Group items tagged

In this TED talk video Dave Eggers is talking enthusiastically about free tutoring centers where students receive one-on-one attention from either more experienced peers or teachers who volunteer to go to these centers at least two hours a week. He backs up the need of having individual help by research data (I would be interested to see the primary research) which say that 35-40 hours a year one-on-one attention students can get one grade level higher. The first center was opened to offer help in English and writing. Although there was an issue of trust at first to visit the center, with time and some advertising the center got packed with students. They even published their own writing in a form of a book, which is inspiring as it honors their work, hardship, creativity and thoughts. Now they have 1400 students in the center and they want to grow nationwide. Also, they have a website (http://www.onceuponaschool.org/) where there is somebody to show guidance to those who are interested in starting their own learning center in their town (for their public school students). To me, this is a great idea to inspire students and keep their motivation going in a particular subject. I wonder if they have done research and found out students of what achievement tend to go there, is it possible that those who are already into writing, science, languages, etc, are the ones visiting these centers. I also wonder if the volunteers who are there to help receive any kind training about certain methodology or ground rules.

This article was really interesting because it targeted exactly what I'm doing at the ESL resource center and gave me a lot of insight into what kinds of questions I should be asking students who come in, how I can better understand their writing and most importantly, how I can better help them with their writing. It discussed how as tutors, we should maximize our resources and skills to better help these students. In the ESL resource center, we have such a good mix of backgrounds, that it really helps accomodate the students as we better understand them. This article emphasized pointing out the differences between HOC (Higher Order Content) vs LOC (Lower Order Content) something I have definitely come across in my internship: students coming in focusing solely on grammar, or pronunciation, or content (a rare one.)

This is a handbook for understanding and developing authentic materials suitable for adults published by the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL), which ran out of money and funding sources about four years ago. I've already been sold on the value of authentic materials and tasks, but with this handbook, NCSALL takes that extra step I've been looking for, it gives me some guidelines to create tasks for my own potential classroom. The underlying theme of this text seems to be facilitating students' connections with their own literacy.

In this space leave a 4-5 sentence summary and response to the article. Do your best to tell us not just what the article argues but how it could be useful for us in ENGL 431. Then use tags to categorize the article for us. (When you're in the blue screen, choices for tags will appear below; once published, they'll appear as gray squares above) That way, as we become more interested in particular concepts or issues, we can easily find all of the articles tagged with those specific terms.

This young girl is so brilliant. We as teachers need to have more faith in our students and give over some of the classroom control. A student centered environment needs to be less restrictive and we need to stop underestimating our students abilities.

This article describes how to set up blogs in an educational format. It gives a step by step instructions and even gives a few blogging websites to try. It discusses different ways in which to integrate the blogs into existing curriculum and also states set backs and alterations that were made after students had worked with the blogs for some time. The blogs themselves are not whats necessarily engaging, its the way in which they are used and how they promote community student centered learning.

The article written by ERIC (The Educational Resources Information Center) which I must assume is a part of George Washington Univ. Washington DC. Graduate School of Education and Human Development is a broken down "checklist" of sorts. It addresses six different concerns with grading student's writing. One such concern is one I think we all might have asked ourselves at one point in time, "Why do professors need to construct effective writing assignments?"(3). The answer given to the question was interesting in that it pushed hard for effective peer reviews. While some peer review is helpful the article did address the fact that most students are unaware of how to give effective peer review. The basics of the article concerning peer review are that professors need to help students learn by example and explanation. I thought it interesting as well that the article addressed how professors can avoid giving a grade that they will have to defend after the fact, a problem for professors who grade writing without a series of rewriting stages. The solution offered is, that's right, stages of rewrites with the professor holding off giving a grade for as long as possible. One important idea brought up in the article is that "…the writing assignment should include necessary information about audience and purpose, the two pillars of writing."(3) I often wonder how we focus on the first and not the second. As the article states one of the pillars of writing is purpose, yet we seem to habitually focus on the audience and not give student's a purpose for their writing.

This is an interesting article of a professor describing how he strayed away from the typical freshman comp syllabus to teach a class that would be relevant to the students. He used a current event (the Immigration Debate) that was especially relevant to his students; the majority were Latino/Chicano and lived in Southern California. He starts the article by giving a history of the immigration debate which isn't important to what we're studying. But then he starts talking about his class at the bottom of page 20 (that's where the article starts to get interesting) and describes how he planned his lessons and writing assignments to be centered around this debate. He tried to make the class interesting for the students and wanted them to feel like they were really learning something. The students had to write a series of essays describing what side of the issue they were on and they had to back up their reasoning with sound evidence and support. Hale describes the work as "challenging assignments that focused on critical thinking and argumentation: (26). All of this led up to a final research paper they had to do which the students would have an easier time doing because they already have a wide range of knowledge on the subject which Hale says "helped to prepare the students to write their research paper" (26). After all the articles the students had read they also had "a good databank of sources to back them up" (27). Hale also describes how this take on teaching was helpful to him as an educator. This was a subject he was very interested in and he notes that he "was tired of placing such a huge firewall between my classroom and my outside activism" (27) so by making his assignment something he was interested in, his enthusiasm would get the students interested too. He states that "the immigration debate engaged my interest as a teacher in a way that standardized assignments did not" (27) and I think this is an important thing for educators to consider when ma

This article was written by Lawrence Musgrove, an associate professor of English and foreign language at Saint Xavier University in Chicago, Illinois. In the article he talks about a lot of the same problems that we have been touching on in class with concerns to first year English composition classes. After a quick discussion of the issues with English composition, he goes into his proposal for a solution. He first conjured up a metaphor between writing and driving. Bad driving has very concrete consequences, and Musgrove thinks that writing should, too. His proposal is centered on professors issuing students "writing tickets" that can be cleared up by attending workshops, seminars, revising their paper, or any other writing task their professor deems sufficient. While reading the responses posted after his article, I noticed that his ideas drew attention from all sorts of different people. People from all different professions and backgrounds (high school students, business men, elementary teachers, etc) had a variety of things to say. Some people loved his idea, and others heavily disputed it. I found that the responses generated were as resourceful as the article itself.

This webpage is presented on the Texas A&M University website. It is all about low-stakes writing, and how it helps the students develop their ideas and write more freely. It beings with a description of low-stakes writing, and the ways in which a teacher would have this type of writing in their class (including how to grade, types of assignments, etc). The web page stresses the importance of feedback on the students' writing, and also says that the feedback can come from a number of sources, not just the teacher. It suggests responses from peers, the writing center, or the student themselves.

I thought this article was a good fit on the path I, believe, I will be taking for my inquiry project ----- student efficacy within an English workshop. The article, written by James Williams and Seiji Takaku, covers the basis of workshops much like Rodby and Fox did in our packet article; however, the article instead of focusing on the structure of workshops focused on the students' efficacy and the effects it may have in order for a workshop to function as it was intended to - to help students better their composition skills in and outside of the English classroom. The article also mentions research done on students within "remedial" workshops and realized "...students had self-efficacy beliefs that did not match their writing performance .... their overestimated sense of efficacy was related to a lack of appropriate, correctional feedback in high school as well as to the tendency among high school teachers to praise and reward students for merely participating in the writing process rather than for producing good work" (3). I thought this statement was interesting because I find it to be true, especially in my experience with not only my internship at PVHS but also with my experience, this year, in Eng 30 workshops and my tutor sessions with second language learners. Sometimes educators focus on participation and the actual process of completing an assignment rather than making sure the student is adequately learning and putting into practice what is being taught/learned. The article also acknowledges the workshop characteristics that may affect students' self-efficacy in the first place. "In the U.S., the majority of writing centers rely on peer tutors" (4). "Some staff include graduate students, but only 3% of 4-year public universities employ professional tutors, that is, persons with an advanced degree" (4). This was a keynote since it reflects on the Casanave article from our class packet ---- to what degree can a peer be considered an actual peer

This website deals with the idea of conferring with students. The author states that individual conversations with students are important on accessing the students and determining what they need at the time to improve their writing. The author shares a wonderful video that demonstrates how one on one mentoring and conferring can truly build the confidence of a student. The author states that it is critical to support students without taking over their ideas specially if the the student is struggling. I truly enjoyed the video as it truly illustrated the authors suggestions. I found this website interesting because sometimes we must show someone how to be a writer before criticizing their papers and assuming that they are bad writers.