essential question: What kinds of technologies can be used to enhance interest and proficiency in writing?
Writing is essential to success in today's world. Unfortunately, the types of writing skills necessary for achievement beyond secondary education are not necessarily the same skills we focus on as we teach academic writing for success on end of grade tests, or the writing portion of the SAT. My ideas about what constitutes good writing have changed and developed through my experience in this program. For example, there is a growing need to teach students how to respond in an online forum. In 2011 6.7 million students enrolled in an online course. For the most part, online courses are very student-driven and writing centered. The luxury of being able to spend time explaining a thought or an answer simply does not exist online. It would make sense, then, that we provide our students with the practice and skills to be able to communicate effectively in such flat conditions. This is just one example of the many ways in which writing has been changed, and will continue to change, due to our rapid technological advancements.
ECI 546: New Literacies and Media
One of my goals in applying to the NLGL program was to get a sense of the many ways in which technology can be used to enhance student learning in the classroom. ECI 546 provided me with a wealth of knowledge about available tools that can be tailored by teachers in order to appeal to multiple learning styles. From Diigo social bookmarking, to Toondo and UDL Bookbuilder, to Voicethread and Google maps, we were exposed to many online technologies. Not only were we introduced to these programs, but we were given the time to apply them to our content areas in practical ways as well as reflect on the success or failure of the tool on the learning process. In my 9th grade English class I spend a lot of time working on developing the literary analysis. As a visual learner myself, I was curious whether an online program such as Glogster would enhance student understanding of the way in which an analytical essay is created.
wittman-moakley_pbi_final.docx | |
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Product of Learning: Although Glogster proved to be a bit cumbersome, I've continued to look for a similar program that would provide students with a presentation format in which they could include images, video, and text. A colleague mentioned S'more, and I used it this year as a place for students to summarize and analyze assigned short stories from R.K. Narayan's Malgudi Days. This year we experimented with the program S'More.com, and the online tool garnered a very favorable response from the class.
Gates and Mosca S'more presentation
Jaffe and Walston S'more presentation
Gates and Mosca S'more presentation
Jaffe and Walston S'more presentation
ECI 52o: The Teaching of composition
Prior to my work in the NLGL program, I was fairly convinced that my sole responsibility as a teacher was to prepare my students for academic writing. Working in an independent school, nearly 100% of our population goes on to a four-year college after graduation, so this is an important aspect of the curriculum. However, after enrolling in ECI 520 it became abundantly clear to me that there are many ways to foster critical thinking and analysis in student writing that is not limited to a formal literary analysis. Through our reading of Tom Romano's Blending Genre, Altering Sytle: Writing Multigenre Papers, and Camille Allen's The Multigenre Research Paper: Voice, Passion, and Discovery in Grades 4-6, I was struck with the many creative ways teachers can approach writing in order to achieve the same result as the traditional "Five-Paragraph" format. I've included an excerpt from one of my responses to our reading.
"One of the strengths of Multigenre Research Projects in the classroom is the way in which the project taps into what Tom Romano calls, “narrative knowing.” Rather than “explaining or analyzing as paradigmatic knowing does, narrative knowing renders experience or phenomenon. Narrative knowing shows. We read a novel and leave the world”(22). Our schools, and myself as well, place a great deal of emphasis on expository writing. I feel compelled to create assignments that will reflect the demands of the academic world for which I’m preparing my students. They will need to do well on the SAT, write essays, reports, etc. for which practice in expository writing seems to be the key. Romano argues that there is more than one way to accomplish the same goal, and he argues he has “persisted in getting students to engage in narrative thinking, to experience how it can enhance their expository writing”(24). One of the strengths of the MGRP is that it enables the readers to experiment with their own way of “narrative knowing.” By providing ways in which a student can gain a sense of what Rosenblatt means when she says that “literature offers readers a chance to engage in a ‘lived through experience’”(24), the MGRP provides the same perspective through their writing. Focusing on character development will provide the foundation for character analysis one might see later in a question on literary analysis. It is a way in which we can provide our students with the tools to know the world differently than what might have been taught and is currently still being taught in most English classrooms, however, it is no less important or effective."
What I've appreciated about this program is that our professors have not only given us the knowledge and tools to enhance our teaching, but the time to put what we learn into practice and to reflect on the effectiveness of our ideas.
My Multigenre Research Project
"One of the strengths of Multigenre Research Projects in the classroom is the way in which the project taps into what Tom Romano calls, “narrative knowing.” Rather than “explaining or analyzing as paradigmatic knowing does, narrative knowing renders experience or phenomenon. Narrative knowing shows. We read a novel and leave the world”(22). Our schools, and myself as well, place a great deal of emphasis on expository writing. I feel compelled to create assignments that will reflect the demands of the academic world for which I’m preparing my students. They will need to do well on the SAT, write essays, reports, etc. for which practice in expository writing seems to be the key. Romano argues that there is more than one way to accomplish the same goal, and he argues he has “persisted in getting students to engage in narrative thinking, to experience how it can enhance their expository writing”(24). One of the strengths of the MGRP is that it enables the readers to experiment with their own way of “narrative knowing.” By providing ways in which a student can gain a sense of what Rosenblatt means when she says that “literature offers readers a chance to engage in a ‘lived through experience’”(24), the MGRP provides the same perspective through their writing. Focusing on character development will provide the foundation for character analysis one might see later in a question on literary analysis. It is a way in which we can provide our students with the tools to know the world differently than what might have been taught and is currently still being taught in most English classrooms, however, it is no less important or effective."
What I've appreciated about this program is that our professors have not only given us the knowledge and tools to enhance our teaching, but the time to put what we learn into practice and to reflect on the effectiveness of our ideas.
My Multigenre Research Project
Product of Learning: This is the second year I've assigned the MGRP to my senior English classes. The first year I was not specific enough in my expectations and this was evident in many of the projects the students handed in. This year I knew a bit more about what to expect and therefore was much clearer in my instructions, my expectations, the rubric, everything, and this made a big difference in the quality of projects I received.
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mgrp_rubric.docx | |
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peterson1_copy.pdf | |
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Special thanks to Christopher Peterson for giving me permission to share his Multigenre Research Project