Using “Writing to Learn”

Informal and short writing assignments to get students involved

OUE Writing Workshop, Emory University, Joonna Smitherman Trapp (2014)

Action and Motion

Action~• Expresses the will and intention of the actor• In legitimate actions we make for ourselves a new

character—a new person

“The agent is an author of his acts, which are descended from him, being good progeny if he is good, or bad progeny if he is bad, wise progeny is he is wise, silly progeny if he is silly. And, conversely, his acts can make him or remake him in accordance with their nature. They would be his product and/or he would be theirs.

~Kenneth Burke

Using Writing as Action

"[Language] can move us toward what is good; it can move us toward what is evil; or it can, in hypothetical third place, fail to move us at all. . . . But any utterance is a major assumption ofresponsibility."

~Richard M. Weaver, The Ethics of Rhetoric (1953)

“As teachers we can choose between (a) sentencing students to thoughtless mechanical

operations and (b) facilitating their ability to think.

If students' readiness for more involved thought processes is bypassed in favor of jamming more facts and figures into their heads, they will stagnate at the lower levels of thinking.

But if students are encouraged to try a variety of thought processes in classes, they can, regardless of their ages, develop considerable mental power. Writing is one of the most effective ways to develop thinking.”

"Writing to Learn Means Learning to Think" Syrene Forsman. (p. 162)

ConsiderWrite for a few minutes about a time when you were asked to write or do something in a class and you realized that the action of writing or speaking changed you or taught you about yourself as a thinker or as a person. How did you “act” yourself into a new way of being?

• Grade school or High School?• College?• Grad School?• Outside of these schooled places? picture--http://www.penparadise.co.uk/prodzoomimg165.jpg

Ways to Create Meaning

Transactional:(Writing to communicate to others)

Helping readers to• Reconsider• Inform • Instruct• Persuade• Accomplish something• Act

Writing to Learn:(Writing for ourselves, expressive)

Ordering and representing experience for understanding • As a way of knowing• As a tool for discovering• As a way of shaping

meaning• As a way to reach for

understandingFulwiler & Young Language Connections: Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum, James Britton (x)

Writing to LearnBritton’s vision of how expressive discourse works—

“…the form of language in which we ‘first-draft’ our tentative or speculative ideas. In other words, it is an essential mode for learning—for the tentative exploration of new areas of knowledge” (26).

Britton, James. “How We Got Here.” New Movements in the Study and Teaching of English. Ed. Nicholas Bagnall. London: Maurice Temple Smith, 1973.

Writing to Learn• calls out the internally persuasive voices of the

self to engage with the more authoritarian voices of the course.

• provides a record to aid memory (a kind of note-taking), to think, work out problems, discover ideas, engage with readings, and converse with each other.

• invites the student to collaborate in making meaning in the classroom.

Writer

Teacher

Course Texts Writer’s Experiences

Writer’s Research Class notes and Discussions

ConsiderWhat activities are already present in your class(es) which fall into this “Writing to Learn” category?• Writing?• Speaking?• Exercise on Blackboard/on the web?

Take a few minutes and write about one exercise that you think works well. Theorize a bit about why it works well. What does it do for student learning? For forwarding the goals of that class?

Peter Elbow~ Writing without TeachersPosits a “place where there is learning but no teaching. It is possible to learn something and not be taught. It is possible to be a student and not have a teacher” (ix).

Teachers are “more useful when it is clearer that they are not necessary” (x).

Writing to Learn activities allow the students to make their own understanding in the context of the space created and supported by the teacher.

General ideas about W2L

• Usually shorter assignments• Impromptu-like feel; “doing” • Informal and often not-graded • Can be done out of class or during class time• Used to help students think through key

concepts or ideas presented in a course• Used to reinforce with practice important

concepts or learning• Can be used to foster discussion

W2L—Student perspective

A good writing assignment:

• Addresses me as an active participant in discourse

• Helps me form and reform my own attempts to understand and think

http://www.teachingcollegeenglish.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/line-drawing-computer-student-300x257.jpg-

W2L—Student perspective

A good writing assignment:• Is given in receptive conditions• Channels of communication are open • Others care about what I have to say• There’s a chance for response and

feedback• Listening happens from all participants in

discourse community

W2L—Student perspective

A good writing assignment:• Is provocative—it gets me going!• Lets me say something meaningful to me—the

questions of the assignment should become my questions as I write• Relates to purpose of course, and I should be

able to identify with that purpose• Lets me do something meaningful for myself and

with others

W2L—Student perspective

A good writing assignment:• Helps me focus or explore an idea or

concept• Allows me to practice and learn the

important forms of understanding in the course• Allows me to stumble without affecting my

final evaluation in the course or the teacher’s good opinion of me

Samples of Writing Activities

(see handout for fuller listing of ideas)

1—Shorter, more informal activities

2—Shorter, more formal activities

Samples of more Informal Writing Activities (on handout)

The WAC Clearinghouse is an amazing and constantly growing resources, including assignment ideas for W2Learn.http://wac.colostate.edu/intro/pop2d.cfm

More Informal Writing ActivitiesShort in-class writings—5-10 minutes• Use as a way to begin discussion (can be directed with prompt

or not)• Use to spur lagging discussion—help them think of what to say• Use to give for questions or expressions of confusion• Use at end to sum up lecture or discussion• Use at end to set goals for a research project or some other

project for the week or weekend• Use at end of peer review session to set revision goals on a

paper or project

More Informal Writing Activities

Out of Class Writings. Ask for x number of pages weekly—open ended, but related to class—suggest that they might • summarize lectures or readings, • wrestle or explain why something in the reading is hard, • disagree with something in class, • raise a question, • make connections with learning out of class or in other

classes, Sometimes teacher will be more directive and suggest sometimes a prompt or task. These can be kept in digital forum or a traditional journal, or handed-in each time.

More Informal Writing Activities

• Double-entry journals (dialectical journals)

• Contemporary Issues Journals or “Sightings” journals

• Exam prep journals (early in semester hand out essay exam questions for the semester—have students use journaling time to explore answers to questions)

• Writing one sentence only—a thesis writing exercise, summary of an essay’s point. Have them write it in a Question, a statement, or elaborated in a paragraph

Ideas for Informal Writing Activities• Call these writings something—Biologist’s Journal,

Reader’s Logs, Thought Experiments, Short Assignments, Small Writings, Musings, blog posts—but something that will imbue them with a sense of importance in your class

• You might give an overall grade for this category based on the checks you assign or the 1-10 grade you give

• Explain in the syllabus and remind students during the semester why these small writings are important and what they are learning from them

More formal W2Learn: The Micro-Theme

• Short formal assignments, usually less than 250 words• Quick and easy to grade• A small amount of writing built on a great deal of

thinking• Provides much provocation!• Problem-based rather than task-based• Sets up rhetorical context for problem• Allows some freedom for choice in student

response

The Micro-Theme (Psych)

Prof. X opens cat food every morning. His cats run into the kitchen purring and meowing and rubbing his legs. What examples of classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and social learning are at work in this scene? Note that both the cats and the prof might be exhibiting conditioned behavior here.

You and fellow classmates have been arguing over this problem over coffee, and you are convinced that your colleagues are confused about the concepts. Write a one page essay (250 words or less) to set them straight.

More formal W2Learn: Believing & Doubting

• Teacher develops arguable propositions (not having one answer but rather many variables) to engage the students with disciplinary controversies• Students take these propositions and bring

evidence and reasoning to bear defending or denying• Can move into oral debate/discussion in class• Can then ask students to take the other side

Believing & DoubtingCultural Studies: In recent years, advertising has make enormous gains in portraying women as strong, independent, and intelligent.

Literature: The overriding religious view expressed in Hamlet is an existential atheism similar to Sartre’s.

Psychology: Schizophrenia is a brain disease or Schizophrenia is a learned behavior.

More formal W2Learn: The Reflection Paper

Can take several forms:1) Reader-response paper2) Personal Reaction paper3) Reflection on the journey of learning over a whole semester

or the course of the development of a project

• Exploratory, tentative, personal, subjective—exploring the connections between course materials and the life experiences and development of the student

• Also designed to help student find a way to speak back to a reading or text when it is troubling or challenging

More formal W2Learn: Other alternative assignmentsHave students write a different genre than might be normally required in the subject area• a poem from the perspective of a schizophrenic

or other personality type that might seem foreign to the student• a dialog between two historical figures on

opposite sides of a conflict or debate• A monologue from someone they might have

interviewed for a project for information

More formal W2Learn: Other alternative assignments• Have students rewrite the ending or beginning of

a novel or story and reflect on what that does to the text• A podcast in response to a scholarly essay the

class has discussed.• A myth or parable to express a philosophical or

moral choice or cultural ideal• An autobiography or process journal to show

development in thinking in an area

Handling the Paper Load• Remember--informal and often impromptu!

• NOT about correctness—just them trying and doing—a check or grade 1-10.

• Use them in class—don’t collect or do and use as an attendance/participation record

• Pick up a few select students’ every day or every other day. Don't read every word, but skim quickly to identify tasks students might need help with--a reading that bogged down in class discussion ,a page that has very little written, a page which might be useful to use in a blog post or email to the class, etc.

Handling the Paper Load

• Have students share in class—mark as a check because they were there and participated—make it a writing and speaking assignment

• Ask students to select their best or most provocative WTL writing for you to review. Or include a few of their best in a final portfolio.

• Ask students to post provocative questions or summary/analysis of readings on an electronic bulletin board or Web forum for class comment.

Handling the Paper Load• Have students keep and turn them in with the project to

which the small writings are leading—part of the project presentation. Can be evidence of a growth in a reflection letter attached to their large project (process and meta-thinking)

• Make small writings part of their website for the class—daily or weekly blog posts, praxis blogs, critical thinking posts, reading posts that the teaching can count for grading and simply respond in class to a select few (or have the students responsible for responding in class some way)

ConsiderTake some time and consider one of your classes. Perhaps one that students find difficult.

•What small writings during the semester might you offer to help build to that assignment? • How can you get them going? • Provoke their thinking?

picture--http://www.penparadise.co.uk/prodzoomimg165.jpg

ReferencesBean, John C. Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom. 2nd Ed. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2011.

Britton, James. Language and Learning. Penguin,1970. And all his work.

Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives. New York, NY: Prentice-Hall, 1950.

Forsman, Syrene. "Writing to Learn Means Learning to Think.“ http://wac.colostate.edu/intro/index.cfm

Fulwiler, Toby and Art Young. Language Connections: Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum. http://wac.colostate.edu/books/language_connections/

Parker, Robert P. and Vera Goodkin. The Consequences of Writing. Upper Montclair, NJ: Boyton /Cook. 1987.

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/prebuilt/pdf/wac/wac-basic_principles.pdf includes a bank of assignments in various disciplines

WAC Clearinghouse Bibliography on Writing to Learn:http://wac.colostate.edu/intro/pop4f.cfm