Transcript Supporting Student Writing

Supporting Student Writing
Dr. Íde O’Sullivan, Patricia Herron, and Lawrence Cleary,
Research Officers with
the Shannon Consortium Regional Writing Centre, UL
Game Plan
• Friday:
– End-goal: The in-class assignment
– Organizing the pedagogical frame and tying writing
types and purposes to learning goals
• Saturday:
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Questioning writing assignments
An Academic Literacies approach: Whose values?
Formative feedback
In-class assignment (40 minutes)
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Knowledge and Experience
• How does your experience with the Writer’s
Retreat inform how you support student writers?
• How does your pedagogical experience and
knowledge inform how you support student
writing?
• How does your experience and knowledge of your
students, individually and as a group, inform how
you support student writing?
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Experience and Knowledge
• How does your experience and knowledge of the
writing process inform how you support student
writing?
• How does your experience and knowledge of
writing and learning strategies inform how you
support student writing?
• How does your experience of peer support inform
how you support student writers?
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Free-writing Exercise
• For the next five minutes write without stopping.
• Do not remove your pen from the paper. Write
without stopping. If you have nothing to say, say “I
have nothing to say” until you can think of
something to say.
• Write in sentences, but do not pay attention to the
perfection of the form.
• Do not edit or sensor your writing.
• Writing Prompt: Given what you already know,
what can you do to support student writing?
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Logical Order and Memory
• Memory is one of the five canons of Rhetoric
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Invention
Arrangement
Style
Memory
Delivery
“These categories have served both analytical and generative
purposes…they provide a template for the criticism of
discourse (and orations in particular), and they give a pattern
for rhetorical education” (“Canons of Rhetoric” Par. 2.).
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Memory, Logical Order and the
Arrangement of Ideas
• Logical arrangement of ideas
– Chronological/temporal
– Spatial/geographical
– Topical/categorical
• General to specific
• Global to local
• Increasing order of importance
• Methods of Development
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Analysis
Cause / Effect
Classification
Process
Description
Comparison /
Contrast
Narration
Examples
Definition
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Generating Ideas through Order
• What are some of the characteristics of
academic writing?
• Can you think of a person, thing or activity
with which it shares some or, even better,
many of these characteristics?
• Can you think of a metaphor or simile for
writing or for some aspect of writing?
– Academic writing is an X
– Academic writing is like an X
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Logical Order and Memory
• When we give students ways of organizing ideas
like this, we give them a point of departure for
analyses, generation, application and
regeneration. We give them the tools that they
need in order to assess how they will proceed.
– Writing Process: Prewriting, Drafting, Revision, Editing
and Proofreading.
– Assessing the Rhetorical Situation: Occasion, Topic,
Writer, Audience, Purpose.
– Assessing Writing/Learning Strategies: Cognitive,
Metacognitive, Affective, Social.
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The Writing Process
• Prewriting: Planning and Gathering
Information
• Drafting: Giving Thoughts Shape and
Order
• Revision: “Re-seeing” (Re-thinking)
the Means and the Ends—the Global
Issues
• Editing and Proofreading: the local
issues
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Assessing the Rhetorical Situation
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Occasion (Kairos)
Topic (Topoi)
Writer
Audience
Purpose
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Strategies for learning
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Cognitive
Metacognitive
Affective
Social
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Giving Students a Framework
• So one way to support student writing is by
organising the tools that they need so that when
an occasion for writing presents itself…
– they have a way of identifying and assessing their
procedural options
– they will have an organised way of assessing the context
into which they write
– They are able to choose arrangements that make for
easier conceptualisation and retention.
– They are able to respond to feedback by prioritising their
learning goals, scaffolding their learning so that progress
can be monitored.
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Other kinds of support
• Writing assignments that students understand; helping
students to understand what is written.
• Providing good resources: Web-sites, handbooks (both
discipline-specific and writing-specific), guidelines.
• Providing students with services: Teaching and Learning
Centres, Writing Centres, WAC and WID programmes,
peer-learning programmes and Writing Fellows
programmes.
• Providing formative feedback
• Providing more space for dialogue on writing and learning
strategies and on transferable skills develoment and
application
• Providing more—both high- and low-impact—in- and out-ofclass writing opportunities
• Involving students in the assessment process (peerresponse)
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Assessment
• Teacher collects, assesses in accordance to
either visible or invisible grading criteria and
returns work to student with an assigned grade
and with comments.
• Teacher collects a sampling of the work done and
gives individual oral feedback in conference.
• Teacher spot-checks and makes a few
suggestions on how student might better achieve
a particular learning outcome—no assessment at
this time.
• Students might be given criteria for evaluating
their own work and/or the work of their peers.
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Providing Formative Feedback
• The power of formative assessment lies in its
double-barreled approach, addressing both
cognitive and motivational factors. Good formative
assessment gives students information they need
to understand where they are in their learning (the
cognitive factor) and feedback develops students'
feelings of control over their learning (the
motivational factor).
• Timing?
• How much?
• What mode? Written, Oral, Demonstrative
(Modelling)?
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Approaches to Teaching Writing
• Ad-hoc approaches—many different teachers
giving instruction that is tailored to what are
viewed as connected to module or disciplinary
needs.
• Systematic approaches—the result of a writing
culture:
– Rhetoric and Composition (US)
– New Literacies (UK/Commonwealth)
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Academic Literacies
• Mary Lea and Brian Street (2006: 369)
conceptualise approaches to student writing as
falling into one of three overlapping models:
– A study skills model— “…sees writing and literacy as
primarily an individual and cognitive skill”;
– An academic socialisation model— “…is concerned with
students’ acculturation into disciplinary and subjectbased discourses and genres”; and
– An academic literacies model— “…is concerned with
meaning making, identity, power and authority, and
foregrounds the institutional nature of what counts as
knowledge in any particular academic context”.
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Learning to Write by Writing
• We learn by doing.
• What do we do? What kind of writing should we
promote?
• What do we learn? What kinds of learning does
writing promote?
• But how can I promote writing without committing
myself to massive amounts of reading and to
countless hours of feedback and assessment?
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Different kinds of writing…
• Genres
– Essays
• Essay in sociology
• Essay in comparative literature
– Reports
– Lab report (biology)
– Lab report (chemistry)
– Technical background report (engineers)
• Text-types or functions
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Writing
introductions
Generalising
Arguing
Describing
functions
Writing critically
Expressing
reasons
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Different kinds of learning
• Subject-specific knowledge (stuff)
• Discipline-specific knowledge (ways of thinking/ways of
processing stuff/ways of interacting)
• Visual, aural, kinaesthetic, inductive, inductive, intuitive
learning, etc.
• Cognitive, social, affective—basic literacies: reading, writing,
IT skills, interpersonal /instrumental communication and
negotiation skills
• High-order thinking skills—categorizing, classifying,
analysing, synthesising, measuring, evaluating, theorising.
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Skill Sets
• Literacy, numeracy, IT literacy
• Communication skills, teamwork, leadership skills
• High order cognitive skills
• Bloom’s taxonomy: knowledge, understanding,
application, analysis, synthesis and evaluate
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Exercise: Compare and Contrast
• Work in small groups to extract salient
information from a table of data in order to
make a recommendation.
• What skills were tested in the completion of this
exercise?
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Creating qualitative measuring criteria
Logically organising information
Categorizing and classifying information
Negotiating and compromising
Logical reasoning
Basing logically reasoned conclusions on retrievable,
defendable supporting evidence
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Learning to Write; Writing to Learn
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Learning,
Writing,
Writing to Learn,
Writing to Learn How to Write in the
Discipline
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Writing to prompts (Murray, 2005;
2006)
• What writing have you done with your students
in/outside of class?
• What writing would you like to do with your students
in/outside of class?
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Keep writing non-stop for 5 minutes.
Write in sentences.
Do not edit or censor your writing.
Discuss what you have written in pairs.
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Reflection and discussion 1
• What was the impact of the previous
exercise?
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Lesson plan 1
• Think about a recent lesson you delivered
where you had difficulty engaging the
students’ interest. Would they have benefited
from engaging in this type of activity from the
beginning of the class?
• Design a writing prompt that engages them in
the topic of the lesson you are about to
commence.
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Reflection and discussion 2
• Why integrate writing into my classroom?
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Writing activity 2
Summarise in writing the main points of the previous
discussion.
• Did this writing exercise help focus/organise the main
points of the discussion for you?
• Did the writing exercise help clarify the main
points/outcomes of the discussion?
• How do you think this could be applied in your
classroom?
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Lesson plan 2
• Think about a recent lesson you delivered
where students may have benefited from
summarising in writing the main points of a
discussion/reading in order to focus that
discussion.
• Design a similar “summarising” exercise and
consider how you might infuse it into this
lesson plan.
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Why integrate writing into the
classroom
• Nurturing good writing skills enhances students’
ability to think in complex and coherent ways (Bean,
2001).
• Writing promotes learning and active problemsolving abilities.
• Encouraging students to practice the conventions of
their academic discipline will familiarise them with
these same conventions.
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Writing is unique
• “The process of learning to write is largely a process
of learning to think more clearly” (Arapoff, 1967:334).
• “Writing serves learning uniquely because writing as
process-and-product possesses a cluster of
attributes that correspond uniquely to certain
powerful learning strategies” (Emig, 1977:122).
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Why integrate writing into the
classroom
• Writing is important in all disciplines.
• Non-systematic approach to writing support and
development is evident in the audit and analysis.
• It is often presumed that students will be acculturated
or somehow induced into academic writing simply by
being immersed in the culture, in this instance the
academy (Lea and Street, 1998:158).
• It is the responsibility of faculty in all disciplines to
cultivate students’ writing (Mitchell and Evison,
2006:72).
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Reflection and discussion 3
• Reflection
What other kinds of writing can I include in
my classroom?
How could I include these activities in my
classroom?
• Discussion and writing activity
Discuss and make a list of the types of
activates you could engage in.
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Writing-to-learn activities (WAC
Clearinghouse)
• Keeping reading, project,
and / or writing journals and
/ or learning logs
• Writing summaries
• Annotating a text
• Writing responses to texts,
lecture points or problem
statements
• Synthesising information
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• Starting discussions
• Focusing a discussion
• Analysing a process, an
event or an argument
• Solving problems, preferably
real ones
• Writing to explain the
implications of a case
• Writing letters
• Writing definitions
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Writing-to-learn activities
• Writing exercise
Define a writing-to-learn activity.
• Writing-to-learn activities are short,
impromptu, informal writing tasks which focus
students on the ideas being presented in
class (WAC Clearinghouse, 2008).
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Writing activity 3
• Think about a difficult concept in your field/discipline,
especially one that you know but have difficulty
explaining to others. Explain this concept in writing to
a group of first-year students.
• What does this do for your understanding of this
concept?
• Now think about how you might test if your students
have understood this concept?
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Exercise: Problem-solving
• After you introduce a new concept in your course,
ask students to write out a theoretical or practical
problem that the concept might help to solve.
• Students can exchange these problems and write
out solutions, thus ensuring that they understand
the concept clearly and fully.
(WAC Clearinghouse, 2008)
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Reflection and discussion 4
• What are the benefits of engaging students in
writing-to-learn activities?
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Benefits of engaging in writing-tolearn activities
• Focuses the mind on ideas/key concepts being
discussed in class – even before they are addressed –
thus engaging the students’ minds.
• Concentrates the students’ attention on content and
discipline-specific writing simultaneously
• Helps them to clarify their thoughts, to learn and to
ultimately develop their critical thinking.
• Ensures that they are engaging regularly in writing,
thus keeping their writing skills sharp.
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Why integrate writing into the
classroom
• In many cases, the only writing assigned to students is
for assessment.
• Consequently, writing becomes associated with stress
and anxiety.
• Informal writing activities and activities which
encourage students to write regularly help alleviate
some of the anxiety associated with writing.
• Students realise that writing can actually be a fun
experience.
• Students develop confidence and fluency in their
writing.
• It helps them make the transition to formal academic
writing with greater ease.
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Writing activity 4
• Write a Limerick commencing with the following
line:
There are students that never can learn
…………
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Reflection and discussion 5
• Do you have any objections to using writing-tolearn activities in your classroom?
• Have you any worries or concerns about
integrating writing-to-learn activities into your
curriculum?
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Worries and fears
• Bean (2001:9-11) recognises the following worries
amongst staff:
Integrating writing and critical thinking into their
courses
– will take time away from content;
– will not be suitable for certain disciplines;
– will lead to an excess burden of marking or
grading;
– will confront them with their lack of writing
expertise.
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Writing activity 5
• Annotation
• Identify the key ideas in this reading (Carter
et al., 2007:279).
• Explain in writing the subtle differences
between the concepts of writing to learn and
learning to write.
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Lesson planning
• Design a writing-to-learn activity with a
specific learning outcome in mind that could
be easily integrated into a class you are
planning for the coming academic year.
• Present this activity to the group.
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Writing-to-learn activities (WAC
Clearinghouse)
• Keeping reading, project,
and / or writing journals and
/ or learning logs
• Writing summaries
• Annotating a text
• Writing responses to texts,
lecture points or problem
statements
• Synthesising information
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• Starting discussions
• Focusing a discussion
• Analysing a process, an
event or an argument
• Solving problems,
preferably real ones
• Writing to explain the
implications of a case
• Writing letters
• Writing definitions
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Conclusions
• Could you see yourself incorporating Writing to
Learn into your curriculum?
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Works Cited
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“An Introduction to Writing Across the Curriculum.” The WAC
Clearinghouse, 1997-2008 University of Colorado. 29 April 2008
<http://wac.colostate.edu/intro/index.cfm>.
Arapoff, N. (1967) “Writing: A Thinking Process”, TESOL Quarterly 1.2
(1967): 33-39.
Bean, John C. Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing,
Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom. San
Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2001.
Berlin, James A. “Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical
Theories.” College English 44.8 (1982): 765-77.
Burton, Gideon O. “Cannons of Rhetoric.” Silva Rhetoricæ. 26 Feb.
2007. Brigham Young University. 18 Nov. 2008
<http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm>.
Brookhart, Susan M. “Feedback that Fits.” Educational Leadership,
December 2007/January 2008 Association for Supervision and
Curriculum Development. 16 Nov. 2008
<http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/dec07/vol6
5/num04/Feedback_That_Fits.aspx>.
Carter, Michael, Miriam Ferzli and Eric N. Wiebe. “Writing to Learn by
Learning to Write in the Disciplines.” Journal of Business and
Technical Communication 21.3 (2007): 278-302.
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Works Cited
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Ebest, Sally Barr, Gerald J. Alred, Charles T. Brusaw, and Walter E.
Oliu, eds. Writing from A to Z: The Easy-to-Use Reference
Handbook, 5th ed. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2005.
Elbow, Peter. Writing Without Teachers, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford UP,
1998.
Emig, J. (1977) ‘Writing as a Mode of Learning’, College
Composition and Communication, 28.2 (1977):122-128.
Lea, Mary R. and Brian V. Street. “The ‘Academic Literacies’ Model:
Theory and Applications.” Theory into Practice 45.4 (2006): 36877.
Mitchell, Sally and Alan Evison. “Exploiting the Potential of Writing for
Educational Change at Queen Mary, University of London.”
Teaching Academic Writing in UK Higher Education: Theories,
Practices and Models. Ed. Lisa Ganobcsik-Williams. Houndmills,
Basingstoke:Palgrave/Macmillan, 2006.
Murray, Rowena. How to Write a Thesis, 2nd ed. Maidenhead,
Berkshire: Open UP, 2006.
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