Day 5: Nancy

Day 5

If our end of the day debriefing session accurately summed up the day, Monday, August 4th was a day of gratitude, connection, disconnection, and reconnection.

After the first week of blissful narrative writing and the occasional allusion to those standards – the Common Core ones; have you heard of them? – we made a shift to a new rhetorical mode of writing for week two: informative. What do I mean by rhetorical mode? Read on, dear reader, to connect rhetorical mode with its definition, to disconnect genre from everything you used to think and teach about it, to reconnect with the wonderful subject of English and your desire to write, and to calm yourself with a little gratitude for heuristics.

Humor in Writing that Aims to Inform?

After short check-ins, as per routine, the blog is read aloud to begin the day; however, Cindy’s blog boldly goes where no OWP blog has gone before with its Star Trek references. She keeps the class in perpetual giggles.  Her log was voted by Andra as “most entertaining,” and Margaret takes the opportunity to pull a wonderful teacher move by asking us to consider whether this is informational writing or not. Of course she won’t tell us the answer right then; we must ponder this question for the next couple of hours before we get to the answer via Dr. Beaufort’s lesson (I’ll tell you now, though): yes, it is informative. One might be skeptical of those who would add humor to any writing that attempts to inform, but such a skeptic would be distracting himself/herself/xeself from the main purpose of the piece. It is possible that some people were shocked to discover that informative writing can be fun, creative, and silly.

The Calming Effect of Gratitude

With Sasha’s gratitude Journal writing warmup, we learned that, “Gratitude has a powerful psychological effect on the body,” and that “Feeling thankful and appreciative...releases dopamine.” Energy, attentiveness, and readiness to learn are among the listed benefits that we felt when she led us through a breathing exercise, helped us focus on the last time we said thank you, and then gave us the following writing options:

• create an acrostic poem using the name of someone you’re grateful for, 

• list the top 10 things you are grateful for, 
• write a thank-you note

I wrote a thank you note, and my favorite line follows: Thank you for the wonderful gifts you have given me – the camping gear, the best dress I own, the Christmas ornaments that will follow me wherever I go, the cat books I love to catch my nose in.

Other people shared their gratitude for (apologies for the incomplete list):

Sasha: music 

Kim: a genuine Jalin (please help me with the spelling!) hug

Cindy: the opportunity to interact with young people

Jeanne: cherry tomatoes and hummingbirds

Carrie: night cycles and light seasons

Andra: the opportunity to work here and work with Margaret

Margaret: offered help, even when it doesn’t help 

Doesn’t simply reading the list make you feel a little calmer? Sasha emphasized the idea that waiting to celebrate and appreciate until the end of something (a school year or a summer camp, for example), is an uneccessary wait! Why not improve the health of your students and build community right now? (Disambiguation: the previous sentence is a rhetorical question, which expects no answer, because it is assumed that everyone can see it needs no answer; we all value health and community.)

* Housekeeping note: the warmups should be 15 minutes, and everyone should post his/her warmup on Moodle!

Morning Lesson: Teaching Genres

The Process of Rewiring the Teaching Brain, or Disconnecting and Reconnecting Genre and Mode

At 9:40am, on a Monday morning, mind you, Dr. Anne Beaufort swooped down on an unsuspecting class of OWP writers, and realigned our heads. During her two minute introductory bio, she explained what called her to return to teaching while working in the corporate world – she saw very smart people who could not write a business report. This prompted research to determine what we are missing in terms of writing instruction. She asked herself the question, “Shouldn’t it be about more than passing our courses?”

As the most fundamental method for understanding how to compose a piece of text, she asked us to focus on genre.

We defined it as:

category

classification

“kind of”

purpose

changing channels (thanks for the laugh eliciting line, Carrie!)

If we want our students to begin to understand genre, we can easily ask them to name genres of music and film (and literature).

Why does genre matter? To illustrate why it matters, Dr. Beaufort gets us giggling again with a dirty trick. The poem she presents and has us analyze, beginning with the line, “No man’s perfect,” is actually Virgo’s horoscope. We conclude that apparently genre does matter, since when we read it as a horoscope, it actually makes sense (we do not debate whether horoscope writing is good writing or not).

Genre knowledge is affecting us all the time, and so we brainstorm genres we write in:

Genres we write	Genres students write
Book review parent letters journal rubric ethnography tv script - comedy professional email personal email grocery lists comic strip facebook posts text messages (social media)	Book review parent letter journal Stories summaries essays rap email poetry love letters facebook posts  notes

Dr. Beaufort explained our goal as using genre as a frame for understanding, dissecting, and analyzing different types of writing tasks. The issue is transferring what students learned to real life. Genre helps us figure out a new writing task.

What is the difference between genre and rhetorical modes? Here’s the definition you’ve been waiting for!

Rhetorical modes are language tools we use. The modes are what we use IN genres (see the picture of the diagram below).

Examples of rhetorical modes:

narrative           argument

exposition        classification

description       cause/effect

Postcard writing is an example of a genre of writing (it’s possible to write in narrative, informative and descriptive rhetorical modes on a postcard, by the way), and so we dove into a wonderful lesson on postcard writing in order to better understand genre. Here’s the table we filled in together after writing our own postcards and analyzing the postcards she brought for us to use for our research:

	Genre 1 - postcard	What we noticed about postcards after reading the ones handed to us
Purpose/Audience	what they know our connection who else will see it (it’s public, so Amy writes in code)	(early ones are check-ins “I’m thinking of you” vs. mid era ones that were filled with information, vs. later ones, which explain places and travels more Sense of obligation (maintenance of the relationship) Keep in touch - “wish you were here”
Content	relation to image thank you/ blessing brief “you have to find the soul of wit” - John (who picked a dirty postcard) simple  location and weather list	• last letter received (or length of time since last correspondence) health sights seen documentation
Structure	Stop before long sticker that will cover the bottom	fragments  brief non sequential sentences (subject jumps) use all available space no room for paragraphs
Linguistic features	formal vs. informal	style:  intimate, formal tone begin sentences with verbs abbreviation

She brings us through a few key points, including the idea that postcard writing is a “received form” – none of us made up the postcard genre writing. As we dig for historical clues, we note that using the title Mr, Ms, Mrs, or Miss shows a formality and respect (time stamp), and perhaps is an indication of social status. We also note that the patriarchy is not hidden in older postcards: Mr. and Mrs. (man’s name).

Be Grateful for Heuristics, Despite the Intimidating Name 

The problem with writing assignments is that when we tell students to “write an essay,” we are giving a confusing assignment. When we use heuristics, we have a tool for discovering what the genre is, and how to write it. Hmm, this could be helpful for students, I suppose.

Heuristic - a device or a tool that helps you understand something.

With our heuristic, we must consider these fundamental elements:

*Audience

*Purpose

*What is the established structure?

*What do I need to pay attention to in terms of language?

Review with a better understanding of genre

Heather brought up an interesting overlap in narrative and expository. We can inform and narrate at the same time. We determine that the testing is what is making us break into these categories. Outside of school, it is highly unlikely that a student will be asked to “please write an argument.” 

With an explosion of warmth, we all connect with the joyful throwing out of these restrictive categories. “How many stories are for persuasive purposes?” 

“Yes!”

“Of course!”

“mmHmm”

By showing students how things are not so easily categorized, we’re showing students how to understand writing. Why do we keep teaching in these categories? Because textbooks are there, they want to make money. Even if we don’t use the label, the way we teach categorizes. 

Resources: Writing Outside Your Comfort Zone. Check out page 65 and 66 for The Unfamiliar Genre Project. Andra shows us Exploding Ants to help us see how younger students can do research and understand genre, and reminds us that The Jolly Postman is a wonderful book for showing the different genres of writing.

Using What We Learned

Because she seems to enjoy best practices, Margaret has us brainstorm the concepts we might consider when writing in the informative mode, and genres we might use to write about the writing process, before we do our own prewriting for an informational piece. (Our brainstorming is shown below.)

• 
  

  What concepts might we consider when writing in the informative mode?	What are some genres we might write for about the writing process?  (Consider audience and purpose)
  integrate genres (subjects) interdisciplinary mindfulness audience point of view/voice modeling/mentor texts process	journal article school board presentation teacher blog poem administrator letter parent letter (audience has switched to parents) powerpoint for students or colleagues student handout poster for students rationale rubric that reflects process letter to students about how we approach process in this class

  
  

Book Groups, Response Groups, and Narratives, oh my!

While the morning was packed with mind-whirling information and a general sense of what. did. we. just. learn?, the afternoon passed with relative ease, as we discussed the highlights of our book group books, moved into our response groups to practice good teacher conferencing skills and to gather feedback on whatever piece (either of our two narratives, the new informational piece we just drafted, or an informational piece we brought with us), and then settled in for the fun part...

Becoming human lie detectors!

Actually, it was much more positive than that; we looked for elements of writing that made a narrative piece believable. Of the three writers who had time to share their narratives, all had very believable elements, and the group was split when attempting to determine the true story.

These are some of the reasons we determined that these individual pieces were believable:

Amy W: Good natural dialogue sounds like her. Humor (drinking wine and being 30 years old, learning to ride a bike). “I’m a teacher.” (True details, but also tone of voice.) Her excitement to read it and emotion in it was convincing. She asked herself if this happened, what would it look like and sound like? Since she wants to be a scriptwriter, her brilliance in dialogue makes sense (cue collective “Ooohh” from group).

Cindy: (The real story.) Details of colors and events. (Series of events.) There was an exactness. Places were named (but not distractingly so). 

Kim: “6 in her fears, 16 in her determination” – great line! Kim got emotionally involved in the story (accessed a real emotion), which was convincing. She grounded it in something she could relate to.

We all wanted to hear more narratives, but the clock was relentless in its ticking, so we moved into debriefing, which began with the realization that we are nearly halfway through the writing camp already. 

Debrief:

What are you taking away from this, and what are your questions and concerns? Do we have uncertainty and anxiety?

Amy: How do we approach apathy? How do we make kids want to do work even if it’s not a summative assessment? Take away: I want to work on making the correlation between narrative and expository. 

John: Postcard activity will go well with a primary source examination. Take away: writing. I haven’t done it for a while.

Amy: Anne eliminated the distance between writing and teaching writing for Amy. More concrete time for writing and demo lesson development would be great – hurray! We will do that tomorrow morning (August 5).

Heather: I understand genres and modes more. Feedback on my narrative was helpful. (Third person in a row to use the term “disconnect.”) She referenced Murray’s idea that we write for ourselves. (At this point we started losing people due to the inflexibility of time.)

Sasha: I’m still absorbing a lot of new information. Watching master teachers do their perfected lessons, and then thinking of how my lesson can compare with that is anxiety inducing.

Kim: Perhaps I’m already teaching genre! How nice is that? Writing Essentials is a great book! But how do I also teach what my school requires me to teach?

Cindy: I’m excited to use the heuristic and primary source documents in my teaching! How do I help students help each other?

Jeanne:  What is this portfolio I keep hearing about? What is expected?

Carrie: I did the writing project 24 years ago, and it’s been a lonely road. It is nice to hear contemporaries admit mistakes/fears. Writing is a messy process, and we don’t always validate it.

The day ended with a resounding agreement that writing is messy, that borders and classifications are drawn sometimes to the detriment of teaching and writing, and a general validation that learning and teaching about the writing process is immensely helpful to us all!