharing my own plans with others—but one of the many skills I continue to develop is that of the adaptation/revision process itself. Process over product, after all.

Collaboration and Chaos

Cole Wehrle — Sun, 02 Feb 2014 16:46:08 +0000

Author:

Cole Wehrle

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Cole Wehrle

As long as I’ve had the pleasure of teaching in one of the DWRL class rooms I’ve flirted with the idea of using Google Docs in a classroom setting. In-class writing assignments are certainly nothing new, but Google Docs made it possible to transform what was a space for quiet reflection into one that demanded open collaboration.

At least, it was theoretically possible. While useful for all kinds of list-making and brainstorming, the promise of Google Docs, as a productive space for real-time collaboration seems largely illusory. As anyone who has ever tried to write a CFP at the same time knows, what results is mostly frustration and confusion. It might be easier to have everyone shouting over a laptop.

So I tabled the idea until, a few weeks ago, I found myself reading about the idea of the “flipped-classroom,” which had become the pedagogical-tactic-of-the-month and was generating lots of buzz on various blogs and op-ed pages. For those who missed the wave (or have yet to catch it), the idea is simple and counterintuitive. Teachers, usually working in small groups, record all of the classroom lectures and send them to students so they can stream them at home. Then, when the students come to class the next day, the teacher will help them with their homework. This has been applied to subjects as diverse as algebra and American history, and many teachers are finding that the “flipped-classroom” has allowed them to tailor their class to the needs of individual students without sacrificing content.

I was intrigued by the concept but was unsure how to apply it to a writing class. When I was a journalism student we routinely had to produce short articles in the space of a 75 minute lab class, but it was a demanding experience and seemed unfair to give it to students in a basic writing class. About that time I realized that Google Docs might provide the answer. If it was too much to ask a single student to produce a research summary in a 75 minute class, perhaps it was somewhat more reasonable to ask it of a group.

Before the class I asked my students to look over two sample research summaries, one very good and the other very bad. Then, during the next class period we began by coming up with two lists of what qualities made the good research summary good and the bad example bad. I then played a short video, passed out a transcript, and asked each group of 3-4 students to produce a good research summary using Google Docs on that video. After a few minutes, when they had set everything up, I casually mentioned that they had to turn it in by the end of class. No late assignments would be accepted.

Panic ensued, complaints were levied, but, after they realized that this was not a point for compromise, they began dividing the work and approaching their job systematically. The activity had forced them all into the 11^th hour crunch, but this time both their classmates and I were on-hand to help. Over the next 45 minutes the students bombarded me with concise, earnest questions about phrasing and grammar while helping each other frame and format their citations. By the end of the class every single group had produced a finished research summary and it was likely the best batch of short papers I’ve ever received.

I’m not sure how to apply the activity to a longer paper, but it certainly seems like an avenue worth exploring.

Benefits of Paper Workshops

Stephanie Odom — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 20:13:10 +0000

Author:

Stephanie Odom

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DigiDreamGrafix.com

This spring I’ve been teaching RHE 310: Intermediate Expository Prose for the second time. The first time I taught it was two years ago, so I had plenty of time in between to think of ways to improve upon my first effort. I love teaching this class. I’m not sure I’ll get to teach a class like it in my new job, but I will definitely try to work in the practice of in-class paper workshops in future classes. Workshops are a cornerstone of RHE 310, and in this post, I’d like to describe how I run workshops, what I think works well, and what I will change in the future.

First, a little context about the class is in order. RHE 310 is a class about style. Instructors (usually graduate students) teach the class in many different ways, but practicing the prose style and genre conventions of a number of types of writing is usually the norm. When I was first planning how I would teach the course, I wanted the students to be able to select the type of writing they wanted to master. I didn’t feel entirely comfortable selecting styles for the whole class since I didn’t want to make pronouncements about what style/s of writing were superior to others and didn’t want to spend time on genres and styles that were uninteresting or unimportant to students. (I have since come around to re-thinking that stance and would feel more comfortable teaching a range of pre-selected styles now.) So, in my class, each student selects a prose model that they admire and the assignments give them opportunities to analyze and imitate that model. The range of models students have chosen has been incredible, as have their creative imitations.

As I said, workshopping is a key part of this course. The first time I taught it, the requirement was that everyone submit writing--any writing--for the class to comment on. Many students submitted imitations of their prose model. These models included magazine writing, sports reporting, technical guides, academic philosophy and film articles, and many more. But in that first attempt, I didn’t require students to provide an example or of describe the writing style they were going for, and that made our workshops ineffective at times. Students would offer advice based on what their general understanding of “good style” was, and the writer being workshopped would reply that their choices were justified based on the type of writing they were practicing. The students would shrug and trust that the writer was correct.

This time around, I changed the workshop submission template to give students a space to describe and/or provide an example of their prose model, which could be the main one they were working with that semester or anything else. Having the opportunity for students to read high quality examples of that type of writing has made our workshops more effective. During the workshop, when someone has a question about whether the writer’s choices are appropriate, it’s easy to turn to the target prose and analyze it to see whether the more experienced author made that choice. For example, we’ve talked a lot about pronoun usage and what that means in terms of rhetorical distance. If the student writer makes I-statements and someone asks if that is an appropriate choice (sometimes invoking the “I heard you should never use ‘I’ in papers” rule), we revisit the target prose and see if that author used the first person pronoun. This is one of several analysis and imitation techniques I’m able to model during workshops.

Other such techniques that I hope they internalize and take with them include reading prose out loud, making a reverse outline of their or another writer’s text, getting a thought down in rough form and playing with the style later, and just generally getting others’ input about clarity and style. I’m lucky that the students in this semester’s class are respectful and forthright, so I don’t need to do a lot of delicate balancing of egos or communication styles. Especially in the early part of the semester, students were nervous about getting their writing critiqued, but that feeling has subsided after seeing how their peers are not dismissive, rude, or totally off-base in their comments.

In this class, I love how these workshops expose students to a wide range of writing styles, some of which they will themselves write someday but others that they won’t. The range gives us the chance to see how writing varies and how what’s “wrong” in one rhetorical situation is “right” in another one. For example, one student wrote a reflective essay about a baseball game that he wanted to publish as a sports column. His style is casual and blunt, two qualities that you often see in sports writing. We talked about how in his case, it was acceptable to use slang words and even profanity in story telling, and how he created dramatic interest by using a series of short simple sentences, whereas in other workshops, we had worked with the writers to combine simple sentences into more complex ones to lend a more sophisticated tone. We’ve seen how in science writing, the passive voice is standard and appropriate, but in personal statements, we want to see more first-person pronouns. It’s also been helpful for writers to get feedback about where their readers want to see more evidence, what they think the argument was, and how they personally responded to the piece.

In the interest of space, I’ll briefly list here other practices that I’ve found facilitate productive discussion and some that I’ll change in the future.

What is working:

Having writers upload their papers to our class wiki 24 hours before their workshop (by 9:30 a.m. on Monday for a Tuesday class) to give classmates time to comment.
Asking everyone to post at least one positive and one constructive comment on the wiki before class to prime them for participating.
Distributing printed copies of the paper even though we can all read it on the projector. This is not necessarily for the writer’s benefit since receiving 18 marked-up copies of their writing can be overwhelming, but it’s been great for keeping everyone else more engaged with the writing.
Speaking with each student about their participation during our midterm conference and letting them know if I want them to participate more or give others a chance to speak, and what I think their strengths as a participant are.

What I will likely change:

Spending 20 minutes instead of 30 minutes on each student to give us more time to analyze and imitate at least one additional type of writing as a class.
Requiring everyone to revise their writing based on our feedback so that the stakes are higher and they practice weighing conflicting comments against each other.
Practicing close line editing techniques, though this is a maybe. Some students are doing this anyway and I’d like to be more involved in what they are suggesting, but I would rather they practice minimal marking and ask questions for clarification instead of making changes to the papers. Depending on the goals of the course I’m teaching, I may or may not encourage line editing.

Learning how to run a writing workshop is a valuable skill for anyone who will be teaching composition, and it requires practice and being open to change. It focuses the class on student writing instead of polished professional writing, it opens up the writing process for discussion, it teaches students that getting feedback on their writing is not going to kill them, and it lets them see how different readers react in different ways and that that’s ok. I will definitely be using this pedagogical tool in future classes and I hope my description of it here gives others some ideas about how to use it in their classes, too.

The Many Upsides of the Student Conference

Megan Gianfagna — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 02:37:42 +0000

Author:

Megan Gianfagna

Image Credit:

via Winter Love

Even for a small class, student conferences take a lot of time and energy. I often hold conferences to discuss a plan for revision of their essays. That means that 6 hours of conferences (15 minutes each x 23 students) usually follow long nights spent grading the essays that are the basis of our discussion. I’ve often left the campus coffee shop after I’ve met with half the class in and felt like I’ve been stuck on repeat—drained from keeping my enthusiasm up during so many different versions of the same basic conversation.

So if the conference process means extra time, extra logistics, and extra pressure to meet tight grading deadlines, why do I continue to do it, semester after semester? It’s not because every student turns out a comprehensive and polished revision of his/her essay as a result of our short meetings. It’s because those brief but focused sessions give me a chance to hear my students talk about their writing process and their experience with the project. For me, it gives the essay a backstory and helps me understand the thought processes behind some of their decisions. It builds a relationship that makes them more comfortable in the classroom and more invested in the work. I also think it makes them more likely to come to office hours or to visit the Undergraduate Writing Center about subsequent assignments. For students accustomed to professors in large lectures knowing them by EID rather than first name, seeing that the instructor is willing to invest the time in their work makes a big difference, at least to some.

I make the first conference of the semester mandatory and all subsequent conferences optional. Because I use the Learning Record as the evaluative framework, student effort and reflection on that effort gets captured and considered in the final grade for the course. As a result, I find that most students sign up for subsequent conference meetings of their own volition. In my current class, Rhetoric of Going Viral, I have mostly sophomores, juniors and seniors. With this group, I’m finding conferences especially productive and energizing. Because we use memes as the objects of our rhetorical inquiry, I get to learn a lot about my students’ personal interests and relationship with online information.

Though the primary purpose of the conference is talk through my comments on their essays and address any questions, I try to talk about something else first. For instance, I like to being by commenting on something I found interesting about a blog post or asking a question about something I noticed in one of their Learning Record observations. This signals to students that I’m there to engage them in conversation and not talk at them about the paper. I’ve found that students use the one-on-one opportunity to ask about how they might apply what they’re learning in class to the kind of writing they do in their majors, to ask about other assignments or class policies, or to tell me how they think I’m strange for letting them interrogate popular texts instead of writing research papers with scholarly sources. I’ll take it. Watching them think about writing in a more expansive way is, for me at least, one of many fulfilling conference benefits.

Even though I build these conferences into the course schedule in addition to peer review and revision workshops, revision can often be an afterthought for students. To help them leave the conference with a concrete plan of action, I like to have them do a brief activity ahead of time. I find it can really help focus our discussion. Some that I’ve used in the past include asking them to rank my comments in what they perceive as the order of importance or having them choose the top three things they think they should focus on in their revision and explain why. I’ve also asked them to write a brief outline of what they would do to the essay if they had more time (to be completed before I send them my comments).

Though not all students are always prepared and some seem like they are ready to basically sprint out the door the second we’ve finished our conversation, I’ve yet to feel like the process wasn’t worth it. I do wonder, though, if other instructors have a very different view of conferences or use more creative strategies to maximize the experience for both teacher and student. I wonder too what will happen when I have to teach more courses in a semester and have to adjust my approach. Individual conferences may not always feasible, so I think I’ll just enjoy the luxury while I have it.