Here's a guy who gets it.
I chose to read chapter six of our assigned reading this week, "Poetry Fusion: Integrating Video, Verbal, and Audio Texts." After a few previous readings on digital literacy and seeing just how woefully inadequate their very understandings are of what they want to use, this is a guy who gets it. Honestly, I think I may use a lot of his layout as information for designs on video production units I'm thinking of. Would I use it all? I dunno, I'm not a fan of podcasts, but the way he's using them here makes an incredibly convincing argument in favor of them. We've all had those teachers who said "read the poem out loud to yourself or your classmate." Who's ever done that? Not me. Not worth it. But here, the author manages to get that same effect our teachers were shooting for, but in a FAR more authentic and useful way.
Ted, Leigh, and Dan all remember it, they were in the class with me. Linguistics. "The History of English", a woefully outdated doc that had some great information in it. My favorite part was the guy who put the Old English Beowulf to music and sang it. What this chapter espouses is something similar to that - it creates a poem that you hear and appreciate for its original style. You break away from the density of the language in reading it.
In terms of video and multimedia, he brings a similar versatility. And, while it's largely left unsaid, the implication to me (at least, I hold to it) is that students with an intrinsic understanding of multimedia literacy begin to connect the dots...again, between what they know and what they don't know. We see that in a huge way about halfway through the chapter, under the "video as text" entry, where a student who began the project with no reaction to the piece is able to develop a real appreciation for what's going on. The main reason, I know, is that the student has taken what he/she knows (how a movie looks) and has been able to marry it to what he/she didn't know (the deeper interpretation of a poem), and a huge part of this has been in learning the essentials of how to make a movie. The teacher had the student break a script, basically, in order to shoot it. The beauty here is that in breaking the script, all of the students have been textually digging into the poems and uncovering deeper meaning from a large variety of angles.
Assessment - again, full honesty: I've taught aspects of this to college kids. I largely assessed/graded completely informally based on the idea of "do they have a plan and did they execute it?" I really like the breakdown of how he laid out his rubric, and what I love most of all is that the students have a hand in grading.
This entire post feels un-meaty. The problem is that I not only don't disagree with anything here, but I just love it. Again, this is a guy who gets it.
My link of the week:
Adobe's video production curriculum
I really like this area for the same reason I liked the chapter I read: it's a good, solid starting point to looking at how to teach the subject.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
reflection for 2/24
I'm going to be honest here: this post is going to be more of a rant than anything. If I can remember I'll try to cite a bit, but mostly I'm going to be riffing off the general vibe, especially from the kadjer piece.
I've brought this up before, in Tracey's class a few weeks ago during the new literacies posting, but it's something that genuinely bothers me. In this case, it starts immediately in the article as a sort of cautionary tale: the principal claiming his teacher "gets" tech with kids, only to see them using laptops in such an absurd way they'd be better off with notebooks.
As far as I am concerned, much of the computer use in/around classroom activities isn't too far off from this, no matter what is claimed. And it's really a matter of understanding language/culture. That is, there is a definitely online culture. The people who get it, get it. The people who don't try to accommodate the culture into their own understandings. It...it just doesn't work.
In the case of 5481, we read a short article (guy's last name was Gee, forget his first name) who advocated using video games as a teaching tool. OK. He's running off of a false premise in not recognizing video games as skinner boxes (i've said it a hundred times and i'm sure i'm not alone), but his general idea was sound enough. it's certainly a game attempt to make his materials relevant to his students, and i won't fault him for that. but he was so out of touch with the entire jargon-structure and even the ethos behind gaming that i just know it would fall flat with him.
And there's a similar attitude at work in this week's readings. Please note: I DO NOT VIEW THEIR EVERY ARGUMENT AS INVALID. I definitely don't want to be misunderstood, as if i'm ignoring everything they say as somehow worthless. I just think that they're doomed to fail, because they don't understand the beast, as it were.
Now, in the case of the Kadjer article, I won't claim that the recommendations on using blogs are invalid. They're not. But they're entirely based on a mode of communication incompatible, in many ways, with blogs and netiquette in general.
I guess the best way I can describe it is this: we have a mutually accepted code of conduct in a mode of writing. Let's use journals as an example, because it's handy for the purposes of this. We have a general variety of tones, a general type of "respect" that we, as journal-writers, by nature afford to the reader. These aren't instinctive by a long shot. They're learned behaviours and they're subtle. They're based on very old principles of communication tied into cultural norms. As an emotional example, something like sarcasm takes a radically deferential tone in something like a journal. To this day I have to continually look at my print writing when i'm doing a first-person view, and try to figure out where my net-ingrained sense of hyperbole and sarcasm is causing misconceptions. and in my speech? fugedduboutit.
Net writing is different. Net writing is based on its own culture. I ask you this: if by some fluke you're one of 50 americans who gets letters in the mail, compare the language and tone to an e-mail. NOW, if the person writing the e-mail is someone with an online life, they're going to be radically different in a dozen different ways. some will be superficial, some will seemingly affect the very tone. those without that online life, those who accommodated their view of this kind of personal writing into e-mail, will have messages very similar to an actual letter. very little emotion, very precise language, etc.
Email's just different than print writing. "printing it out" doesn't change it. you need to remember: the idea of an internet with rules is new. the net was built by geeks like me...except they were smarter and had patience to deal with hardware. while print etiquette is built on a certain "code of conduct", netiquette has its own structure, and it shows its face in different senses depending on the format. im's are different from texts, texts are different form email, et al. it's all built on the old internet, the one built by those geeks. geeks are generally aggressive, rude, and sarcastic. i don't mean this as an insult, nor do i mean it as a universal. geeks are also problem-solvers, and we take any sort of "rule" as an invitation to bend/break/move around it. communication on the net is built upon this kind of aggression and subversion. most kids these days with internet access live in it and are versed in the rules. it's why this message is laden with a lack of punctuation, is occasionally sarcastic, and is filled with rhetorical fallacies i wouldn't dare approach in an actual print format.
Wanna know why hacking exists? because it's a puzzle to solve. screw "legal", it doesn't apply. the fact that rl society is attempting to impose law and order on it does not, for now, mean that those laws will be followed.
and teachers, such as we see here, are attempting to put their rules onto it. i do NOT mean this negatively. i just mean that their students are more well-versed in the conduct than they are, generally speaking, and they know how to operate it. so well-meaning teachers such as those in the kadjer article throwing out assignment blogs are wasting their time. they're trying to put a shiny hat on a journaling technique, and their intentions are admirable. but they should stick to journaling with a notebook unless they're versed enough to make an online assignment actually different. look at my post here. i'm REALLY trying to make this non-internet in tone. not sure how successful i am. based on lack of capitalization and complete lack of pronouns in otherwise complete sentences, i'd bet it's more net than print. and if this were an actual paper, it wouldn't look anything like this. I'd also use punctuation more.
My reason is simple: the language and deference for online writing by this teacher, as an example, is antithetical to what the students already operate on when online. the article, like the gee article from a few weeks ago, is the modern equivalent of saying "golly look at this here television-box, it's newfangled. we need to get that into class." yes. the intention is admirable. but the language and mode of thinking is outdated. can you teach a student when the student knows more about the medium than you?
another fairly superficial example: raise your hands if you know what it is to be trolled. or rickrolled. either/or. similarties between the two.
again, again, again - it is admirable. he's trying to spur interest by introducing a fun piece of equipment that the students want to use. but they use it differently. it's also admirable for administrators to mandate their teachers keep up to date on it. but if the very mode of thinking is still set to pre-internet, it's only going to go so far. i don't mean this universally, obviously. my cooperating teacher's great with it in a lot of ways, and he also has a view i share on it: it's all part of a toolbox. use what's needed where it's needed.
my link for the week:
it's a recent "blog" post with imbedded video asking, "is the internet really an amplified for youth deviance, bad behaviour, and risk?"
My answer: no, and you're comparing apples to oranges.
I've brought this up before, in Tracey's class a few weeks ago during the new literacies posting, but it's something that genuinely bothers me. In this case, it starts immediately in the article as a sort of cautionary tale: the principal claiming his teacher "gets" tech with kids, only to see them using laptops in such an absurd way they'd be better off with notebooks.
As far as I am concerned, much of the computer use in/around classroom activities isn't too far off from this, no matter what is claimed. And it's really a matter of understanding language/culture. That is, there is a definitely online culture. The people who get it, get it. The people who don't try to accommodate the culture into their own understandings. It...it just doesn't work.
In the case of 5481, we read a short article (guy's last name was Gee, forget his first name) who advocated using video games as a teaching tool. OK. He's running off of a false premise in not recognizing video games as skinner boxes (i've said it a hundred times and i'm sure i'm not alone), but his general idea was sound enough. it's certainly a game attempt to make his materials relevant to his students, and i won't fault him for that. but he was so out of touch with the entire jargon-structure and even the ethos behind gaming that i just know it would fall flat with him.
And there's a similar attitude at work in this week's readings. Please note: I DO NOT VIEW THEIR EVERY ARGUMENT AS INVALID. I definitely don't want to be misunderstood, as if i'm ignoring everything they say as somehow worthless. I just think that they're doomed to fail, because they don't understand the beast, as it were.
Now, in the case of the Kadjer article, I won't claim that the recommendations on using blogs are invalid. They're not. But they're entirely based on a mode of communication incompatible, in many ways, with blogs and netiquette in general.
I guess the best way I can describe it is this: we have a mutually accepted code of conduct in a mode of writing. Let's use journals as an example, because it's handy for the purposes of this. We have a general variety of tones, a general type of "respect" that we, as journal-writers, by nature afford to the reader. These aren't instinctive by a long shot. They're learned behaviours and they're subtle. They're based on very old principles of communication tied into cultural norms. As an emotional example, something like sarcasm takes a radically deferential tone in something like a journal. To this day I have to continually look at my print writing when i'm doing a first-person view, and try to figure out where my net-ingrained sense of hyperbole and sarcasm is causing misconceptions. and in my speech? fugedduboutit.
Net writing is different. Net writing is based on its own culture. I ask you this: if by some fluke you're one of 50 americans who gets letters in the mail, compare the language and tone to an e-mail. NOW, if the person writing the e-mail is someone with an online life, they're going to be radically different in a dozen different ways. some will be superficial, some will seemingly affect the very tone. those without that online life, those who accommodated their view of this kind of personal writing into e-mail, will have messages very similar to an actual letter. very little emotion, very precise language, etc.
Email's just different than print writing. "printing it out" doesn't change it. you need to remember: the idea of an internet with rules is new. the net was built by geeks like me...except they were smarter and had patience to deal with hardware. while print etiquette is built on a certain "code of conduct", netiquette has its own structure, and it shows its face in different senses depending on the format. im's are different from texts, texts are different form email, et al. it's all built on the old internet, the one built by those geeks. geeks are generally aggressive, rude, and sarcastic. i don't mean this as an insult, nor do i mean it as a universal. geeks are also problem-solvers, and we take any sort of "rule" as an invitation to bend/break/move around it. communication on the net is built upon this kind of aggression and subversion. most kids these days with internet access live in it and are versed in the rules. it's why this message is laden with a lack of punctuation, is occasionally sarcastic, and is filled with rhetorical fallacies i wouldn't dare approach in an actual print format.
Wanna know why hacking exists? because it's a puzzle to solve. screw "legal", it doesn't apply. the fact that rl society is attempting to impose law and order on it does not, for now, mean that those laws will be followed.
and teachers, such as we see here, are attempting to put their rules onto it. i do NOT mean this negatively. i just mean that their students are more well-versed in the conduct than they are, generally speaking, and they know how to operate it. so well-meaning teachers such as those in the kadjer article throwing out assignment blogs are wasting their time. they're trying to put a shiny hat on a journaling technique, and their intentions are admirable. but they should stick to journaling with a notebook unless they're versed enough to make an online assignment actually different. look at my post here. i'm REALLY trying to make this non-internet in tone. not sure how successful i am. based on lack of capitalization and complete lack of pronouns in otherwise complete sentences, i'd bet it's more net than print. and if this were an actual paper, it wouldn't look anything like this. I'd also use punctuation more.
My reason is simple: the language and deference for online writing by this teacher, as an example, is antithetical to what the students already operate on when online. the article, like the gee article from a few weeks ago, is the modern equivalent of saying "golly look at this here television-box, it's newfangled. we need to get that into class." yes. the intention is admirable. but the language and mode of thinking is outdated. can you teach a student when the student knows more about the medium than you?
another fairly superficial example: raise your hands if you know what it is to be trolled. or rickrolled. either/or. similarties between the two.
again, again, again - it is admirable. he's trying to spur interest by introducing a fun piece of equipment that the students want to use. but they use it differently. it's also admirable for administrators to mandate their teachers keep up to date on it. but if the very mode of thinking is still set to pre-internet, it's only going to go so far. i don't mean this universally, obviously. my cooperating teacher's great with it in a lot of ways, and he also has a view i share on it: it's all part of a toolbox. use what's needed where it's needed.
my link for the week:
it's a recent "blog" post with imbedded video asking, "is the internet really an amplified for youth deviance, bad behaviour, and risk?"
My answer: no, and you're comparing apples to oranges.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
reading reflection for 2/17
So, I posted a little bit of this in a response to Jack's blog, but I'll restate here just for the sake of flow.
I really responded to the Van DeWeghe article in ways I haven't responded to anything else so far. We've had a few really practical and solid guides (the dornan text as a whole is incredibly practical, as an example), but none so immediate to me.
A few weeks ago, the English 9 group had to come in with 3-4 ideas for what they wanted to do their research papers on. The general topic they had was simple: pick someone in your life who had to undergo a huge change of some kind. document the social aspects. some people chose medical crises, immigration, etc. their primary sources are personal interviews.
My cooperating teacher had them all in groups of 3-4 and they each had a simple worksheet on which they'd document their peers' ideas and how "good" they thought said-ideas were. while they were working, he came up to me and said, "it's a good idea to always do, but don't be surprised when they don't do the kind of critique you want." So I asked him a little bit about why he did the group critiques/revisions, what he meant by different kind, etc. He pretty much said, "you can give them very specific lenses to look through. ask them to answer specific questions, etc. but no matter what, they're going to default back to either saying 'i like it' or 'fix comma here, capitalize here, i like it!'"
That day, his third hour also had assigned groups for the same sort of thing. 11th grade honors, in this case. same thing. he said no matter how smart the kid is, what grade they're in, it doesn't matter. only 1 in 20 will, in high school, be able to do it. the rest will default to the more shallow stuff we often complain about, and Van DeWeghe comments on. it's just, in my cooperating teacher's opinion, a matter of maturity, strength of ability/confidence as writers, and social dynamics.
Why do them? That was my big question. His response: "eventually they will be strong enough and mature enough to use them in a more productive way, without a teacher's intervention. When that comes to them in a few years, they'll already be in the habit of doing it. It'll be familiar to them and productive."
he combats this whole thing when it comes to actual draft revisions by using turnitin.com, which has a feature that will send out each student's essay, anonymously, to X amount of students (you tell it how many: in his case, it goes out to 3 others). students are then required to comment on the papers...again, anonymously. the website also has a feature in which, the teacher, plug in questions. when it turns around and sends out the anonymous papers to students, it attaches the questions in terms of a minor worksheet that they have to answer. the anonymity helps for a bit more truthfulness.
I had a thought about a way to combat this, stolen wholesale from the girlfriend.
groups of four. assign each person a role: this person praises, that person critiques. another person looks specifically at grammar/spelling. she apparently uses it a lot for draft revisions and it works well.
i have to admit, it's kind of interesting to look at the praises for "teaching higher level thinking" vs. the more pragmatic view that my cooperating teacher has. but i do see a lot of abilities for common ground in there, especially when you take into account the idea that it models good habits that they'll hold onto and use more effectively at later points.
My link for the week:
this is a peer editing form. I actually quite like the questions. they're pointed, but open-ended. I plan to use something similar in teaching the research paper to the 11th graders.
I really responded to the Van DeWeghe article in ways I haven't responded to anything else so far. We've had a few really practical and solid guides (the dornan text as a whole is incredibly practical, as an example), but none so immediate to me.
A few weeks ago, the English 9 group had to come in with 3-4 ideas for what they wanted to do their research papers on. The general topic they had was simple: pick someone in your life who had to undergo a huge change of some kind. document the social aspects. some people chose medical crises, immigration, etc. their primary sources are personal interviews.
My cooperating teacher had them all in groups of 3-4 and they each had a simple worksheet on which they'd document their peers' ideas and how "good" they thought said-ideas were. while they were working, he came up to me and said, "it's a good idea to always do, but don't be surprised when they don't do the kind of critique you want." So I asked him a little bit about why he did the group critiques/revisions, what he meant by different kind, etc. He pretty much said, "you can give them very specific lenses to look through. ask them to answer specific questions, etc. but no matter what, they're going to default back to either saying 'i like it' or 'fix comma here, capitalize here, i like it!'"
That day, his third hour also had assigned groups for the same sort of thing. 11th grade honors, in this case. same thing. he said no matter how smart the kid is, what grade they're in, it doesn't matter. only 1 in 20 will, in high school, be able to do it. the rest will default to the more shallow stuff we often complain about, and Van DeWeghe comments on. it's just, in my cooperating teacher's opinion, a matter of maturity, strength of ability/confidence as writers, and social dynamics.
Why do them? That was my big question. His response: "eventually they will be strong enough and mature enough to use them in a more productive way, without a teacher's intervention. When that comes to them in a few years, they'll already be in the habit of doing it. It'll be familiar to them and productive."
he combats this whole thing when it comes to actual draft revisions by using turnitin.com, which has a feature that will send out each student's essay, anonymously, to X amount of students (you tell it how many: in his case, it goes out to 3 others). students are then required to comment on the papers...again, anonymously. the website also has a feature in which, the teacher, plug in questions. when it turns around and sends out the anonymous papers to students, it attaches the questions in terms of a minor worksheet that they have to answer. the anonymity helps for a bit more truthfulness.
I had a thought about a way to combat this, stolen wholesale from the girlfriend.
groups of four. assign each person a role: this person praises, that person critiques. another person looks specifically at grammar/spelling. she apparently uses it a lot for draft revisions and it works well.
i have to admit, it's kind of interesting to look at the praises for "teaching higher level thinking" vs. the more pragmatic view that my cooperating teacher has. but i do see a lot of abilities for common ground in there, especially when you take into account the idea that it models good habits that they'll hold onto and use more effectively at later points.
My link for the week:
this is a peer editing form. I actually quite like the questions. they're pointed, but open-ended. I plan to use something similar in teaching the research paper to the 11th graders.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
oh, my link for the week!
The online english grammar guide
i like it because i'm on the kids' side: i hate memorization. i hate repetition. books exist so you don't have to remember. same with the net. this is a good breakdown of everything. hit ctrl+f and look for what you want.
there are several that i use in addition to this, depending on what i need. this is just one of the "nicer" ones.
i like it because i'm on the kids' side: i hate memorization. i hate repetition. books exist so you don't have to remember. same with the net. this is a good breakdown of everything. hit ctrl+f and look for what you want.
there are several that i use in addition to this, depending on what i need. this is just one of the "nicer" ones.
but I like grammar...
I mean it, i love grammar. Although I will admit, my love for it is only in some areas. honestly, as much as i like grammar, i wouldn't go as far as weaver suggests: introducing participal phrases, etc. i don't care about that NOW. very little point in teaching it.
Again, total honesty - i'm a trained playwright, a trained poet. i learned by being shown how the whole looks and in the case of poetry how meter works. beyond that, boring.
and in terms of the complexity that weaver advocates for being a part of the daily lit lessons: not needed. at all. it's bogging things down by asking students to memorize names for what they know. MAYBE, if they become New Critics, they can learn it.
That all being said, what i do advocate and like about grammar is not something i advocate teaching instead of lit. i love the weaver model of it, just not that complex. the car analogy she listed is actually quite apt: i to this day don't know, care, or understand how a car works beyond combustion. i do know how to drive. a student can know the basics of writing without knowing the literary version of a transmission, methinks.
Revision and drafts - i think the only thing I disagree with is the implicit statement about what these authors have used for "revision" and drafts in the past. i've never had this problem with just looking at grammar. i think the difference is i don't ask for revision from a draft as a whole. i make them work in pieces and workshop them. i don't care about spelling/grammar, and i judge content. i feel like it's a big problem to do peer revision ALONE, and it's also an issue to work with entire drafts. too often they don't really listen when they think of it as a big cumbersome paper, and when looking at each other's they're just going to look at the spelling/grammar unless they're asked to look at specific questions.
but that's just me.
Again, total honesty - i'm a trained playwright, a trained poet. i learned by being shown how the whole looks and in the case of poetry how meter works. beyond that, boring.
and in terms of the complexity that weaver advocates for being a part of the daily lit lessons: not needed. at all. it's bogging things down by asking students to memorize names for what they know. MAYBE, if they become New Critics, they can learn it.
That all being said, what i do advocate and like about grammar is not something i advocate teaching instead of lit. i love the weaver model of it, just not that complex. the car analogy she listed is actually quite apt: i to this day don't know, care, or understand how a car works beyond combustion. i do know how to drive. a student can know the basics of writing without knowing the literary version of a transmission, methinks.
Revision and drafts - i think the only thing I disagree with is the implicit statement about what these authors have used for "revision" and drafts in the past. i've never had this problem with just looking at grammar. i think the difference is i don't ask for revision from a draft as a whole. i make them work in pieces and workshop them. i don't care about spelling/grammar, and i judge content. i feel like it's a big problem to do peer revision ALONE, and it's also an issue to work with entire drafts. too often they don't really listen when they think of it as a big cumbersome paper, and when looking at each other's they're just going to look at the spelling/grammar unless they're asked to look at specific questions.
but that's just me.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
week three reading post for 2/3
I'll be honest: while I definitely got some practical points out of the Dornan reading for this week, the Romano reading just felt monotonous. Yes yes I get it: you like multi-genre papers. All I saw from you here was a ton of small "zomg I love it so much!" Not worthless, not by a long shot. But at the moment..not so applicable.
HOWEVER, The Dornan stuff I've found immediate value in has been a very solid breakdown on different ways to approach different papers. This goes even further in the wiki readings this week. I have a huge background in argument and debate, as well as a love for the practical application of the five-paragraph essay. So I responded pretty well to it...
Kimberely Wesley seems to lack any sense of transitive use. At one point she states something like, "the form is restrictive because it doesn't allow possibly good ideas a student comes up with to come to fruition." There was a tired seed metaphor in there too. Anyway...sure, I can see that if she forces them to put large subjects into a small essay. I think of it like this - the five paragraph essay is just a generalized template. It's the "medium-sized" version of the form. A few years ago, I volunteered in a sixth-grade classroom as they were learning the structure of essay-writing. They started with the "perfect paragraph", which is also known as the paragraph sandwich graphic organizer. We spent a few weeks learning the form of the intro/body/conclusion in a single paragraph, and then we moved onto a full page. A five-paragraph essay using the same basic style. The idea wasn't that it was the end: it's not. they were told this, we know this. But it's a good start to a good form of a thesis, a few points you prove, and a conclusion. Wesley seems to really lack this understanding, and it's unfortunate that she's so willing to toss a good and perfectly valid format just because she doesn't understand that it's not an end to a process. Novick's very introduction is perfect in that regard: it's a severe lack of imagination, and possibly an incredibly reactionary view of "it's been used in the past, and therefore invalid." This causation fallacy is frustrating, to say the least.
Argument ties into this. I view all essays as inherently argumentative. In academic writing, it's largely rhetoric in nature. As unfortunate as I feel it is that people like Wesley abandon a GOOD introduction to logical thought in writing via the five-paragraph essay, I feel incredibly fortunate that someone like Randi Dickson is able to identify the over-arching concept. The form of the five-paragraph essay is good because it's manageable to kids who haven't written an essay before. Optimally, by the time they're in the 9th-10th grade, they're also doing larger essays, but the five-paragraph essay keeps the general form in motion for them. It's not just an exercise: it's an application of understanding the structure of the rhetorical argument, and it's a solid (and, again, MANAGEABLE for them) method to apply their instinctual verbal abilities into a written form. Right now, I'm beginning work on a unit for writing a research paper for the honor's college writing class. My method to getting there? Impress on them the importance of verifying source, the proper use of collected-research, and giving them a solid understanding of logical argumentative processes. This is the backbone to the writing we expect of them. As-is, I have several tentative moments where they will be writing five-paragraph essays. The idea is not for them to be purely summative assessments, but for them to be applications of learned concepts that they can bring into their larger (7-8 pages) research papers.
They need to understand how to avoid fallacy. They need to learn persuasive argument in a written form. While I'm all for something like Romano's multi-genre project, it's not something to replace a five-paragraph essay. Those who criticize the form, I've noticed so far, simply aren't understanding what it is. And by that measure: the teachers who are teaching the five-paragraph essay as a simple exercise with no further application are showing a similar lack of thought.
My links for the week:
how to win an argument
An overview of the academic essay
These are a little more wordy than my previously-linked sites. They're not really something I'd generally just throw on a student, although they're certainly something they can look at once they're on firmer ground. But they are something to keep in mind. The "essay" is a nebulous form held together by basic principles. Those basic principles are not just present in an academic setting.
HOWEVER, The Dornan stuff I've found immediate value in has been a very solid breakdown on different ways to approach different papers. This goes even further in the wiki readings this week. I have a huge background in argument and debate, as well as a love for the practical application of the five-paragraph essay. So I responded pretty well to it...
Kimberely Wesley seems to lack any sense of transitive use. At one point she states something like, "the form is restrictive because it doesn't allow possibly good ideas a student comes up with to come to fruition." There was a tired seed metaphor in there too. Anyway...sure, I can see that if she forces them to put large subjects into a small essay. I think of it like this - the five paragraph essay is just a generalized template. It's the "medium-sized" version of the form. A few years ago, I volunteered in a sixth-grade classroom as they were learning the structure of essay-writing. They started with the "perfect paragraph", which is also known as the paragraph sandwich graphic organizer. We spent a few weeks learning the form of the intro/body/conclusion in a single paragraph, and then we moved onto a full page. A five-paragraph essay using the same basic style. The idea wasn't that it was the end: it's not. they were told this, we know this. But it's a good start to a good form of a thesis, a few points you prove, and a conclusion. Wesley seems to really lack this understanding, and it's unfortunate that she's so willing to toss a good and perfectly valid format just because she doesn't understand that it's not an end to a process. Novick's very introduction is perfect in that regard: it's a severe lack of imagination, and possibly an incredibly reactionary view of "it's been used in the past, and therefore invalid." This causation fallacy is frustrating, to say the least.
Argument ties into this. I view all essays as inherently argumentative. In academic writing, it's largely rhetoric in nature. As unfortunate as I feel it is that people like Wesley abandon a GOOD introduction to logical thought in writing via the five-paragraph essay, I feel incredibly fortunate that someone like Randi Dickson is able to identify the over-arching concept. The form of the five-paragraph essay is good because it's manageable to kids who haven't written an essay before. Optimally, by the time they're in the 9th-10th grade, they're also doing larger essays, but the five-paragraph essay keeps the general form in motion for them. It's not just an exercise: it's an application of understanding the structure of the rhetorical argument, and it's a solid (and, again, MANAGEABLE for them) method to apply their instinctual verbal abilities into a written form. Right now, I'm beginning work on a unit for writing a research paper for the honor's college writing class. My method to getting there? Impress on them the importance of verifying source, the proper use of collected-research, and giving them a solid understanding of logical argumentative processes. This is the backbone to the writing we expect of them. As-is, I have several tentative moments where they will be writing five-paragraph essays. The idea is not for them to be purely summative assessments, but for them to be applications of learned concepts that they can bring into their larger (7-8 pages) research papers.
They need to understand how to avoid fallacy. They need to learn persuasive argument in a written form. While I'm all for something like Romano's multi-genre project, it's not something to replace a five-paragraph essay. Those who criticize the form, I've noticed so far, simply aren't understanding what it is. And by that measure: the teachers who are teaching the five-paragraph essay as a simple exercise with no further application are showing a similar lack of thought.
My links for the week:
how to win an argument
An overview of the academic essay
These are a little more wordy than my previously-linked sites. They're not really something I'd generally just throw on a student, although they're certainly something they can look at once they're on firmer ground. But they are something to keep in mind. The "essay" is a nebulous form held together by basic principles. Those basic principles are not just present in an academic setting.
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