Tag: college

Writing Group Lesson Plans for College Composition Class

The writers in my classes regularly get into groups and read their writing to one another.  If left to their own devices about what to do in these groups, the students are usually either very quiet or they point out what they see as errors.  In the spirit of trying generate conversation, we read an except from Peter Elbow’s Writing Without Teachers.  During the class before the small group workshops, we practiced the methods outlined by Elbow as a whole class.  There were two brave students who agreed to read their work aloud to the class.  We talked about the text after the reading using the directions below.

Writing Groups in Action

Directions:

  1. The entire essay gets read out loud by the writer or someone the writer chooses.
  2. Everyone should “listen” with a pen and, as Elbow says, “point” to words and phrases that get into your skull.  Mark these spots as you read or listen.

Complete 3-7 silently in your daybook and then share.

  1. When the piece is completed, everyone takes time to silently write ½ page in their daybook that describes the “movie of their mind” that occurred as they listened to the piece.
  2. Summarize the main points of the article by writing a sentence in your daybook.
  3. Choose a word from the text that summarizes it.
  4. Choose a word NOT in the text that summarizes it.
  5. Write a metaphor for the piece.  If it the essay were (an article of clothing, weather, terrain, an instrument, or anything else you can thing of) what would it be? In other words, I might say, “Jerry’s piece was a tornado.”

As you share 3-7 with your group, hopefully conversation will arise.

  • You don’t need to write it in your daybook, but how did the writer do when it came to a title, signal phrases, parenthetical citations, and a works cited page?  Can you help each other with any of these things?

After all the pieces have been read and discussed

  • Write at least ½ page in your daybook answering the following.  Explain how the group went today.  What suggestion do you have for improving the group’s interaction?  What went well?  What needs work?  What does the work have you thinking about?  What do you think needs to happen next with your essay?
This Semester's Writers Seem Especially Dedicated to the Process

My Reflections

As expected, the groups were slow to start but the students began to relax and talk more as the class went on.  I think I had the students writing too much in their daybooks.  The writing took awhile and I think it killed the conversation.  I think an adjustment would be to have the students write everything that is above except for the movie of the mind.  Someone could just speak that and students could offer their own thoughts in comparison to the one movie of the mind that is shared.

The students bring four copies of the paper to class.  One of those goes to me.  I think next time I’ll have the students write on the drafts instead of in their own daybooks.

Students are often late the day a paper is due.  I had students form groups of four and as soon as they had four, they began the workshop.  They were free to leave after they finished.  Some groups used the full eighty minutes and some were done in an hour.

College Writers on the Craft of Writing (podcast link at bottom)

Each semester the past couple of years the First Year Writing Program at St. John’s University holds a conference called “Coming to Writing.”  My colleague Tara Roeder was one of the faculty members who came up with the name and it comes from Hélène Cixous, a writer Tara describes as her favorite, fabulous, French feminist.  Here’s a quote that has previously been used on the conference program.

“I sensed that there was a beyond, to which I did not have access, an unlimited place […] A desire was seeking its home. I was that desire. I was the question. The question with this strange destiny: to seek, to pursue the answers that will appease it…
—Hélène Cixous in “Coming to Writing”

I moderated a panel discussion of students I worked with during the semester, recorded the session, and published the session as a podcast with their permission.  I can certainly spot ways in which many of them were, as Cixous describes, in pursuit of answers.  What follows here is the title of our panel and a description of the work the students discussed.

Writers on the Craft of Writing

Like it or not, these students had to be writers this semester.  They wrote two blog posts a week and created a documentary film as a culminating writing project.  Here’s a list of the students who presented and what it was that most struck me about their work:

  • Brianne revolutionized the way many of us thought about how a dean might work with students in his or her respective college.  She talked with deans from many of our colleges at St. John’s and then surprised most of us when her exhaustive interviews of students revealed that many students communicate with their deans regularly.
  • Tahyanna is a funny and smart writer who I think ought to write a memoir something along the lines of Confessions of a Germaphobe.  (I don’t think she’s going to do it)  During the “Coming to Writing Conference,” Tahyanna talked about her writing process for the final paper, an assignment I call “A Writer on Writing.”  I make my students (no sense in saying I ask them to do it)  something we call an “annotation.”  For annotations, students  print out articles and take notes on them.  Tahynna explained how she put all her annotations out in front of her and looked at her written comments on the articles as a way of organizing how she was going to write the paper.
  • Miriam was the only student I had who referenced the only poem we looked at all semester as a way of thinking about images.  Although Miriam wrote about several topics, I remember her for writing about the environment.  In one of her pieces she wrote about a sort of paradoxical beauty, that oil in a puddle of water can be beautiful:  “Some puddles are murky, quiet as to how deep they really are.  Others are crystal clear, reflecting the fiery fall foliage.  Others seem to have life.  An intermingling of swirling colors…these puddles have harnessed their own rainbows.”
  • Michael came up with a theme for his blog:  conflict.  What impressed me most about his work (aside from his sometimes encyclopedic knowledge of the Middle East) was the savvy and empathy he showed entering into controversial topics.  Rather than lighting up our classroom with angry argument, Michael fostered ideas of tolerance and conversation meant to help us all understand many points of view.
  • Diana says she comes from family that immigrated from the Soviet Union to Israel where she was born, and that she considers herself an American.  These identities informed her writing in which she used the various generations of her family to underpin the structure of her final portfolio.  She also alludes to a terrible nickname given to her by a former teacher:  ESL, she was called, because her teacher felt she spoke using poor grammar.  Way to go dude.
  • Kevin started off not sure if he wanted to write about working on cars or the fact that he switched his concentration of study to nursing.  He took a practical approach to the work of the class and interviewed coworkers at the hospital, gathered information about graduate schools in nursing, and read numerous scholarly articles in his field.  If I was ever in need of someone to look after my health, I’d trust Kevin completely.
research, college, writing, high school, college prep, process
Tahyna and Miriam Intellectually Browse in the Library

Thanks to my colleague April Julier for organizing this semester’s conference.  The audio podcast of our panel discussion is available below.  If you take the time to listen, I wonder how you envision the college composition course?  Perhaps you are someone who says you are getting students ready to take it?  Maybe you’re headed for school yourself or had a very different experience when you were a student?  And of course there are other teachers of writing who have very different takes on what this class can be.  Love to hear from you regarding your thoughts on the sort of writing you’ve experienced connected to the first year writing course.

You can connect to the podcast here or search for “digital book club” on iTunes.  Thanks for checking this out.

Write With Me Wednesdays: Create Your Writing Territories

   (SEE VIDEO VERSION BELOW)

(Click Here If You Prefer the Podcast)

Writing lesson teaching ideas research

Directions:  Respond to the following prompts to create your writing territories.  Perhaps you want to copy and paste these prompts into your blog and post your responses.  If you use this activity for your writing, I invite you to leave your blog address via a comment to this post.

  1. Make a list of topics you know a lot about, or if that puts too much pressure on you, make a list of things you know something about.
  2. List the main parts and/or roles in your life.  For example, I’m a professor, a novelist, a husband, a father, a runner, and much more.
  3. Make a list of places you know well.
  4. What are you working on right now?  What projects/work do you have going that might make for good writing topics?
  5. Make a list of topics that you wish you knew more about, or list some things you’d like to be trained in.  You could go out and learn (maybe interview others) and bring the news of your learning back to your audience.
  6. Do a sample schedule of your life.  Try out a weekday, a weekend, summertime, or a holiday.  At 8:00 a.m. you….  And then you…  The idea is that there are topics buried everywhere in each minute of your life.  You just need to be on the lookout for them.
  7. List some political/social issues relevant to your life.

So You Created the Territories, Now What?

  1. Look over the words and phrases you’ve listed and use them to come up with projects for writing.  You might see something that reminds you of a story or you might find a word or phrase that triggers an idea for what you can tell your readers about.  If it’s something you want to know (Why do I keep ending up in these relationships or how do I enter a film in a festival?) then you can take your readers on a journey with you.
  2. Do you want to post your writing territories?  You could explain that you are going to write along with us and that you are posting your writing territories as a blog post.  You could also probably post them as a comment to this post.
  3. After completing the territories, I’d love it if you would post a reflection as comment here about how the activity went for you.
  4. You might want to just jump right to the writing. I suggest that you tell us a story or tell us about one of the words or phrases that you have listed while responding to the prompts.
  5. If you’ve already got a project underway, (as I do) then post an excerpt from that work on your blog and show how it comes out of your territories.  I plan to post something that comes from my writing territories next Monday, November 21, 2011.
Access the handout here.

Library Book Browsing Activity

Find the Book You Were Looking For

(or the one you didn’t know you were looking for)

Torg, Torgerson, St. John's University, Reading, Research, Writing, books, teaching
Yep, Young People Still Look at Books

The Activity:  (take notes in your daybook)

  1. Walk over to the library with someone you don’t know very well, and chat with them about their intellectual interests.  What did they find during the last library trip?  What do they think they might read and write about this semester?  Note your partner’s name and write down some of what they say to you.
  2. As we get in the hallways of the library, check out the signs on the wall that inform you what numbers (PN 1345  etc) are on what floor.  You can also check with me, or the staff of the library for help.
  3. You were to come to class with three call numbers for books in the Queens library that might interest you.  Try to find these books.
  4. As you find a book, be sure to check around the same shelf and the shelves close to your book to see if there is anything there that interests you.  This could be a section of the library that you return to again and again.  Write down the author and title of a book that is close to the book that you meant to find.  You’re going to spend the class reading and you’ll check out a book or two at the end of our time.  Be thinking about what books you might want to take with you.

Take Notes in Your Daybook that look something like this:

Book 1 Title and Author:__________________________________________________________________________

Book Close to Book 1 Title and Author:____________________________________________________________

  1. When you’re done, you should have written down the names of at least six books: the three books you were looking for and the book that looked interesting that was near the book you were looking for.
  2. Take books with you that you might want to read around in.  You don’t need to re-shelve these.  From what I understand, the library wants to get a sense of what books you are looking at.  There are carts placed around the library where you put the books when you are done looking at them.
  3. Sit down somewhere in the library and read around in the books and see what you find interesting.
What Floor Are the Writing Books On?

Homework

  1. For this week or next week, do a Reading For Writing (RFW) entry on a book that you check out from the library.  See the syllabus for a full description, but this means you’ll choose golden lines from the article.  Type up those lines in bold, and then free write after the quote sharing whatever the writing gets you thinking about.
  2. Somewhere in the piece, tell us about whom you visited with.
  3. Be sure to use the “son of citation” website (or something like it) to give the full MLA works cited entry at the bottom of your post.
  4. Copy and paste that works cited entry into your “Reading Bibliography” tab on your blog.
  5. Print out a copy of the entry for reading groups next Wednesday and bring your book or books to class next time.

Want the handout?  See the handout tab at TheTorg.Com