DigitalPenny

We often listen to songs on the radio, in our homes, and with friends. Sometimes we feel that the songs we listen to help to identify who we are. Some of us even allow those songs to actually define who we are. Well, I decided to allow students to introduce themselves to their classmates by first writing a prose poem about themselves, and then by allowing them to bring music in that expressed their personalities too. The goal of this assignment was to have the students introduce themselves to other class members, and at the same time to see and hear how we use language to identify or define who we are.

I don’t think that many of the students were up to the task because half the class didn’t show up. At the end of each “artist rendering” I asked the students to evaluate each person’s poem to see if they could identify any of the schemes and tropes that we had discussed.
Although we didn’t get around to everyone, the students told me that they enjoyed the exercise. One student said that it put her in the frame of mind to begin writing. This was another goal that I had hoped to accomplish, getting them on the path to begin to want to write.

At this point, I feel that I need to extend the assignment by one week. I need to change the calendar too. What I didn’t allow time for in the calendar was to allow them to bring their texts into class so that they could discuss it amongst their group members. I need to write that in.

On another note, I think I like having music in the classroom, it lessens the tension.

***Forgot to add this***updated 2/5/05
This morning I went to visit a veteran teacher, Kurt Stavenhagen. Although at this particular time, he was at a point of reviewing notes, I still found the session informative. He began by providing an overview of what the day's objectives were (This was something that I had forgotten. One must provide a roadmap of the objectives for the class period. I think it gives the students a sense of direction and it also allows them to mentally prepare for what is going to happen.) Anyhow, as Kurt explained and explored the chart, he would step away from it and ask the students specific questions. When I say specific, I mean questions that would get them to think seriously about what he was saying. When Kurt came to the row on his chart that listed audience, he asked the students if they believed that audience was important. One student in particular believed that audience didn't matter, that it was the purpose of the document, which was more important. Several students challenged this student's theory, but he stuck to his guns, and even attempted to provide warrants for his claim. Kurt didn't say much at first.

It seemed that his initial reaction was to have the student further explain his point of view. And as that student explained, out of the corner of my eye, I could see other hands rising from the rows against the walls. Well, this discussion went on for about five minutes or more. And although other students disagreed with that one student, I saw Kurt take a back seat and allow the discussion to run it's course. That's teaching. The atmosphere was energetic, and students were engaged. Kurt ended the student's conversations by asking them to hold on to thier thoughts for another class, that he needed to complete the review so that they would not become frustrated with the weekend assignment. I liked that move.

So he went back to the chart, and completed the review. Toward the end of class, he wrapped up by forecasting the homework, and the assignment for Monday's class. Watching Kurt in action, it allowed me to step back and review what techniques I had been using in class, especially to set up and wrap up class sessions. I kept those thoughts in mind as I walked to my own writing class. And when I walked in the door, after getting settled, the first thing I did was setup the objectives for that class session. I've been doing it from that day forward. It really helps.

Posted by Digitalpenny at 03:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

See, last night, I fretted about being able to get my point across about figurative language, and how the author uses it to persuade us. Well, I stayed up pretty late trying to figure out a way to incorporate learning with playing. I like board games.

And one of my favorite board games is Cranium. I decided to use it as a basis for creating a game with learning about figurative language. I thought it was a bit lame, but as I found, the students enjoyed playing it.
I designed the game so that the students would pull a slip of paper from an envelop, read the instructions, and follow whatever the instructions said. The other group members would have to guess what scheme or trope this question applied to. Each time a student would pull a slip, they had to either draw, gesture, or read. The goal of the game was not to get them to memorize the different schemes and tropes, but to be able to recognize that something was going on with the language when they saw it or heard it.

Well, when I got to class, I discussed information from the previous class period. Then separated them into groups, and allowed them to play the game. There were ten questions that each group had to answer. I had planned for this to be a 15 minute game. As I walked around the table, some of the students used their notes, others used their heads (to see how much they had remembered from the reading). At the end of 15 minutes, I asked if they were ready to stop because I had planned another activity. They were so much into the game, they asked if they could finish going through all of the questions. I didn’t get a chance to have them journal, but I think that everyone had fun trying to remember those schemes and tropes.

Posted by Digitalpenny at 03:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last night for homework, the students were supposed to read the second half of the introduction and then a piece on language. I thought to assign the reading on language so that the students would begin to have some sense of how different cultures addressed language.

For example, in the assigned essay, Kingston talked about how she had been silenced by her mother because her mother had cut her tongue off. It wasn’t until after she had taken classes in America that she was able to talk; first through her writing, and then through speaking about her writing. As usual, I had no idea on how to address the essay in class. I really wanted this to work towards my idea behind the rhetorical analysis essay that they have to write for their Unit 1 assignment.

Well, we were in class. The first thing I did was address critical reading strategies that we had talked about in a previous class. Asked if anyone had any questions—there were none—and then I moved right into Kingston. My first question was, “How does Kingston address language in this essay?” I didn’t think that that was a difficult question. And I waited for 30 seconds before I said anything. No one answered. So I attempted to ask the question in a different manner. Still not a word. Then one of the students, Ashley said that she didn’t see how Kingston was addressing language, but she didn’t think that the writing itself was all that good. So we began a dialogue about the writing; I didn’t’ want to go there. To make a long story short, I attempted to explain the essay and my reasoning behind assigning it. Then the students seemed to understand the point of the reading, and how it related to a way of looking at language.

I had them write a journal excerpt about the class experience. I’ve gotta plan a little better. By this I mean that I have to anticipate not only whether they did or did not read the assignment. I have to anticipate that they will not see things as I do. So I have to make them see or begin to see things rhetorically.

Posted by Digitalpenny at 03:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This morning I had a student inform me that she had to drop my class because of a scheduling conflict. I thought to myself, “Well, here we go.”

I questioned whether it was really a scheduling conflict or whether it was the fact that I walked in class on the first day looking bewildered because I couldn’t locate my cell phone. Anyhow, class proceeded as it normally would. We had a chance to discuss the first assignment. I talked about the way Gohsgarian unfolded and related analysis to a way of looking at audience, text, and writer. We also looked at articles from the newspaper, which took up a bulk of the time. We read articles and looked for key instances of what Goshgarian spoke about in his introduction. We also looked for pointers of what Patricia O’Connor discussed in her essay, “Saying is Believing.” As a weekend assignment along with two assigned readings, I asked them to go out and review Syracuse’s Channel 5 website (http://www.wtvh.com/story.asp?stid=12103). This web site presents a short news story, which seems not to be more than two paragraphs. It also includes a video that presents the “live” news story. I found that the video presents more information about the subject, not necessarily store. For example, one story that I viewed, in the written text, it listed two people as source for the story. In the video, the reporter interviewed four people to back her claim. What does this say about news reporting? Are reporters starting to believe that we have come to the point where we no longer read what’s printed? I want my students to ask and to provide answers to questions like this. This is critical reading. Well, I’ll see on Monday if they “get it”.

Posted by Digitalpenny at 03:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today was the first day that I taught my WRT 205 class for the spring semester. I didn’t do as much as I thought I would. I may have given them a bad impression…the idea that I might be just a little unorganized. Well, I walked in with my backpack unzipped, books falling out. I was clearly looking for my cell phone since it had just rang. I was mainly looking for it so that it would not ring in class, but I couldn’t find it. After about one minute of frantically searching, I just stopped, took off my coat and said, “Hello, my name is Aleshia Jefferson.”

I turned to write my name, title of the course, and course section number on the board, and there was nothing to write with. The class had a whiteboard, and I had chalk and visio markers (wrong tools for that particular class). So I ended up prematurely handing out my syllabus so that the students would know my name and what class they had signed up for. I began to ask whether they had questions for me, seeing that I had walked into a classroom made up of majority white and three oriental (one by the way who was ESL; the other two were twins, but their first language was English) students. One student asked whether this was my first semester at the university. Another asked where I was from. Another asked how I graded. All good questions I thought. So I paused, and then continued to introduce myself. Told them where I was from, what I had done before coming here, and then told them why I was at the university. I then asked them to introduce themselves. Afterwards, I read the syllabus, asked if there were any questions, and then paused to give them a moment to ponder. After paging through the syllabus, a few of the students had minor questions; I answered them, and then let them go. By this time, class time was over anyway. Thus, I actually had more planned than we had time to discuss. Great!

Posted by Digitalpenny at 03:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am designing this particular category to supplement the journaling that I'm supposed to do for my WRT 670 course. I have entries that I need to add and a few that I need to create. I'm supposed to journal whatever I want, and it doesn't have to necessarily relate to my WRT 670 course. Here goes.

Posted by Digitalpenny at 09:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)