Using

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Using Writing to Learn

• Informal and short writing assignments to get
  students involved

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

• Action
• Expresses the will and intention of the actor
• In legitimate actions we make for ourselves a new
  charactera 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. Kenne
  th Burke

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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 of
• responsibility."
•                        
• Richard M. Weaver, The Ethics of Rhetoric (1953)

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• 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)

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Consider

• Write 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?

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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 understanding

Fulwiler Young Language Connections Writing
and Reading Across the Curriculum, James Britton
(x)
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Writing to Learn

• Brittons 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 learningfor
  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.
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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.

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Writer
Class notes and Discussions
Writers Research
Writers Experiences
Course Texts
Teacher
10
Consider

• What 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?

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Peter Elbow Writing without Teachers

• Posits 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.

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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

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W2LStudent 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

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W2LStudent perspective

• A good writing assignment
• Is given in receptive conditions
• Channels of communication are open
• Others care about what I have to say
• Theres a chance for response and feedback
• Listening happens from all participants in
  discourse community

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W2LStudent perspective

• A good writing assignment
• Is provocativeit gets me going!
• Lets me say something meaningful to methe
  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

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W2LStudent 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 teachers good
  opinion of me

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Samples of Writing Activities

• (see handout for fuller listing of ideas)
• 1Shorter, more informal activities
• 2Shorter, more formal activities

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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

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More Informal Writing Activities

• Short in-class writings5-10 minutes
• Use as a way to begin discussion (can be directed
  with prompt or not)
• Use to spur lagging discussionhelp 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

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More Informal Writing Activities

• Out of Class Writings. Ask for x number of pages
  weeklyopen ended, but related to classsuggest
  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.

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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 semesterhave
  students use journaling time to explore answers
  to questions)
• Writing one sentence onlya thesis writing
  exercise, summary of an essays point. Have them
  write it in a Question, a statement, or
  elaborated in a paragraph

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Ideas for Informal Writing Activities

• Call these writings somethingBiologists
  Journal, Readers Logs, Thought Experiments,
  Short Assignments, Small Writings, Musings, blog
  postsbut 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

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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

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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.

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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

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Believing Doubting

• Cultural 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 Sartres.
• Psychology
• Schizophrenia is a brain disease or Schizophrenia
  is a learned behavior.

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More formal W2Learn The Reflection Paper

• Can take several forms
• Reader-response paper
• Personal Reaction paper
• Reflection on the journey of learning over a
  whole semester or the course of the development
  of a project
• Exploratory, tentative, personal,
  subjectiveexploring 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

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More formal W2Learn Other alternative
assignments

• Have 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

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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

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Handling the Paper Load

• Remember--informal and often impromptu!
• NOT about correctnessjust them trying and
  doinga check or grade 1-10.
• Use them in classdont 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.

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Handling the Paper Load

• Have students share in classmark as a check
  because they were there and participatedmake 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.

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Handling the Paper Load

• Have students keep and turn them in with the
  project to which the small writings are
  leadingpart 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
  classdaily 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)

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Consider

• Take 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?

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References Bean, John C. Engaging Ideas The
Professors 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/languag
e_connections/ Parker, Robert P. and Vera
Goodkin. The Consequences of Writing. Upper
Montclair, NJ Boyton /Cook. 1987. http//www.qui
nnipiac.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/p
op4f.cfm