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Seeing Around the Bend Before You Go Around It: Sequencing Assignments. Incorporating Writing in the FYEC. How We Might See Their Writing. A better way to see it?. In a nutshell: Plan, plan, plan….
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Seeing Around the Bend Before You Go Around It:Sequencing Assignments Incorporating Writing in the FYEC
In a nutshell:Plan, plan, plan… Using feeder assignments helps students hone acquired skills and to see writing as a cumulative process. The more preparation and support you offer a writing assignment, the more likely you are to be pleased with the results. The goal is critical self-distance (not necessarily writing perfection).
Writing choices for your FYC • How closely do you want to work with your 185 instructor? • Do you want to offer revision opportunities as a way of improving student writing? • How much class time will you devote to paper preparation? • Do you want to sequence assignments so that they build on one another?
Sample Sequence (handout p. 1) Typically, the first assignment in 185 is a summary. I look for something that is “academic,” student-relevant, and provocative. Attendant skillset: • Critical reading; note taking and marginalia • Introduction and integration of quotations • Begin parsing simple arguments This isn’t a pro forma exercise for freshmen!
Sample Sequence (handout p. 1) Next in the sequence is a critique. Essentially, summary plus critical evaluation of a source. Attendant skillset: • Reinforcement of summary skills, plus: • Stages of thought; organization; argument building • Supporting with evidence • Recognizing fallacies • Strategies of persuasion (ethos, logos, pathos) • Objectivity vs. opinion
Sample Sequence (handout p. 2) Following the critique in the sequence is an analysis. This assignment will draw on summary (especially in providing “textual” support), and the argument-making process of critique. Now the students are launched and will engage in their own critical process.
Sample Sequence (handout p. 2) The previous assignments in the sequence were feeders for this one. A fourth tier might be the research-based capstone. Analysis Critique Summary
An exercise in planning Proposed FYC objective: Students will have three options for their major culminating exercise. One group will trace their ancestry through a series of oral history interviews and present a genealogy workshop. Another group will host film “readings” and present critical analysis of the construction of film as text. The last group will focus on a carefully selected installation of presentation of objects in a local museum or other institution for preservation. They will explicate how the institution stages local history or culture.
The common threads • Students will undertake a critical analysis of how history is constructed, remembered, and staged. • Examining various ways in which "southernness" has been constructed and contested. • Paying particular attention to the structures of identification proposed by texts—literary and historical, in varied genres.
Following the same sequence • For the summary: a reading that reflects on how narratives are constructed; subjectivity; memory; southern identity • Perhaps a reading from Edward Ball’s Slaves in the Family; Ernest Gaines’s The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman • Accompany with clips from African American Lives • Good starter material for all three groups, esp. oral history
Critique Brainstorming • Will perhaps gear this one toward the institutional memory (plantations and museums) group. • Needs to be something students can react to (Wendell Berry verged on the offensive!). • Reading: perhaps a chapter from Confederates in the Attic on a contested form of remembrance (reenactment, Confederate memorial days, monuments), along with a Faulkner story demonstrating how towns create collective memory. Or William Byrd and field trip.
Analysis Brainstorming • If I use the same 185 template for critical analysis then I’ll look to film and text. • This will serve the third group. • An obvious choice: a reading of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind along with the film. • But will generate other pairs for students who may be interested in other topics.
The payoff • To use the composition term of art, the writing process becomes recursive and self-reinforcing. • Students can approach their final projects with a measure of confidence, and model new ways of interpreting familiar artifacts, texts, and institutions. • Critical thinking is a work in progress in the FYC.
Other suggestions for planning better freshman writing With a view to writing across the curriculum, and tested 185 strategies, you might consider: • Offering workshops and revision opportunities • Using student examples frequently • Involving students in rubric generation • Building in prewriting • Conferencing
Offering workshops and revision opportunities • See p. 3 of handout • Need not be time-consuming and tends to significantly improve content quality • The contemporary wisdom in comp/rhet suggests commenting only on drafts, with a view to revisions.
Using student examples frequently • See p. 4 of handout • Lowers stigma • You can vet students submissions in advance (pick a good one and request a sample) • John Bean observes that students often say they “learn more about writing from models feedback than from traditional comments” (Engaging Ideas, 1996)
Involving students in rubric generation • See pages 6 and 7 of handout • “Strong papers will …”
Building in prewriting • See pages 5 and 8 • But simply earmarking some class time for prewriting can be helpful: parse the writing prompt and use one chunk of prewriting as a feeder.
Conferencing • Study: Amount of time spent reading your feedback… • You don’t have to be a comp teacher to know it: Fifteen minutes of targeted, tailored writing advice can do more than fifteen classes of writing technique!
