Wow! A lot can happen in a week! While I’ve caught up on most of the blogs from last week (comments forthcoming in the next few days…) and completed the readings for this week, I’m still trying to process how to visualize all this material. (Being a visual learner is not always convenient!) I’m trying to think outside the box, but I still struggle with the thought that these pieces (pedagogies) need to somehow fit neatly into some sort of visual presentation. Is it linear, or more of a box? Fourth grade, after all, is all about the graphic organizer! One thing I know for sure is the more I read, the more strongly I feel about the importance of the process pedagogy and what it has to offer students.
I am rapidly becoming a fan of Peter Elbow and his teachings, and I particularly appreciated his willingness to defend his position in his review of Harris’ Expressive Discourse while allowing for the possibility that some of her ideas make sense. I’m drawn to his emphasis on voice, because I feel that so often we, as teachers, squelch students’ voices, even though it may be unintentional. Just working our way through the required curriculum is enough to deaden student motivation and kill creativity. But reading pieces that highlight the importance of voice, such as Elbow’s commentary that voice empowers individuals to act in the world (Tate 23), helps me to regain my momentum to move forward with whatever it takes to help students find theirs.
From an evaluation standpoint, the Pennsylvania rubric used to score students’ writing allows four possible points for style, which includes voice, out of twenty possible points on the entire rubric. So theoretically, a student could have no “style” whatsoever, and still receive an 80% if he scores four points in all other categories, including focus, content, organization, and conventions. But without style (voice), would the piece be worth reading? This doesn’t seem to say much for the current-traditional pedagogy from which we’ve slowly been shifting for the past thirty years. But this all boils down to the writer’s purpose and audience, which seems to be bone of contention among the scholars we’ve been reading. I guess if there were only one correct answer, a “one size fits all” for teaching writing, we wouldn’t need to keep researching. Keeping an open mind seems to be the key…
Now that I’ve put my thoughts into words, I’m envisioning more of a tree than a line or a box. Thoughts?
Interestingly (or really, not so much for the reader), it appears the state exams are looking for a regurgitated "style" of writing. Essentially, it appears to be a game of follow the leader, the leader being the rubric. Sadly, our students are not expressing their creativity and true abilities.
ReplyDeleteIf we are looking at your two visual options, I think a tree is more appropriate. Each branch could offer another researched idea of "what works." From this tree, the teacher and student could pick the appropriate components for a writing assignment? Just an idea!
I absolutely vote for the tree, and love the idea proffered above by teachergirl. I may just have to use that visual!
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of graphic organizers.... My third grade son is struggling with writing. He loves to read, but despises writing. We have been journaling together for a few weeks now, and he is definitely becoming more fluent, composing an entire page during dinner prep, as opposed to a few sentences or eeeeeeking out a paragraph.
So, long story short, his ever so helpful (really) teacher sends home a packet of graphic organizers today, and my son doesn't want to journal, but asks if he can "just fill-in" one of the organizers his teacher gave him. We argued, and I caved - UNTIL I saw that he was writing just a disjointed sentence or two in each box on the organizer. No sentence level details, no transitions, etc. NOW, we have an agreement: journal THEN fill -in the organizer. I'm hoping this will assist him with organizing his writing without hampering his increasing fluency.
We talked last week about the ideal way to teach writing to our kids: fluency > clarity > correctness. This is generally not the case, and may be something worth considering trying to change in our homes, classrooms and schools.
"But without style (voice), would the piece be worth reading?" -- This is a great point! None of the rubrics I have ever used or created valued voice as much as I am beginning to understand it needs to be valued in order to create good writing.
ReplyDeleteI know this is a bit off topic, but responding to the graphic organizer story - - I fear some grand Faustian bargain at work with the thrill over graphic organizers. I certainly understand agree that some people are visual learners. And the graphic organizers could be a helpful pre-write tool, or simply a way to provide order when taking a sea of notes for a history or science unit. But what I have seen over the last few years - and I'm talking about high school students here, so an interesting parallel with the 3rd grader - is the desire to rush through and just throw anything into the "boxes" - incomplete sentences, disjointed thoughts and all - with little thought/care given to quality. And the goal: to just "get it done." The result is the poorly completed organizer will not in the long run provide the assistance we originally hoped for. So what's the solution here?
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