Thinking and Q's on Swagger-isnky and Chief Rief

General Reactions

First of all, I want to emphasize that the general consensus on more constructive, collaborative, and open-ended assignments has its obvious merits in the instruction of writing. It's a wonderful and messy process that can't be fully developed with the rigidly codified structures that I knew as a middle and high school student. As a product of less engaging and constructive writing instruction, I feel that I have some authority in declaring older modes as destructive to the confidence, creativity, and originality that develop a good writer into a great writer. Rief's conception of the Writer's-Reader's Notebook (WRN) fosters support for student voices in a way that is unparalleled in my academic history, so I fully intend on integrating that into my future teaching. Somehow, I'd like to pair that with the portfolios that Smagorinsky describes in such depth (maybe using pages from the WRN as elements of the portfolio could work). Also, the collaborative approach to constructing student texts through peer editing and different group activities appears rich with developmental opportunities.

Having said all that, however, such open-endedness does play to a few of my anxieties about teaching due to its inherently unpredictable nature. The texts tend to present this approach as vastly under-appreciated in schools and complete rarities within the profession, which could lead to some rather difficult adjustment periods for students. They might even need to be weaned off of their reliance on structures rather than thrown into the fire of such open prompts as the authors (Smagorisnky especially) appear to present. Just reading some of Smagorinksy's hypothetical prompts had me verging on paralysis of choice, and I'm a graduate student. "To show your engagement with this play, create an interpretive text in any form of your choice" (Smagorinsky 91). Anxiety-inducing. Love the sentiment, but for my own sake I'd have to wade into student freedom over the course of a few months or years before I could be so bold in my assignments.

Questions

The amount of choice students have in both Rief's and Smagorinsky's conceptions of writing instruction seem to leave open the possibility that students miss out on information that they don't know they're curious about, because they haven't been exposed to it yet. How do you ensure with such student-driven model that students will be exposed to each of the various styles and genres of writing that they need to experience (as per different school, district, state, and federal requirements)? I'm not sure I've wrapped my head around the degree to which students have choice in the classes, because that aspect is so heavily covered in each of the texts we've read. Basically, I'm still left wondering: where exactly should I draw the line between appropriate challenges and unreasonable expectations for my students and for myself as new initiate to the profession? Without an actual classroom of students to engage with at the moment, this has proven a difficult concept for me. 

Teaching and Lesson Planning Reflection

The Planning Stages

At first, Crime and Punishment seemed less like the title of our selection and more like a description of our experience planning for such a dense text. The first planning session, which took place in class immediately after receiving our copies of the text, consisted almost entirely of Lisa and me struggling to find meaning in the text for ourselves. After the brief session, we stood in awe of the complexity of the text which we were expected to use in a high school class. 

When we reconvened a few days later, we had each processed the material and came ready with a few possible entry points into the text. Taking the common themes between us, we started on our first attempt at a lesson plan by defining the context in which our lessons would occur. Namely, we thought we could teach Crime and Punishment in a unit about justice with it as our focus and other satellite texts to complement the development of the idea. From there, we found standards which might apply to that idea, and we started crafting the first of perhaps four different approaches to engaging the material. Each time we got about halfway done with a lesson, it would either focus too narrowly and stall out or it would balloon in scope and become impossible to manage in one day's plan.Creating a lesson that posed an engaging challenge which the students could realistically make strides toward within one class period proved a somewhat difficult task. 

Ultimately, we found what seemed to be a reasonable goal, which abandoned the entire context and used entirely different standards from the first attempt. We would use the text as a mentor text to teach methods for determining the meaning of words in context. In order to emphasize the importance of defining words within a context, we breached covered the concept of connotation. If students can understand the affect of word choice, then they will be more likely to see the importance of contextual meaning. We then found the standards which connected to contextual meaning, and then filled out the skeleton of our plan. 

Beginning with the text in mind, as opposed to beginning with the standard, made the planning process more difficult. It would've come more naturally if I had free reign in determining which text promoted my goal rather than which goal was promoted by my text. The disorienting nature of the situation had its benefits, though. By beginning with the text, it helped promote my thinking as a teacher. I had to read with the mindset of "what can I use from this?" just like I was reading a book on teaching strategies. 

The Practice

Taking it from the top, the hook went on a little long, so the lesson would've been relatively abbreviated by the time we got to the text itself. Our lesson plan could have benefited from listing the times intended for each activity, so we could more accurately gauge the flow of the lesson. The PowerPoint especially seemed rushed after the hook. Student involvement in the process still existed, but in a completely different capacity due to the increased pace. Rather than participating in the learning, they mostly listened to what we said or read what we had typed up for them. In both the short video segment and the PowerPoint segment of the lesson, we could have been slightly more clear about what students needed to do (i.e. write down the information we conveyed). Overall, I'm quite happy with the lesson we produced and implemented. and my main takeaways are that I need to work on timing and direct instructions to the students.