Hi! next week, we will be meeting in the President’s Conference Room (N318– FANCY!)
Here are next week’s readings: First is a VERY short reading from Bad Ideas About Writing (and a reading you might be able to use with your students if you like,) called “Teaching Grammar Improves Writing” by Patricia A. Dunn. The second is: “Making a Case for Rhetorical Grammar” by Laura R. Micciche.
One thing I’d like us to think about for discussion is: Micciche’s students already have a pretty strong grasp of Standard Written Edited English (SWEE) when they perform these rhetorical analyses on texts. How might you use this idea of “rhetorical grammar” to teach writing here at City Tech?
Please also (as a comment on this post) write up EITHER:
- an exercise/ assignment that you do to teach reading/annotation/vocabulary strategies OR
- a concern or problem you have with teaching reading.
Also, the forums on grammar/ engagement/ modes are still up. We’ll be talking about grammars next week– if you have issues or concerns you’d like to cover, post something in that forum.
One thing that I like to do for teaching annotation is to show students the research on the benefits of annotation. In one of the first classes of the semester, I ask students to talk about their experiences with annotations, what instructors have taught them to do in the past, etc. This opens up a conversation about how annotation is something that we get taught to do, but it has seemed time-consuming, not useful, etc.
Then I talk about research that I’ve found on notetaking. Here are a couple links that I’ve used:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/10/09/162401053/a-lively-mind-your-brain-on-jane-austen
^ I especially like talking to them about the study from the NPR article; the finding was that brain activity looks totally different depending on whether we do close reading or casual reading. I use this as a springboard to talk about the fact that there are many ways to read, but reading closely shapes the connections that our brains make.
My hope is that showing the research gets students excited about the “why” of annotation before we dive into how to do it.
A concern that I have with teaching reading is a question of motivation. My students demonstrate that they are familiar with (having been previously taught) multiple reading strategies including annotation and other forms of content and genre analysis (without necessarily the vocabulary that we are using in this course). However, they also demonstrate a persistent resistance (bordering on unwillingness) to actually perform those strategies with the assigned readings. I would prefer not to have to go student by student each day to check whether or not they have highlighted and annotated their readings when I could be using that time to go through a deeper level analysis. Is there some method to ensure compliance with a less policing strategy?
A concern that I have with teaching reading is a question of motivation. My students demonstrate that they are familiar with (having been previously taught) multiple reading strategies including annotation and other forms of content and genre analysis (without necessarily the vocabulary that we are using in this course). However, they also demonstrate a persistent resistance (bordering on unwillingness) to actually perform those strategies with the assigned readings. I would prefer not to have to go student by student each day to check whether or not they have highlighted and annotated their readings when I could be using that time to go through a deeper level analysis. Is there some method to ensure compliance with a less policing strategy?
My method for teaching grammar has been to put into the assignment that students must proofread out loud. They speak better than they write, like most if not all of us. They also can hear a lot of errors that way. I also have them write something collectively. After that, we look at it without knowing who wrote what. They generated it, but nobody’s singled out. I have them rewrite sentences to make them better. This way grammar is through immersion and through learning together. They’ll also be doing a presentation on a grammar system in the latter half of the term.