Final Sample of Mentee's Written Work

This sample of my mentee's writing consists of a satirical cover letter that, based on the 5+1 writing traits rubric that I developed around a series of six levels, scored a "5" in ideas, a "5" in organization, a "5" in voice, a "5" in word choice, a "5" in sentence fluency, and a "5+" in conventions.

Reflections On Writing In My Subject Area

Though this professional learning blog has explored a variety of writing tasks, from poetry to narrative, that seek to allow students to develop their literacy skills as they familiarize themselves with subject-area content, I believe that my future practice will be biased towards the incorporation of more traditional writing assignments in the area of physics. In my view, it will prove difficult to convince students in the academic stream at the senior level, who are preparing to enter university and will likely be skeptical of the value more esoteric or non-traditional tasks, that poetry or narrative assignments are worthwhile. That said, if I find myself teaching science at the intermediate level, I believe that I will be able to explore the full range of writing tasks that are available to teachers who seek to foster literacy across the curriculum and enhance student learning through the use of such activities.

Instruction in my teachable subject of physics has stressed the value of lab quizzes and worksheets over formal lab reports at the senior level, given that the former two are completed in-class rather than at home or during one or more full class periods, but my exposure to a variety of different writing tasks in the Writing Across the Curriculum course has convinced me to employ all of the above-mentioned assessment options. While there are drawbacks to the traditional lab report, including production and marking time, the opportunity to foster student literacy through written introductions to such reports is a compelling justification for the inclusion of this assessment strategy in a senior-level physics course. In the case of lab activities that are to be assessed through formal reports, I will provide students with rubrics that include criteria based on compositional elements including adherence to the conventions of the English Language, structure, and clarity in addition to the usual assessment categories associated with the collection, manipulation, and reporting of data. The former will allow me to discuss writing skills and the important components of effective written work with students prior to, during, and after the submission of the written reports. I hope that this process will encourage students to internalize the skills and approaches that we discuss and to transfer them into other subject areas.

I see the value in developing writing tasks that encourage students to make connections between disciplines, guiding them to appreciate the interconnectedness of knowledge across the curriculum. Our responsibility as teachers is not simply to a particular subject, but to students and their evolution as whole learners and complete individuals. By establishing the natural links between multiple learning processes and subjects, I hope to equip and train students with the tools, skills, and views that enable them to approach real world issues from a variety of perspectives. Hopefully, given an education that recognizes the underlying links between fields, students will be able to examine complex and multifaceted problems in light of their multitude of contributing factors.

That said, in order for writing assignments to have advantageous long-term effects on student development, such activities must also have evident short-term benefits that encourage students to accept non-traditional learning processes as worthwhile and to continue to invest themselves. The writing tasks that I develop and implement should ideally allow students who are verbal-linguistic learners, rather than mathematical-logical, to appreciate subject area content in personally meaningful ways. By providing students with multiple modes to demonstrate their acquisition of knowledge while targeting and accommodating a variety of learning profiles through the conjunction of traditional and non-traditional tasks, I hope that I can encourage students to accept and to participate in the slightly unusual learning environment that I will seek to create.

Effective Transitional Statements

The following outline was developed to guide my mentee to improve the structure of his essays while transitioning more effectively between paragraphs and maintaining paragraph unity. Though the outline does not by any means reflect all of the components of an essay, it addresses the student's need to develop effective transitional topic sentences and a conclusion. This sheet could be returned to me prior to the composition of an essay so that the student can receive constructive feedback on transitional statements in order to improve his writing process.  

Outline

Topic:

Thesis statement (in the form of a statement, rather than a question):

Subject of paragraph two:

Transitional topic sentence:

Subject of paragraph two:

Transitional topic sentence:

Subject of paragraph three:

Transitional topic sentence:

Subject of paragraph four:

Transitional topic sentence:

Subject of paragraph five:

Transitional topic sentence:

Concluding statement:

Concluding paragraph (rather than merely restating the thesis or summarizing the essay, the conclusion elaborates on your argument, (a) connecting it to a broader question or larger subject that might itself be worthy of development into another essay, (b) considering the implications of the thesis and the subjects that the essay has addressed (What does the subject of this essay mean to a reader?), or (c) addressing a point that the essay may have left unresolved by suggesting that it might be of value to explore said point in greater detail in order to conduct a complete analysis of the topic.

Suggestions

• Answer the question "So What?"
  

  Show your readers why this paper was important. Show them that your paper was meaningful and useful.

• Synthesize, don't summarize
  
  • Don't simply repeat things that were in your paper. They have read it. Show them how the points you made and the support and examples you used were not random, but fit together.
    

• Redirect your readers
  
  • Give your reader something to think about, perhaps a way to use your paper in the "real" world. If your introduction went from general to specific, make your conclusion go from specific to general. Think globally.
    

• Create a new meaning
  
  • You don't have to give new information to create a new meaning. By demonstrating how your ideas work together, you can create a new picture. Often the sum of the paper is worth more than its parts.

Mentee Checklist

The following one page checklist has been adapted from an online resource to target the specific areas in which my student writer struggles. The list could adapted to suit students at a variety of grade levels, and the list of items could be expanded or contracted in order to address the needs of a particular class or student.  

1. Introduction:

❒ The thesis statement clear.

❒ The thesis statement states the specific argument that the essay will advance/the specific subject that the essay will explore.

❒ The introduction frames the thesis, introducing the subject to be explored, and does not provide too little, or too much, information.

❒ The introduction elaborates on the way in which the essay will address its topic or develop its argument.

2. Body:

❒ The essay develops in a logical manner; the subject of one paragraph leads naturally into the subject of the next and all paragraphs address the thesis.

❒ The argument develops in an effective manner; subjects are organized so as to guide a reader to accept the argument or to easily understand the issue explored in the essay.

❒ Each paragraph has a transitional topic sentence that guides the reader through the essay from one paragraph to the next.

❒ Each paragraph is unified, addressing only one topic.

❒ Quotations are integrated properly.

❒ Quotations are integrated effectively and judiciously.

3. Conclusion:

❒ The conclusion does not simply restate the thesis; synthesis of ideas is evident.

❒ The conclusion does not introduce a new supporting argument.

4. Writing Style

❒ Homonyms (its vs. it's; course vs. coarse) are employed correctly.

❒ There is no pronoun confusion (i.e. when used, pronouns such as he, she, it, and they clearly refer back to a specific noun).

❒ The essay uses the active voice.

❒ Whenever appropriate, the essay is in the present tense.

❒ The essay is free from cliches and colloquialisms. Academic/formal language is used throughout.

❒ There are no contractions.

❒ The essay employs all words and content-area specific terms correctly.

❒ There is no repetition of sentence construction

❒ There are few instances of repeated word use in a compressed area of the essay.

❒ Repetitious ideas/restatements of the same idea have been eliminated.

Student Resources

Having conducted further reviews of my mentee's work, I located the several online resources that will help me to address the evident gaps in his pre-writing, writing, and post-writing processes.   

Conclusions:

This resource provides a concise overview of the purpose and principal components of a properly-constructed conclusion.

http://www.canberra.edu.au/studyskills/writing/conclusions

The following resource elaborates on the relatively simplistic treatment of conclusions provided above; both have merits, though the former resource may have more value for a student at the level with which we are concerned.

http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/conclusions/

The following resources are template checklists for teacher evaluation and student self-evaluation.

http://tcdsbstaff.ednet.ns.ca/hwalsh/LAW%2012/Concise%20Essay.Writing.Checklist.pdf

http://www.gallaudet.edu/tip/english_center/writing/essay_check_list.html

http://www.roanestate.edu/owl/essayrev.html

Sample of Mentee's Written Work with Mentor Comments

I have assessed this sample of my mentee's written work and obtained his permission to display it in this blog after inserting constructive feedback in an effort to address what I view as the major impediments to his effective communication of ideas. This piece could be used as an exemplar. In a guided activity, students could identify the text's strengths, weaknesses, and errors and then correct them in order to better understand the criteria by which their work is to be judged and to gain experience in the critical post-writing review process.
 

Mentoring Student Writer: Resource List

After assessing several samples of my mentee's written work, I came to the conclusion that weaknesses in his pre-writing process hindered his ability to communicate effectively. In general, I found that:

(1) The student's work was marred by errors related to grammar and use of homonyms (its vs. it's; there vs. their)

(2) Topic sentences were usually weak or unrelated to the subject of their associated paragraphs. Consequently, these paragraphs often demonstrated a lack of unity.

(3) Transitional sentences were often absent or did not lead logically into the subjects addressed in the following paragraph.

and

(4) The student's work included multiple colloquialisms and contractions that detracted from the tone that he set out to establish; radical variations in tone were common due to shifts between formal and informal discourse.

I compiled this list of resources in an effort to address the issues that I identified.

(1)

It's vs. Its and There vs. Their

http://its-not-its.info/
http://www.wikihow.com/Sample/There-Their-and-They're


(2)
Concept map to address the pre-writing process and as the student expressed some signs that he might be a primarily visual learner. potential

http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/printouts/30699_concept_map.pdf

Articles on the appropriate use of contractions in a variety of written forms:

Business writing
http://www.instructionalsolutions.com/blog/bid/82807/Contractions-in-Business-Writing

http://www.businesswritingblog.com/business_writing/2006/04/dont_use_contra.html

In general written work
http://www.plainlanguage.gov/howto/guidelines/bigdoc/writeContract.cfm


(2&3)

Discussions on paragraph length and unity:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/606/02/
http://www.dailywritingtips.com/how-long-should-a-paragraph-be/
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/exercises/grammar/grammar_tutorial/page_39.htm

(4)

Elimination of colloquialisms/formal vs. informal discourse:
http://vandenbroek.weebly.com/uploads/2/4/3/5/24359759/formalinformal.pdf
http://www.wikihow.com/Avoid-Colloquial-%28Informal%29-Writing

Work and Power Lab

This lab for a grade 11 physics course encourages students to express their interpretations of a situation involving the physical principles of work and power in both written and numerical formats. This lad could easily be expanded through the inclusion of a writing activity that would ask students to consider the scenario presented in the worksheet's final series of problems and to compose a narrative of the "race" between the two individuals in question that incorporates appropriate terminology and demonstrates student understanding of relevant physical processes.

Shakespeare Set Free

While my experience in assessing resources and material that teachers can incorporate into their lessons is limited, I have been consistently impressed by the quality and practicality of the Shakespeare Set Free series (http://www.folger.edu/template.cfm?cid=2768).

These texts offer teachers complete, easily-modified lesson and unit plans for teaching, among other Shakespeare plays: Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, and Hamlet. Detailed resources including activities, worksheets, and quizzes, can supply teachers with ideas that they can then incorporate into personalized lesson plans, saving teachers a tremendous amount of preparation time which can then be reinvested in assessment or rehearsal of content-delivery.

Sample Student Work: Grade 11 Academic English

The following literary essay on Crucifixion imagery in The Old Man and The Sea could be used as an exemplar in a Grade 11 Academic English course to demonstrate level 2+ work.


 Through a process of guided reflection and analysis, students should be able to identify the following elements of the essay that prevent it from reaching level 3 or level 4 status:

- Grammatical errors (By Santiago settling against the planks of the bow, Hemingway makes a comparison to Christ...)
- Style is "choppy" and reflects uncertainty through overuse of commas.
- Weak introduction involving a statement that seems tenuously connected to the thesis: "Also, an underlying Christian theme to the novella is maintained by other religious allusions, which keep the image of the crucifixion prominent within the reader’s mind."
- Awkward or colloquial phrases, especially in transitions ("One of the first obvious religious allusions...";"Another way...".

- Misused words: "utilizes" instead of use.

- Integration and explanation of quotations is at times awkward: Santiago goes on to say, “…he [the left hand] has only cramped once. If he cramps again let the line cut him off.” This passage alludes to Mark 9:43: “And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off”.

- Use of the passive voice creates some muddled sentences.


Positive elements of the essay include:
- Strong vocabulary and generally effective word choice.
- Logical organization within the "Five Paragraph Essay" format.
- Highly effective use of a second primary source (The Bible).
- Easily identifiable thesis: "The crucifixion imagery is used to create empathy for the ‘old man’, Santiago, and his suffering."

A Problem in Dynamics

James Clerk Maxwell "A Problem in Dynamics" reflects some of the problems that Peterson identifies with student poetry in the disciplines of physics, chemistry, and biology; Maxwell oscillates between abandoning rhyme for meaning – a decision that Peterson advocates – and sacrificing the clarity of images and ideas in order to maintain his rhyme scheme.

As Peterson observes, the poetics of Patrick Lane and Michael Ondaatje involves a reduction and a progressive erosion of verse through successive revisions. That which remains after this process is little more than a skeletal essence, creating a Giacometti statue of a poem. In his rejection of such approaches, Maxwell delights in the expansiveness of his piece. Rather than distilling complex concepts and seeking to express the “dynamics problem” simply, Maxwell creates an at times bloated and unwieldy block of verse. Yet Maxwell does not simply reject the kind of aesthetic principles that define the aforementioned artists; he deliberately counters his natural inclinations as a physicist As a scientist, Maxwell would ideally seek to balance the demands of precision, accuracy, and concision, yet in translating a physics problem into verse, he deliberately confounds both physicists and students of English literature alike, despite the relatively simple situation that he describes. 

While any researcher in a particular scientific field embraces a particular lexicon and mode of communication that is common to all his or her peers, the language that he or she adopts is opaque to the uninitiated. To some extent, each scientific discipline speaks its own language. Yet most share a set of basic terms and conventions, expressing complex concepts through a shared language of mathematics. Those outside of the hard sciences lack this language, and the scientists' method of communicating simply and precisely becomes a barrier to understanding. Here, Maxwell plays with the language of the liberal arts, contorting it until it becomes an impediment to understanding.

Considering the poetic ideal of Lane and Ondaatje in the context of physics, mathematics is the highest poetry, for no symbol – no language – other than that of mathematics could represent its principles and convey Maxwell's intended meaning more clearly and concisely than a few simple lines of differentiated equations. Yet, Maxwell's humor depends on his verbosity and his over-complication of the physical principles. The poem's affective power, its ability to make us laugh, lies in its tortured attempt to translate between the conventions of scientific discourse and the physicists primary language of mathematics into a poetic structure and a complex English language.

The poem then offers students the chance to re-translate Maxwell's meaning and explore the ways in which our scientific modes of communication – which can at times frustrate students immensely – allows us to express and share ideas more quickly and easily than traditional English. A teacher could explore a variety of questions with his or her students related to the poetic form and its potential in a physics classroom. Could students adopt an approach similar to Maxwell's in order to simplify a problem at their level (one that does not involve a description and use of differential equations) into a narrative poem without sacrificing meaning for rhyme or rhythm? Could the poetic form be used to express a problem solving process involving simplification, identification, and solution? 

Physics Exemplar: Grade 11 Waves and Nodes

The following example of a student lab report that details the results of an experiment involving waves and nodal points represents level 4 work for the grade 11 university preparation physics course.
  

Physics Exemplar: Grade 12 Photoelectric Effect

The following example of a student lab report is yet another example of level 4 work for the grade 12 university preparation physics course (SPH4U) that reflects the results of an experiment involving the photoelectric effect.
  

Physics Exemplar: Grade 12 Diffraction Grating Lab Report

The following example of a student lab report represents level 4 work for the grade 12 university preparation physics course (SPH4U). It could be used as a mentor text or an exemplar for students as the develop lab reports to convey the results of an experiment involving the use of a diffraction grating.
 

Physics Exemplar: Grade 11 Waves Lab Report

The following components of a grade 11 lab on wave motion reflect level 4 work. The expansive introduction goes well beyond expectations for the assignment, to the point that the student might be advised to consider reducing future introduction sections in order to make better use of his time.

Lab Reports in a Physics Classroom

In typical high-school science classrooms, hands-on lab activities provide students with opportunities to make connections between theoretical concepts and real world situations, develop questions regarding the application and function of those concepts, and apply scientific principles of inquiry as they seek out answers.

Lab experiments – both “recipe” labs in which procedures are provided and self-directed inquiry-based actives – address the common Stream A of the Ontario Curriculum for all science courses; Overall Expectations for this stream (taken from Grade 11 University Preparation Physics) are as follows:

• A1. demonstrate scientific investigation skills (related to both inquiry and research) in the four areas of skills (initiating and planning, performing and recording, analysing and interpreting, and communicating);
• A2. identify and describe careers and Canadian contributions related to the fields of science under study.

Lab reports, which follow similar conventions across all scientific disciplines, are the primary formal method by which students convey information and results obtained through any lab activity. The composition of these reports addresses each of the major elements and skills demanded by Overall Expectation A1, as Students initiate and plan a scientific inquiry, execute the lab activity while collecting and recording data in accordance with the laboratory etiquette and conventions, analyze the data that they have collected through a variety of written, graphical, and mathematical means, and then report – i.e. communicate – the results that they have obtained and the conclusion that they have reached with reference to experimental data. Such reports consist of several distinct, titled sections:

1. Title: A clear and straightforward reflection of the content of the report.
2. Abstract: A brief summary of the experiment, its objectives, results, and conclusions.
3. Introduction: A statement that explains the physical principles or theory that relate to the experiment that the student has undertaken, possibly involving a review of, or reference to, scientific literature, that addresses the reasons and purposes for the experiment.
4. Objective(s)/Hypothesis: A concise statement of the purpose of the experiment or the expectations for its outcome. Often included in the introduction.
5. Theory (If there is no introduction): A presentation of the physics that is associated with the experiment, including derivations of equations, theoretical predictions for the experiment to be carried out, and an explanation of the the physical principles that the experiment is designed to test.
6. Procedure/Methods: A clear and concise set of instructions that detail the steps by which the experiment was performed.
7. Data: A representation of raw experimental data, generally tabulated, that often includes estimated uncertainties.
8. (Data) Analysis: An analysis of the experimental data in light of your objectives/hypothesis and theoretical principles. This section includes graphical representations and interpretations of data.
9. Results/Discussion: A discussion of the lab's results that emphasizes interpretation and the relation of experimental data to theory. The results section may replace both the data and analysis components, reflecting the same information.
10. Conclusion: A concise response to the experiment's objectives with reference to results.

Convention dictates that the lab report should be written in the passive voice and the third person in order to create an air of impartiality and detachment.

As noted above, some variance exists in the lab report formats employed in different institutions: many teachers or schools eliminate the “Materials and Methods” section, especially if the report reflects on the results of a “recipe lab,” or term it the “Procedure;” others forgo an “Introduction” or replace it with an internal “Theory” component that serves much the same purpose. Recipe labs generally have as their objective the confirmation of a pre-established theory, while inquiry activities designed to address questions to which students do not have an answer may require a “Hypothesis” section. If students know their goal – determine the coefficient of static friction of a textbook and a calculator, for instance – they may list that as their objective and develop an associated procedure or method to achieve the objective that they have set.

In order to teach students the conventions of the lab report format, I would rely heavily on the use of exemplars. Together with students, I would generate a set of observations as my class explores a mentor text. After providing students with a checklist, I would then ask them to assess a variety of exemplars that reflect levels 1, 2, 3, and 4 quality, having them identify strengths, flaws, and areas for improvement. Student groups would then grade the exemplars based on achievement chart levels.

A number of useful strategies are available at the NCSU website, including the following outline:

http://www.ncsu.edu/labwrite/instructors/intro_teachinglwr.htm#introlabreports

Introduction to Lab Reports (for those without access to ppt)

1. Brainstorm with your students what they think the purpose of a lab report is.
   
2. After discussing the purpose, ask students to list and describe the parts of a lab report. You may use the “Parts of a Lab Report” overhead and/or the handout during this discussion.
   
3. Have students brainstorm the differences between a lab report and a scientific journal article. Click the following link to show them a sample journal article, http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v66n6/991447/991447.html or find one of your own. Use “A Comparison of the Scientific Article and the Lab Report” as an overhead or handout during this discussion.
   
4. Pass out a sample lab report and “Guide for Analyzing a Laboratory Report” handout.
   
5. Put students into groups and either assign each group analyze one part of the lab report, or have each group analyze the entire lab report.
   
6. Have an open discussion where groups share what they learned during this activity.
   

Handouts you’ll need:

1. OVERHEAD/HANDOUT: Parts of a Lab Report with Brief Descriptions
   
2. OVERHEAD/HANDOUT: A Comparison of the Scientific Article and the Lab Report
   
3. A Sample Lab Report (choose one from this link)
   
4. Guide for Analyzing a Lab Report

Provide students with the following handout as a resource for analyzing exemplars in class.

http://www.ncsu.edu/labwrite/instructors/ta-analysisguide.pdf

Once students have become familiar with basic lab report format, introduce sample lab reports from the following web site. Though these reports reflect college level work, they allow students to look beyond the requirements of their grade level, making connections and comparisons to more advanced material that will allow them to better understand the conventions of their own format.

http://www.ncsu.edu/labwrite/res/labreport/res-sample-labrep.html

My next series of posts will consist of several exemplars that represent level four work at grades 11 and 12, as noted alongside each mentor text.

Call of Cthulhu Character Creation

Peterson identifies character development as one of the most difficult aspects of narrative construction for student writers, and her views on the matter align with both my observations of student work and my limited experience with creative writing. Developing well-rounded characters who are more than pawns of the plot through realistic dialog, narration that is at once both revealing and subtle, and actions that are justified by previously-established motivations while revealing previously unseen elements of a character is incredibly difficult.

My experience with tabletop role playing games has led me to consider character prior to the development of a plot. The series of steps that players and game masters follow at the outset of a game in some ways seems to mirror the process of character construction in a written narrative, possibly offering students a scaffolding activity for their attempts to create believable and fully-realized characters. A role playing game - Call of Cthulhu, for instance - begins with a shared understanding of setting, principle themes, and the ideas that the author wishes to explore. Firmly set upon this common, solid ground, players develop characters, built around a flexible template that can be expanded or contracted as desired, considering history and attributes. A co-creative process of plot development follows in which players and narrator together construct a story that responds to character-driven choices - assuming that one does not play for a "railroading" GM. This process could be adapted into a classroom context in order to train students in some of the basic techniques of narrative and character development while engaging them in part of a game. The random nature of character generation in a tabletop RPG demands creativity in the formation of personalities, characteristics, and backstories. For instance, how do we account -- historically, physically, and psychologically - for a charisma roll of 4? What does this number translate into for a particular character and how does it affect him or her over the course of his or her life?

With proper guidance, students at a sufficiently advanced level could use games such as Call of Cthulhu in order to gain a better sense of the logical and emotional bases for the characters that they seek to develop for their written narratives.

Virtual Particles

The poem "Virtual Particles" could be integrated into a Grade 11 physics course as a mentor text in an Energy and Society unit that explores nuclear fusion and nuclear fission.

Students could be asked to translate the poem into conventional scientific discourse, making connections with mathematical formulae related to half-life reactions and concepts of particle decay. A discussion of these "translated poems" could highlight the respective strengths and weakness of the two pieces, potential impediments to understanding in both English and Physics contexts, and the differences between students' translations in both structure and content. What words or phrases did they associate with a particular formula? Did the poem's structure influence the format or organization of their poem (were they sequential responses to the ideas raised in the poem or were they logical progressions through the material itself as it was taught)?

Students could also consider simple questions of value. Does the poem contribute anything meaningful to our discussion of nuclear physics? Could it be used as a memory aid in some way?

Finally, in lieu of a translation piece, students could be asked to respond to the poem in whatever manner or form they wished: mathematically, through the use of scientific discourse, through a response poem, etc.

Narrative in the Physics Classroom

David Booth's vision of enhanced literacy in Whatever Happened to Language Arts depends largely on guiding students to make connections between literary and historical narratives and their personal life stories. In some way, all the tales that “we” tell become a part of “us” both as a collective and as a collection of individuals. Students must be guided to “[find themselves] in story,” for“as personal storytellers … we learn from the stories of others and we take the truths out of these narratives .… our stories connect us to the others in our lives” (52). In order to reach students and create lasting, critical readers and thinkers, we must guide them to relate to, and to internalize, the narratives that we present to them.

Throughout my practicum placement in a university preparation grade 11 physics classroom and a university preparation grade 12 physics classroom, I attempted to explore the narratives that surround the discovery of certain fundamental principles of physics on both an individual level and on the level of the academic discipline itself.  The qualitative and subjective data that I collected through these explorations and student responses to them suggests that the use of narrative and framing techniques can connect abstract principles of the discipline to students' lived experiences, increasing students' immediate engagement in the classroom as well as their short and long term retention of information.

In one specific case, I introduced the concept of kinetic energy and couched its mathematical derivation in a narrative involving historical developments of cannons and the technological advances that improved their design. After having obtained the students' interest – based on a subjective assessment of their engagement in the class by monitoring levels of noise or “chatter,” inappropriate student-student interactions generally, and eye contact between myself and my students – I introduced an hypothetical narrative regarding cannon-based warfare. One side in the conflict had developed cannons that fired cannonballs of twice the mass, and the other side had developed cannonballs that could be fired with twice the velocity. As an impartial third party, we were tasked with determining who would win in such a conflict, all else being equal. Applying Kinematics, the work-energy theorem, and basic algebraic manipulations of established formulae, we then found that the latter group had the advantage.

In a second example, I then used the definition and formula related to kinetic energy in order to determine the energy that would be released by a collision between Earth and an actual Near Earth Object of a substantial mass, moving at a substantial speed. The value of energy released was so large that it had no significance in itself, so I related it to the Tsar bomb, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, by describing the energy released by its explosion – equivalent to the energy released by an explosion of a block of TNT approximately 320 m³, or as tall and as wide as the Eiffel Tower. The energy released by the collision between Earth and the Near Earth Object was almost five times that which was released by the Tsar Bomb's nuclear reaction. Several students approached me with questions regarding this example and tangentially related physics subjects. Not only had they absorbed the fundamental principles that I had sought to teach them, they had begun to make connections between the physics and their experience and background knowledge. As a

result, they appeared to enjoy the lesson and were eager participants in the ensuing problem-solving session and discussions.

The power of narrative that David Booth identifies can indeed be exploited in subjects other than English. Couching the principles of physics in narratives or real-life examples drawn from student experiences not only makes the material more relevant to them, it also generates engagement and in turn helps to curtail behavioral problems – an engaged student is less prone to act out. Given the ease with which Booth's theories related to narrative were applied in a physics classroom, I am eager for future opportunists to explore other strategies – that were originally intended for application in the limited context of an English course – in diverse and new settings.

Works Cited

Booth, David. Whatever Happened to Language Arts? Markham, Ontario: Pembroke Publishers Limited, 2009. Print.

Reflection on a Mentor Text

The article "Striped for Parts"(http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/11.03/parts.html) by Jennifer Kahn could be presented as a mentor text to a class of grade 11 or grade 12 biology students. While Kahn's text is outside my primary teachable domains, English and Physics, it integrate the hard sciences and the liberal arts, providing science students of any discipline with the opportunity to examine popular science writing and consider the differences in convention and style between it and true academic, scientific discourse.

In a biology or interdiciplinary context, this text could be integrated into a unit of study on reading and writing in a scientific context. After several lessons in which students explored the concept of objectivity and the formal structure of both lab reports and scientific journal articles, I would introduce this text as a means of engaging students with high levels of English literacy who are creative or artistically oriented. In contrast to authors of academic journal articles, Kahn seeks both to inform and to entertain, and the grotesque nature of the text and its subject matter may interest students – particularly males. Given its relatively vibrant prose style, her work may also interest creative students who have not yet been exposed to the ways in which they can write on subjects related to science and technology while remaining unconstrained by many of the conventions of scientific discourse. Often these conventions render scientific writing stale and disaffecting, so the article could be introduced as a means to discuss techniques authors use to engage and capture the interest of their audiences.

However, the rejection of these conventions in popular science articles and the focus on entertaining rather than informative content comes at the cost of abandoning the principle of objectivity. Khan's emotionalism and sensationalism, while engaging, make evident her personal biases. The very purpose of scientific writing becomes lost in a pleasant haze of dynamism and snappy prose. Through an exploration of the article, students should become aware of the effects – both positive and negative – of a shit between academic and non-academic scientific discourse.

A possible lesson developed around this article might consist of:

1. Guided reading in which students read each paragraph and identify the central topic or argument.
2. Reflection on each segment of the article using BLM 4.3: Informational template
3. A systematic breakdown and discussion of the text, contrasting it with previously-discussed examples of scientific writing. Groups could consider topic prior a whole-class discussion, which would be organized based on a series of topics including:
   1. Reflection on the introduction to Kahn's article, its effect on readers, and the information that it relates to a reader.
   2. Word choice and use of language which in turn influences...
   3. … our sense of the author's emotional state or investment in the issues covered in the article (Guiding Questions: What words, phrases, or constructs would not appear in an actual scientific journal article and why? What do they tell us about the author or her views that would not otherwise be apparent?)
   4. The structure of the text as whole, which does not divide as easily into defined components such as abstract, introduction, results, analysis, conclusion, etc. as does a lab report or even a traditional scientific journal article with a logical progression.
4. Based on the results of the previous discussion, we would then assess the effects on style on the message and information conveyed in the article. Students should assess what has been gained and what has been lost in the shift from academic to popular scientific writing. Which do they enjoy? Which better serves its purpose(s) (which are different in the two contexts)?

Engagement Resources

The following list of resources addresses the reading a literature strand of the Ontario English Curriculum and it focuses on issues of student engagement. It has been divided into three categories: general advice and motivational strategies, articles and texts that are more directly applicable to a classroom setting, and theoretical explorations of the topic of disengagement.

Advice

Booth, D. (2009). Whatever Happened to Language Arts? Markham, Ontario: Pembroke Publishers.

Booth offers multiple strategies to address students' lack of motivation in the English classroom with emphasis on reading and engagement. The text provides a wealth of practical suggestions based on the author's classroom experiences with the integration of technology, alternate text forms, and multiple literacies.

Lapp, D. (2009). It’s All About the Book: Motivating Teens to Read. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 52(7), 556-561.

Lapp's article consists of a case study on reading and student interest. Based on observations made in the classroom, she offers a reflection on student reading habits and the effectiveness of school book clubs.

McLean, C. D. (2007). Fifty Ways to Promote Teen Reading in Your School Library. Young Adult Library Services 6(1) (Fall), 8-10.

This point form list of suggestions for teachers and librarians may help educators and resource personnel – patently – promote reading.

Ontario Ministry of Education. (2004). Me Read? No Way!: A practical guide to improving boys' literacy skills. Retrieved from

http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/brochure/meread/meread.pdf

The guide address the widening gender gap on literacy tests and university attendance, offering success strategies for educators and students in the English field.

Ontario Ministry of Education. (n.d.). Think Literacy: Cross-Curricular Approaches, Grades 7-12. Retrieved from

http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/studentsuccess/thinkliteracy/files/Reading.pdf

This resource outlines pre-reading, reading, and post-reading strategies, and suggests possible student-engagement technique in a cross-curricular context.

Resources

Ontario Ministry of Education. (2007). The Ontario Curriculum Grades 11 and 12, English.

Jessica L. S. (2012). The new dry land workout: Practical writing exercises for professional hockey players. Journal of Poetry Therapy: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Practice, Theory, Research and Education, 25(4), 187-195.

This article could be integrated into a classroom as a resource to engage male students in the act of reading itself while also challenging the cultural bias that incline them to view literacy as feminine in nature.

Klor, E. (2011). Serving Teen Parents: From Literacy to Life Skills. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, LLC.

Klor offers advice and act ivies designed to train librarians to meet the needs of both teens in general and young parents. While the text is not designed as an aid for classroom teachers, it offers substantial practical advice for all educators who deal with issues related to teen literacy.

Swenor, K. (2006). A Teen Take on Reading: Results from the 2005 Teen Read Survey. Young Adult Library Services 4(4) (Summer), 42-44.

Some of the information contained in this resource may be of use to teachers who wish to better understand student reading practices based on the perspectives and experiences of actual teens.

Theory

Bouchamma, Y. (2014). Impact of Reading Strategy Use on Girls’ and Boys’ Achievement." Reading Psychology 35(4), 312-331.

This study explores the correlation between metacognitive skills and reading ability, concluding that addressing a marginalized component of the curriculum by requiring students to evaluate their reading and writing processes explicitly may have positive effects on their literacy development.

Harrison, B. (2010). Boys and Literature: Challenging Constructions of Masculinity. New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies 45(2), 47-60.

Harrison suggests that teachers should create situations in which boys can explore definitions and conceptions of masculinity in order to address the cultural assumptions that may adversely affect male literacy.

Sample Essay on 1984

The following grade 12 essay is an example of level 3+ work. It could be used as an exemplar text in a classroom, allowing students to identify the weaknesses in research techniques, citation, and sentence construction that prevent a unique and engaging paper from meriting a level 4 or level 4+ mark.
 

English Students and the Value of Literature

Particularly skeptical English students should know that they are not alone in their rejection of literature; their conviction that it is valueless has precedent. 

I am personally invested not only in the discipline but in many of the forms and expressions of literature themselves. Postmodern efforts to destabilize texts a on structural level immediately concerns me given my classical background. Yet a willingness to challenge structures and reject received assumptions and values often characterizes the students for whom I will be responsible; revolution is, after all, a young man's game primarily.

Despite my belief in the value of literature and its forms -- as if the former could be defined apart from its instantiations and the conventions that have developed to distinguish them -- neither that which we call literature nor its myriad modes exist as pure platonic ideals. Literature, the novel, the poem in all its expressions both formal and informal, the play, and the short story did not always exist among the forms or as images in the mind of God. We created them. Once, there was no novel; we have, among others, Cervantes and his marvelous proto-novel about the man from la Mancha to thank for it -- and thank him we should in my view, though many an English student might disagree. Once, there was no literature whatsoever. There were no books, and the notion of recording information in textual form was seen by some to threaten our mental faculties and the strength of our memories, a concern that might be familiar to those of us who are old enough to remember a world in which information was not a google search away.

Skepticism regarding form and function -- from text, to book, to literature, to the novel -- is not new; rather it has defined, and may ever define, our discipline. Better men than I have assaulted literature, and better men than I have defended it, but the very fact that it has required constant defense legitimizes the concerns that many students express. Yet I cannot imagine that most young people are remotely aware of this fact. How often have they been told that English literature is inherently valuable, and that that received knowledge is unassailable gospel truth? How many bite their tongues while remaining convinced of nothing other than their instructors' mental inflexibility and dogmatism? At worst, how many grow to despise the act of reading in its entirety because no teacher ever gave them the opportunity to present and explore their objections to literature and the objections raised by even a few of their ideological forefathers?

As teachers, we should recognize the validity of students' positions, even those with which we fundamentally disagree, but with respect to those opinions, blind acceptance can easily be worse than de-legitimization. Raise a vigorous defense, rather than shying from the fight. Have students define literature's value or lack thereof and then introduce a range of material to demonstrate that a pervasive – perhaps even obsessive – concern with the validity of our discipline has in fact defined it since its inception. Justify the value of literature on a practical level by developing a unit around the issue, incorporating texts such as:

“In Defense of Literacy” by Wendell Berry https://docs.google.com/a/uottawa.ca/document/d/1KCtvcdoycXMCYSZGhUcdoyav9NQfl-K7f5w-_bcMsGU/edit?hl=en_GB

Percy Bysshe Shelley “A Defense of Poetry” (Which will allow for extensions into lessons on music and visual arts.)

George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language." (On the study of a vital and clear English discourse in order to protect us against malicious or weaponized language.)

The Defense of Poesy Sir Philip Sidney. A classic defense and early objections to literature's inferiority to history and philosophy. http://www.bartleby.com/27/1.html

If we truly believe that literature is valuable, we must show students that our faith is not without practical grounding. We owe the effort to those students whom we seek to best serve and we owe it to the discipline that -- I would hope -- we all love.

The Official Government of Ontario Document "Me Read?" explores the growing literacy gap between male and female students, offering some concrete data on early school leaving and university attendance rates and suggestions regarding boys' education.

Responses to Atwell and Peterson

Atwell's narrative suggests that our task as teachers in general, and English specifically, is to provide students with materials that are accessible and connected to their life experiences while requiring them to produce work that has practical value, yet her evolution as a teacher, and the progression of her strategies, exceed such relatively simple requirements – demands of relevance that teacher education training and my practicum experience have emphasized.

As I have been taught thus far, we are to design tasks that provide choice in products and procedure – as Atwell found with her student, Jeff, allowing options in which one component of the final product could be a visual text could help to support certain students' learning and trigger the evolution of their writing process. Similarly, to generate engagement we attempt to design tasks that mirror real world situations, creating assignments that are practical and applicable to the students' past experiences and present and future needs.

Yet according to Atwell, even assignments that allow for student choice in a traditional sense only provide a different set of constraints. Her rather radical conjunction of the two aforementioned principles – allowing students free reign in their choice of products based on their individual interests and needs – is highly discomforting to me personally. Ceding that level of power to students is a daunting prospect. Even as a student, I would have found her approach immediately terrifying, as I craved structure and strict guidelines. It is difficult to believe that no student in her class responded to her proposal that her class develop individual writing ideas for real world audiences with a resounding “No,” as I would have done (Atwell, 1998, p. 13). Peterson echoes and addresses this concern with his suggestion that teachers should provide students with free choice regarding from and limitations based on content area, as “students appreciate having some parameters set on their writing” (Peterson, 2008, p. 4). Such an approach may provide sufficient structure to account for the learning needs of the students whom I have identified.

Nonetheless, Atwell's realization that the traditional choices provided to students are in fact far too constrictive still represents a remarkable challenge to all teachers, let alone those who prefer relatively structured teaching environments. In order to generate effective writing tasks, the familiar demands to facilitate and allow for student choice and to connect their products to real experiences must be expanded and joined.

Atwell's attempts to write alongside her students, and the lack of success she found during the exercise, represent a similar challenge to the way in which we structure our writing tasks and the demands of production that we place on students (Atwell, 1998, p. 11). Her inability to compose vibrant pieces of work in response to the assignments that she provided for her students – the reduction of an art form to an assembly line production – attests to the artificiality of the assignments that we often provide and illustrates the danger of failing to properly consider the effects and the challenges of the work that we require students to complete. We can demand that students write a great deal, but if they produce dull and dead works, they may not truly learn the craft and the art no matter how many writing assignments they complete. They may not truly grow.

As for Peterson's article, given the practices of evaluation laid out in this university's Curriculum Design course, I was somewhat surprised by the suggestion that teachers should assess both students' content-area knowledge and their writing ability. According to the principles of assessment established in that context, teachers should not take into account students' facility with the English language when determining a grade for an unrelated subject, even though we must address their ability to communicate information. We should not allow students' strengths or weaknesses in literacy to influence the content-specific grade that we assign to their work. Though my associate teacher assessed work based on achievement chart categories of Knowledge, Inquiry, Making Connections, and Communication – assigning marks based on students' use of scientific conventions and proper English – the practical impact of communication marks on final grades was ultimately insignificant given that the relative weight of the other three assessment categories was substantially greater than that of Communication. His gesture towards assessment merely indicated an area of possible improvement to students, rather than influencing their grades. Though my experience has been limited, thus far both theory and observed practice have inclined me to eschew the evaluation of students' writing skills. I will admit, however, that as a student of English literature who has been dismayed by students' apparent illiteracy throughout my practicum experience, I am troubled by the apparent failings of the current system and the effects of the practices that I have observed.    

On Accademic Writing

As I never went through high-school, I was never formally trained to write in anything other than an academic context; my education focused on reading almost to the exclusion of writing up until CEGEP, at which point teachers both guided and constrained us with repeated explanations, drills, and work sessions that emphasized the universality and inflexibility of the essay format. Prior to entering university, I found that I had rarely enjoyed the writing process, largely due to the regimented structure of the four paragraph essay.

As I progressed through my undergraduate and graduate degrees, however, I came to appreciate the academic essay as the principal method of communication in my field, capable of expressing a level of vitality in form and prose that I never would have anticipated based on my prior studies. Though the process – and, indeed, the liberty – of composing academic work became pleasurable, the changes that I observed in the form of written discourse also brought with them new frustrations. Postmodernist discourse dominated much of material that I was responsible for reading and some of the responses that were expected to that material. Were I to offer a particularly uncharitable assessment of the experience, I would say that for some time it seemed as if the fundamental purpose of writing seemed to become lost – like many readers – in a sea of deliberate obscurantism.