Joanna

Workshops and Conferences GTW

I found many of the ideas in this chapter to be really useful in planning how to structure workshops and conferences. Great stuff! I'm not so sure about the whole-class workshop idea, though. I can see how doing something like that would be helpful in showing students how to effectively critique their peers' writing, yet I would be hesitant in holding a workshop myself. I think the reason for this is that I would feel like one student would get all this help and the rest wouldn't--like it's not exactly fair to the other students. I like the idea of small writing groups much better, as it seems like much more effecient use of time. Each piece of student work gets to be seen by (hopefully) at least two other students. Also, as it says in the chapter, "beginning writers, whose self-confidence may not be high, tend to be more comfortable in smaller groups" (64). I agree with this idea and, therefore, feel that using writing groups from the beginning would be the most beneficial for all students. I like the idea of being liberatory when structuring the writing groups and setting up the ground rules about how they will work. I definitely think I'm going to ask my students their opinions about whether the groups should rotate throughout the semester, etc. I also think some specifics need to be set by the instructor, like how many students should be in the group. I am thinking that 4 is a good number.

Reading about the dynamics of writing group sessions, I was reminded of something that I had to do in my ENGL 1301 class, which was round robin peer review. I thought it was pretty cool because we got feedback from many people, so we were able to have many reader's perspectives. I might do something similar, like a round robin within the writing groups. With the comp classes I took and the ones in my triad last year, I have not yet seen a class that had writing groups change throughout the semester--they always just stayed with one group the whole semester. In my experience as a student, I did not really like this because I only got to know those 3 or 4 people in my group and nobody else. So, maybe switching it up would be good (I think I would ask the students if they wanted to or not, though). I liked the Example 3.1, the sample peer review response tips. I was actually about to create one of these for when my students do peer review, so this is really helpful as a model! Also, i was thinking that for evaluating the writing groups, I could take the questions from this chapter and make it an exit slip for the end of the peer review/workshop session. Then, the next class day, I would give a summary of the students' reactions to the writing groups and have a discussion on things that are working and things that need improvement in the writing groups.

A lot of the suggestions/tips in the student conference section seemed pretty obvious to me. Maybe that's because of working at the Writing Center. It's got to be student-centered and you can't appropriate the student's work. Yup. I did think it offered some good questions to ask, though. I also liked that it said to end with "one concrete assignment" and to make sure you both have a "clear sense of what has been accomplished" (72). This goes right back to the common theme that the student has to see the point or they will not deem it worthwhile. I really like the idea of conferences and plan to implement at least one conference session per student for each portfolio.

Elements of TW Ch 4

This also gives tips, mostly about revision and peer review (so some was similar to the previous reading). I have to say that when I was reading this, I associated well with the junior who says: "right from the beginning I knew that my first draft was going to be my last". This kind of goes with that whole idea we were talking about the first week of class, of not practicing what you preach. I rarely write more than one draft, so I can definitely relate. I think, though, what is different from freshmen not writing multiple drafts and me not writing multiple drafts is that I do other types of revision mentioned in this chapter before I begin really completing a draft. For example, I sometimes do other types of writing to get my ideas down and adapt that into a draft. Or, in a lot of upper-level classes, we have to turn in proposals or abstracts that really make me think about what and how I am going to write. I like the idea of in-class revision, particularly th third bullet on p. 72, to have the students work on revising from the teacher's comments during class, so I can seen their revision processes. I have been considering out of class peer review, but I am still on the fence about it. Last semester in comp theory, my major topic of focus was computer-mediated peer review and I interviewed a Professor Feagin (who had co-authored an article about it). He gave me good tips on how to set up peer review--by letting the students help decide--and on how to control the peer review when it is outside of the class. I might incorporate this, but I would also have some time in class to discuss the papers as well, I think, so the students can talk about the comments.

TA's Guide

Back to the idea of conferences. A lot of this information, once again, I already knew from the Writing Center, such as to sit next to them and not across from them. Also, I already use many of the questions given as tips to prompt the students about their writing. These are some really great tips for someone new to conferencing, though. I don't really know what else to say about this because none of it was new to me. I find this interesting because last semester, when we focused on conferencing in Comp Theory, I saw a lot of differences between conferences and writing center consultations. From this article, I don't really see any.

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JENNIFER

Workshops and Writing Groups

It has been a long time since I have been part of a writing group. Actually, I can’t ever remember being part of one, so this is going to be a new experience for all of us if I decide to implement those into my classroom. Peer review is something that definitely comes to mind with writing groups, and I actually like the writing group tasks set aside for assessment of peer reviewed papers (66). Buddy editing was really helpful in Literary Theory. I know Dr. Talley was so leery of peer editing apparently because of class dynamics, and as GTW says, motivation, is such a big part of group work and peer review. (66) That’s why it is important that the dynamic of the group is positive. But how do you go about making sure that happens? I don’t think you can, that is why switching things up could be a possibly remedy, but then where is the trust that was built in the other group? At the end of the first semester at Dr. Engelhardt’s house Bryan Davis was talking about how his peer review was not really working in his high school class because the students were afraid to say anything bad about each other. I suggested making them anonymous. This may work better in a class-size peer review and not a small group, if you choose to do it that way. On to conferencing, which I believe is such a necessity for motivation and suggests the part of Fink’s “atomic” theory of caring about your students. As GTW says, this instills ownership of the paper in the student. (72)

Assigning and Responding to Revision

I can totally relate to writing what I thought was a masterpiece and then the teacher coming back and ripping it to shreds. Wow, it feels lousy. One of the first rules of journalism, and I think it applied rightly so to all genres of writing, is don’t fall in love with your words. Like that Cornell Freshman says, it is like building a wall and then breaking it down again. (65) I understand from both points of view, I think most, if not all of us have been there. Having to juggle writing a paper and having 5,000 other things for other classes going on at the same time (sounds vaguely familiar and very recent…) and making time to revise something that is uninteresting or even really interesting to the student is tough. I think we can definitely look back on what Booth taught us about audience and subject and the rhetoric stance. We have to be writing not only about something we care about or are interested in, but we have to have a notion of who our audience is. That is where peer review comes in. I have never really considered out of class peer review, but it may be something to try in Portfolio 2. Again, I struggle a bit with whether or not complete anonymity is the best approach, but after reading this section, I am thinking a concise overview of “collegial respect” to peers is imperative. (74) On the matter of comment review, I would like to hear some experiences from teachers who have actually had students turn in comments before passing them back to the students. I kind of think that would be pulling the reigns back a little on them, almost not trusting. Another thing that is important is the clarity of the notes, which is reason anonymity may not work as well. This gives me a lot to think about with peer review before I implement it.

One-on-One Conferencing

Throughout this section I kept equating it to my experience in the Writing Center, down to the seating position of the student/teacher. Lost Lonnie was a lot of those students that came in to the WC, and it was really interesting reading about TA Terrible and TA Terrific. I think I probably was somewhere in the middle, maybe TA Temperate, not as bad as terrible, but not as well-read and well-practiced as Terrific. I like the prep questions (72) and I think they will be helpful even in peer review. I found the part on teaching development (76) to be constructive for me, especially writing out the list as they tell you about their details. Visuals like that are really helpful to see where you are doing well and where there may be room for improvement. I don’t think I ever had a frustrated or angry student in a conference who thought I did not help them with context, but there are those students who come in and only want their grammar proofread, and when you don’t look at every little colon or comma, they do feel cheated. But that is a whole other category. There is a difference between TA conferencing and consulting and those details are important. I look forward to figuring them all out.

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Garrett

Well, I totally read tomorrow's readings instead of today's...oops. To prove I did it, here they are!

Using Portfolios

Interesting readings, if not a little didactic and technical. I have a problem with any set definitions for scoring a portfolio, but that’s to be expected with anything this seemingly subjective. Though “the difficulty of achieiving consistent scores” is always a problem, I don’t much know if the Phase 2 option is much better. It sounds like a logistic nightmare, and hell to organize. Don’t we already have a “reflective letter” for the readers from the student, discussing why the goals have been met? And is White saying that the the student reflective letter is so important that is can be the only item on which to base the grade? I might have misread that, but that seems to overlook some essential student work.

That being said, I think this is why I like our program, because we can split up the classes into manageable portions so that each teacher can grade at their own pace. We don’t necessarily need large staff gradings. I think he hits the nail on the head when he writes “You must read selectively, and since by this time you have come to know the students fairly well, you can decided where to invest your limited time” (171). That’s been my experience with grading. You get to know the students, and you get to know what to expect. As White writes, though, “the quality of teacher comments is an important aspect of teaching” (175). What you do write needs to be meaningful and helpful, and that’s something you don’t get until you’ve read student papers before and know what works. I think they appreciate the comments.

Portfolio Standards for English 101

I didn’t notice until the The “C” Portfolio that I was reading basically the same rubric, with slight alterations for each one. It just began to sound really repetitive, but then I realized what was going on. Apart from being helpful when I’m actually grading portfolios, this reading is really just a good reference, a sort of outline to follow when grading or thinking about the assignment. An interesting point was his assertion that “A portfolios may show frequent evidence of the writer’s ability to make conceptual or global revisions-wide-ranging changes at the idea level-as well as local revisions.” It really gets back to the “process not the product” philosophy we seem to go for with the portfolio system, and shows the emphasis is on revision, and the value of working something out on your own.

Hesse also seems to place much emphasis on cohesiveness, which White makes a priority as well, when he says that the “C” portfolio “may seem to be more compilations of isolated works than at least partially connected wholes.” White says the same when writing that the reflective letter “has the power to turn a mere collection of materials into a unified and important document.” So, the idea of finding a “theme” and a sense of cohesion is evidence of higher-order thinking, kinda like writing a concept album? In all seriousness, I had never thought of this, and I think it’s cool. We do it when we are creating class plans (History happens at the local, intimate scale, even though we mostly read of the larger global aspects-that’s kind of mine and Joanna’s theme for comp), so why not ask that our students do it to? It may carry over to real-life situations and help them to see.

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Liza

Elements – Ch 4

In my experience, students are more likely to thoughtfully revise drafts if they have been given feedback on a first draft from the instructor. In Dr. Englehardt’s Critical Approaches class, she required that we submit a complete draft of our final research project and then she held conferences with us to talk about revisions, ideas, etc. I thought that was a really great idea. Yes, it’s more work for the instructor but she chose to take that extra step in helping us. I know it helped me. As stated on page 65, “Peer reviews from other students often yield haphazard or superficial revisions, and monitoring these reviews adds substantially to our workload.” I know I have been asked to turn in my peer reviewed drafts but I was never told what was going to happen to them. Did the instructor actually compare what the other students suggested with my revisions? I know that I did not always take peer reviews seriously in undergrad classes so I pretty much ignored most of what was written. (Except when Joanna peer reviewed my paper on the Amish in Senior Capstone! I listened to what she said then.) I’m conflicted about the peer review process.

I’m going to try the “writing groups” thing in the fall and see how it works out. Things might be different if it is not a “hand your paper to the person on your left” type of situation. What if the person on the student’s left is always absent or talks about getting Cs all the time, etc.? What kind of confidence is that going to give the other student? I do want to schedule a peer review workshop activity of some sort. I like the idea of bringing samples and sharing them with the class (for peer review and for revision). That would help. Chelsie’s activity is also a great model for revision.

I can relate to students only having one draft because a paper is assigned “with tight deadlines in the midst of other homework and exams” (66). Of course, students are writing the paper the weekend before – or even the night before. We’ve all been there. I guess that’s why some instructors assign grades for several drafts. I haven’t quite worked that part out yet.

TA’s Guide – Ch 8/9

I’m glad I read the Prepare Carefully section because it reminded me to tell students that I will need to have a copy of their draft in advance of a conference if they want feedback (72). A lot of our instructors already request that we do this. It allows for more meaningful feedback and is a very reasonable request. I can see already that I am a terrible TA! I think it will take some practice in order to remember how to word questions (and I see we are doing that tomorrow!). I think I’m going to make some note cards to have as cheat sheets and do a little *turn and cough* when I forget what I’m supposed to say so I can so I can take a peek! The list on page 80 says that you can keep a list handy as a “reference” but wouldn’t that make students lose confidence in you?

The workshop activities in Ch 9 would work well in our classrooms. Since this reading seems to refer to TAs? of professors for other disciplines, they would need to hold separate workshop times but we can actually incorporate these lessons into our classes.

Guide to Teaching Writing

I am definitely going to encourage my students to take notes during our conferences. I don’t know how many times I have been in a conference with a professor and had these epiphanies that were completely gone once I left. The conversation gets going and the ideas start rushing into your brain but once you leave and become preoccupied with other things, you risk losing them. That’s what happens to me anyway.

I know I mentioned this in one of our small group discussions, but I’ll say it again. I had a professor here who would require a teacher conference be scheduled after the first absence. That may seem a bit harsh, but it makes students become accountable. It lets them know that you are paying attention. I was terrified to miss a class. Once I missed, I scheduled my conference, brought my doctor’s note and she took one look at me and said that she could tell that I was still sick and appreciated that I cared enough about the class to make the effort to be there but to go home and get better. I was never terrified of a conference again. My point is that conferences can be used for many reasons. I can appreciate the value of a good conference because I have had professors take time out to conference with me when it was not their scheduled office time. That is when a student knows that a professor really cares – the lesson learned that day becomes so meaningful that you don’t want to let the professor down so you keep trying your hardest with all of your assignments. At least that is what happened with me and I would hope that one day some student would “pay it forward!”

Okay, I’ll stop sounding like an after school special now!

Eva’s Response Journal

Assigning and Responding to Revision

I have to admit that I am one of the many that is guilty of trying to write the perfect (impossible) paper the first go round. I guess we do not realize that we are revising as we go and not letting the writing process take its course. I sometimes feel like I am forcing my paper into a place where it will fit into my thesis. It is hard to explain but when I revise as I go, I end up being driven by the paper instead of me directing how it will end up. As the essay says, the initial draft is usually a lot of confusion so how can we possibly make the first draft be the last. This is why process is the way to go; it irons out all the vagaries and extraneous information that leads to fuzzy writing.

It is also true that our best thoughts are not our first ones often, a great point occurs as we are into our paper but if that thought takes us into a different direction, the thesis becomes irrelevant. This is usually why the paper looses focus or disjointed think I will try to share this with my student and maybe it will make some kind of impact on the. Do not rush it let your thought and writing process develop. Good writing takes work and time.

I can see how the two-stage draft idea would make a paper better, the first stage is for shaping the paper and putting out the idea which still has potential for reshaping, and the second is for setting a thought out idea in concrete. If we skip the first revision stage, everything we have written needs to stay in order for the paper to make even some kind of sense because disjointed sentences may be needed to make forced connections with other thoughts. Second thoughts of revision become disruptive to Like the Cornell student said of his work that it is hard to take things out because it would make the paper fall apart. I recall several teachers’ comments about making my paper better that felt to me like a disruption because I knew that the revisions suggested would require me to restructure some of my paper.

I can appreciate techniques to delay the sense of completion of a draft. I think that I will use the tactics mentioned, I especially like other suggestion in the chapter before about the silent student. I will ask the writer to tell me what they think the weaknesses in their paper are. This will get them to giving more thought to their unfinished work. A short assignment introducing the purpose of the paper might also be effective. I think that primarily, the student should understand that drafting is a process that will improve the final product and that it is very much a part of the process as much as the final paper. The tips for comments on revisions will be useful to me so that I do not become to invested in improving each students work, instead, I will comment so that they will be the ones to clarify the issues As far a peer reviews, I will follow the example of the numerous reviews I have been a part of . Group formation, copies, maybe a review form respect for others work will be a part of my peer expectations talk. In Class Workshop

I have not had much experience with the term’ workshop’ therefore, I don’t know when we are doing it unless I notice it up on the wiki page and I go “OH, ok so this is work shopping,” I will somehow try to convey to the class that when we are In collaborative mode discussing or critiquing our own or others work, that constitutes a workshop. I like the idea of fixed writing groups or peer groups I think that it lends itself to bonding with a group and a trust formation. If groups change about, they may not feel invested in their groups’ success. I might even go as far as suggesting some sort of competitive activity between groups to enforce that ownership of the group.

I always found the list of questions to ask or look for in a paper very helpful as I was writing my own paper or looking at some one else’s work. GTW goes over the conference as the TA book does

Conferencing

I really like this little book and I recommend it to my fellow TA’s. Since we are scheduling conference days for portfolios, it is important for me to be prepared to ask the right question about students writing. II can see how a student might become dependent on the instructors direction in improving their papers but I feel that it is their process and if I jump into it, they will not have the pleasure or pain of that discovery. I think it might be helpful to take the stance of collaborators in improving the paper.

The tips and ideas that are in this handbook tell me that I need to think critically about how I respond to students questions and how I form my own questions about their paper. I can see that how I ask a question will make the difference in whether the student will go away feeling even further lost and confused or like they have realized the new potential that their paper has. The key concepts, focus, structure, development and transitions will help me to direct my question to that part of the writing.

As far as teaching skills and concepts, it is clearly our job to help the student to understand these. They are different from writing which comes from the individual’s expressive process. Praise is a form of encouragement and that is what the first year student s need. I recall feeling inadequate and dazed when hit with the freshman com syllabus along with other expectations such as web technology and student id’s and the like, praise is necessary not only to encourage students work but to help them feel that they are worth while and that there are in the right place (university).

Over all these chapters are full of great advice on how to interact with students in conference, how to help them realize their own writing potential through conferencing and how to develop the best paper by drafting and revising in stages. This will have to be summer break reading because I need more time to absorb these good idea

Sean

The TA guide is great! The material discussed in chapters 8 & 9 seemed, at first, to be much of the stuff that I had already picked up in my own experience as a student (maybe I was paying attention more than some of my peers?), but then I realized how valuable the questioning philosophy and planning sheets are and I decided that this might be one of the most handy resources we've read this semester! The suggestions in this book are not only immediately transferable to my lesson plans, they are easily modifiable. For example, the "Technology Tactics" on pages 71-72 give some easy ways to communicate with the student online, which might offer a better opportunity for some students, especially if they live off campus, and they also open the door to developing more inventive ways to address individual student conferencing. On top of that, the tactics for being a successful questioner generally seem applicable for an online chat, too.

workshops and conferences

This part of the GTW seemed like a lot of the same stuff that was in the TA Guide, but with less ready utility. I liked some of the pointers for peer-review, although, again, I felt as though I had already picked up a lot of those ideals through my own experiences (maybe the case is that I had really good groups almost every time I did any workshopping). I was kind of skeptical about the large workshop that this book begins with and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't use it in my classroom; it seems as though your devaluing the function of review when you apply it to only one or a few student's drafts and then expect the rest of the class to pick up on those lessons for themselves. Maybe I am just missing the concept here, but I think that whole-class workshops would have a very poor time-to-value ratio in an hour and 15 minute class.

The conferencing section of this book seemed a little bit more helpful, if for no other reason than the suggestion at the end that a "successful conference should end with at least one concrete assignment, one that shows you and the student agree on your expectations for the next stage of work" (72). I think little things like this are what would make revising meaningful, as opposed to the superficial editing that occurs in most undergraduate revision (I was guilt of it, too!)

revising

In line with what I just said about the GTW section, the ETW chapter on revising really takes charge of the issue of rampant single-drafting. I have been guilty of this myself, so I can relate to the assertion that many undergrads don't do much revising. As a grad student, though, I have realized more fully the value that even a small amount of structured revising can have for overall clarity and cohesiveness. With that in mind, I am glad that there is a plethora of suggesttions for getting students to take their revisions seriously in this book. I think the stance that the book takes about undergrads not having enough time to plan for revision is a bit forgiving (I always chalked it up to my own procrastination, and I had a very busy schedule outside of my undergrad courseload), but I appreciate the author's focus on ways to overcome that attitude. As for the peer-review ideas in this book, I'm not sure I agree with them all, either. As with the whole-class workshopping in the GTW book, I think the outside-the-class peer review in this book is a bit lopsided in its potential results. My experience is that students will have focused and meaningful assessment if they have class time to review (which is why I would advocate small-group workshops), but will offer more of the pat-on-the-back type review if given the papers for take-home review. In creative writing, we always used the take-home method, but for academic writing, I don't think students are as willing to spend their time outside the classroom reading thoughtfully and critically. Overall, though, I think this text, along with the other readings for today, are extremely helpful in lesson planning. =======

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Chelsie

These readings are exactly what I needed to feel more confident about my future of teaching Composition. I will use the TA Guide as a script the first few times I have conferences. It’s really helpful to see the way that you should say something, compared to the way you shouldn’t. The second chapter of the TA Guide talks about doing different workshops for different purposes. This concept made me feel more confident as well. Somebody yesterday said, “Just remember you know more than they do.” Of course I do! I like the idea of having intensive workshops. I think they’ll get a lot of information that they will need. I’m starting to consider what their theses will look like in the citizenship autobiography. They will probably range greatly. I need to work on this. There were so many good tips in the TA Guide such as let the student work on the paper as you sit with them, but make sure to keep yourself busy. Great Stuff!

As for teaching groups. I’ve decided to wait as long as possible so they can at least know each other before they get in groups. The GTW suggests otherwise. It’s better if they don’t know each other because they won’t have anything else to talk about except for the status of their work. I was considering groups of five and six, but now know that four should really be the max. From GTW I also took that at the end of the conference you should assign something concrete to the student before the next class. This way they have to look at the drafts before the next class time.

I like this quote from ETA “A first draft confronts you with the nature of your own confusion on the subject. Revision gives you the chance to recover from that confusion.” We just need to provide the opportunities for students to revise, we have to make it a part of their writing rituals. I assume that the majority of students try to do what they book says they all do; turn in their first drafts as final. This book gives great examples on how to avoid that situation. Another comment I like was about outlines and how they can sometimes hinder the student’s ability to organize. This means we should be prescriptive, but not too much.