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.
Sunday 22 March 2015
Monday 16 March 2015
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.
Friday 27 February 2015
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Conclusion:
❒ The conclusion does not simply restate the
thesis; synthesis of ideas is evident.
❒ The conclusion does not introduce a new
supporting argument.
- 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.
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.
The following resources are template checklists for
teacher evaluation and student self-evaluation.
http://www.roanestate.edu/owl/essayrev.html
Wednesday 18 February 2015
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
(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
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