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| Teaching Tips | |||
| Teachers know where many of their best ideas come from: other teachers.
The following are teaching tips by grade level and topic submitted by teachers. New topics and grade levels will be added regularly. We're looking for teaching tips for the following areas as well: If you have an idea for a new thread, or if you'd like to suggest a new idea, email: nancymays@umkc.edu. College Level Teaching Tips The narrative-significant event: Writing a scene New territory: Write about an uncomfortable environment Real people: Incorporating live interviews into essays War words: Writing about the military Student Writing: These tips show how you can best use student writing in the classroom Rhetorical tools that help students re-vision writing Learning from their mistakes: Reading gaffs out loud The narrative-significant event: Writing a scene A valuable teaching tool for me is the narrative-significant event classic, which requires students to develop a scene around an event that held significance for them. The students were to then analyze why the event was significant. The essay I use was by a student who had visited an elderly nursing home. Not only did she analyze how it changed her view of old persons, the word choices in her descriptions created a "hidden" thesis that was stronger than her overt one. Thus, students see how language works on both the denotative and connotative levels to create often a stronger thesis. -- Lindsey Martin-Bowen
New territory: Write about an uncomfortable environment I like to require students to go somewhere where they are a bit ill-at-ease. (For example, a Catholic student might want to visit a Baptist church service or vice-versa. Someone from the suburbs might want to trek around midtown during the day.) Along with describing their new environments, the students are to analyze the differences between the setting and their comfort zones. (Mickie Dwyer, another GTA then —suggested this assignment.) -- Lindsey Martin-Bowen Real people: Incorporating live interviews into essays In my English 225 class, we use science and society to frame our readings, discussions and writings. The class pivots around the idea that science is everywhere: religion, politics, homes, and the classroom. For one essay, I asked students to conduct a live interview, meaning at least one source could not come from a book or a journal. This forced them to see where science intersects with society. Medical students had no trouble: They rushed to their physician-mentors and gleaned tight research and great quotes. One student explored reasons why doctors should embrace, instead of shun, patient Internet use. Students who weren't science majors had great ideas, too. One student interviewed 10 of his fellow fraternity members on their opinions of stem cell research. After he recorded their opinions, he asked them to define stem cell research. He used that as his basis for an article that explored why Americans are relatively ignorant about scientific topics - but not afraid to vote on them. Students enjoyed looking around their own world for live sources. -- Nancy Mays War words: Writing about the military This essay comes after a semester of reading and looking at issues and contexts that define or influence gender roles in our country. The military seems to be the apex of gender construction, but I let the students go in most any direction for this one, including terrorism or women under the Taliban. All kinds of responses. Write a 10-12-page research paper that explores one particular theme concerning war, the military, post-war culture, etc. We have read texts about men and women affected by warfare, but now I would like you to personalize your research and focus on one idea about which you would like to learn more, make an argument about, or reevaluate your thinking on the subject. Some issues you might choose to consider:
Please feel free to pursue other issues, especially concerning race or gender. Formatting Requirements: 10-12 double-spaced pages, one-inch margins all the way around, 12-point font (such as Times New Roman), no cover page. In the upper left corner, place your name, my name, course description, and date (there is an example of this MLA Format on p. 69 in Rules for Writers). Include an original title, centered on the page. Please insert page numbers. Use MLA citations for quotations and borrowed ideas and language (examples on pp. 402-412 in Rules for Writers). Turn in your rough draft with your final.
Because so much of the grade in the majority of our courses is determined by what students write, it only seems fair to devote a good deal of time to hands-on discussions of what we think good writing, in this context, looks like. By not discussing student writing and our specific responses (marginal comments; end-comments) publicly, we mystify the main criteria used for grading our students. This is true, for me, for every class I teach, but let me give an example from last semester. Apart from non-fiction texts by Bill Bryson, Nick Hornby, and Virginia Woolf, student texts were the main texts in the class I just taught in London, "London Literary Non-Fiction." We approached the class by thinking about relationships between and among personal, professional, and cultural ways of thinking and we worked towards publishable essays that were grounded in a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings (!) revised in the cooler light of reflection. In the context, it made sense to use Wordsworth's ideas about the composing process because the first assignment had each student choosing a bridge, standing on it, and writing in response to whatever struck. A number quickly figures out that W/W.'s "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, Sept 3, 1802" is etched in large letters, welcoming visitors to "The London Eye" (a large ferris wheel just down-river from Westminister). They brought the first, raw drafts to class, read them in a round-robin group of four, making comments and suggestions, identifying the most compelling parts and asking for more wherever it seemed appropriate; then they did some fact-based research about the bridge and its environs, as appropriate to the directions they were already going in, and went back to their plumbing-challenged accommodations to reflect and revise. Then, back to the classroom with the second draft, a different group of four, and a different set of suggestions for reading (the suggestions for reading and responding were developed at the beginning of each draft-session in conversation with the students): each reader was asked, in the case of the "bridge" essay, to write comments in the margins and an end-comment making two or three main suggestions for revision/development. Then one more revision at home and the essay was handed in. In the case of the bridge essay (we also worked on essays written at some kind of memorial, on a form of public transport, and inside a building of their choosing), I read the first draft while they were working towards the second draft, then met each student in an individual conference before the second draft was due. Throughout, we avoided comments on grammar, punctuation, etc., working on the premise that revision is about ideas and that the "Strunk and White" stage is only really appropriate to the final stages of the writing process (the last 5%?). I asked them to edit and proofread before the final version was handed in. Let me just say that a number of the essays produced by this process are truly magnificent, some because the students grew so much during the semester, others because they provide exceptional commentary on the experiences of American students in London mediating between cultures, academic conventions, and personal issues. But then I suppose I would say that. -- Steven Dilks, Ph.D., associate professor of English
My main goal is always to give students rhetorical tools they can use to generate and re-vision writing. I primarily use student writing to illustrate very narrow and specific aspects of writing. Usually, I'll select a passage as an example of narrative, descriptive, argumentative, textual reference, etc. writing. We'll discuss how a particular rhetorical choice relates to the writer's overall intent. I rarely go over an entire essay unless I'm highlighting topics such as direction, movement, depth, breadth, flow or transition. By limiting myself to specific passages and topics, I force myself to be concrete about writing. Instead of saying, "This is great writing. See! See? Please, see." I say "This is an effective use of personal narrative to introduce the complicated emotions involved in an issue such as abortion." -- Patrick Putenney, UMKC Learning from their mistakes: Reading gaffs out loud One thing I have found that really works is to use their own gaffs and mistakes from essays to show them where they go wrong. My students have said that it makes it easy to remember their mistakes; and they have had really good senses of humor about it. For example, when student repeat themselves incessantly in an essay, read it (without the student's name and with apologies when they recognize themselves) so they can hear it happening. I found that use of student writing really does work and students seem to appreciate it. -- Vanessa Everhart |
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