Amanda King, a recent Effingham High School graduate who plans to major in journalism in college, says that as a result of rewriting drafts of scripts based on her teachers' and classmates' critiques, the course has improved her writing skills more than her rhetoric class has.
http://www.edutopia.org/film-school
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Friday, May 9, 2008
Multimodal Communications
http://wac.colostate.edu/atd/visual/dufflemeyer_ellerston.cfm
Communications Across the Curriculum (CAC)
21st Century definition of literacy:
To be literate in the twenty-first century means possessing the skills necessary to effectively construct and comfortably navigate multiplicity, to manipulate and critique information, representations, knowledge, and arguments in multiple media from a wide range of sources, and to use multiple expressive technologies including those offered by print, visual, and digital tools (Sean Williams, 2001, p. 22).
Definition of Visual Culture:
Visual culture is not limited to the study of images or media, but extends to everyday practices of seeing and showing, especially those that we take to be immediate and unmediated (Mitchell, 2002, p. 170).
Definition of critical literacy:
critical literacy can be defined as the ability to see text (in this case, particularly visual text), not as a transparent window on reality, but as constructed from a viewpoint, with someone's communicative purpose and a calculated effect in mind.
Kathleen Welch (1999) states:
students should have the opportunity "to interpret and analyze electronic and visual texts as a means to understand our culture's "articulation and power" (p. 134).
Hill (2004) argues that:
all students should be educated in visual rhetoric
Mary Hocks (2003) argues that, specifically, this rhetorical education should mean "students ... learn the 'distanced' process of how to critique the saturated visual and technological landscape that surrounds them as something structured and written in a set of deliberate rhetorical moves" (p. 645).
W. J. T. Mitchell (2002) calls on us to help students critically negotiate our visual culture by "overcom[ing] the veil of familiarity and self-evidence that surrounds the experience of seeing, and to turn it into a problem for analysis ... " (p. 166, emphasis added).
We agree with new media and critical literacy theorists who say that
[... ] education [should] concentrate, not on the transfer of information nor on the reproduction of value systems, but on the urgent task of equipping people with the necessary "thinking tools" to make sense of historical processes so that individuals may become better at assessing the "likely" verisimilitude of any account or representation of the world. (Willeman, 2002, p. 20)
"customary distinctions" between the visual and the verbal are no longer useful (a point that W. J. T. Mitchell also makes in his 1992 Picture Theory) and that we have an opportunity, in this communication environment, to "produce more critical forms of consciousness" (Stroupe, 2000, p. 609).
Logan (2002) when he notes that digital possibilities for generating and receiving texts, both visual and verbal, "not only change social patterns but they also affect the psyche and the ways in which people think and learn by creating a new sensory bias and hence a new cognitive style" (p. 13).
Ann Marie Seward Barry (1997) explores in detail in her Visual Intelligence, providing evidence that when we receive multiple, fast, intense, and engrossing messages in our media environment, we suspend analysis and enter a state very like daydreaming: "we become emotionally but not logically involved in the medium, and images stream into our psyche, accepted without critical analysis" (pp. 172-173). (Is a tool in analysic multiple viewings?)
FOR PREFACE: we are concerned about overlooking new methods of composing—methods which fundamentally rely on a mix of the visual, the verbal, motion, and even the aural—that offer students both composing and interpretation opportunities that more closely mirror those surrounding us in the media environment today.
Diana George (2002) makes an important argument for a reexamination of visual communication's place as a part of the necessary literacy skills of our students (p. 14), looking at how communication instructors might go about asking students to create visual arguments in a way that does not necessarily preference either images or text
students do not, for the most part, develop an understanding of the world through conventional and exclusively written or spoken text because our culture's stories and supposed solutions to problems reach us in new ways.
we believe the fact that it is a culture of visuals (and text) in motion, as opposed to the photographic images of a magazine, is extremely important to those of us concerned with helping CAC students compose and critically interpret text.
All of it comes to us in the form of less text, more visuals, moving backgrounds and footage, ticker tapes, and background music, and it is presented as if it is objective and complete information, offered solely for our education and not for any other reason. Our students receive and interpret these kaleidoscopically and heavily visual texts as "natural, unstructured, transparent replicas of reality ... " (Gregory Veen, 1998), when in fact they fit perfectly into Postman's (1970, p. 161) definition of structured message systems which assign us a role to play, feelings to feel, and thoughts to think.
when hypertext remains the primary opportunity for electronic and visual composing we offer to our students, they may come to "confuse the ability to link materials with intellectual enrichment, subscribing to the idea that saying all that you know (or linking as much as you can find) about a topic is better than selecting your evidence based on an analysis of your reader's questions, knowledge, and needs" (pp. 29-30).
multimedia composing process helps students see the rhetorical importance of the unity and coherence of the full composition because students' attention is directed to images and other elements (e.g., sound, motion) not only "as individual carriers of meaning [but] to the ways in which the meaning of the composition in which they appear is conditioned by their combined synthesis ... . [they] are consciously arranged to convey a particular message" (Veen, 1998, emphasis added).
when students reflect on the very deliberate process they have engaged in to choose a particular image and to place it into the composition in a particular way (at a chosen juncture, certain speed, with particular transitioning moves, and with particular music or verbal text accompanying it), that "image has forever lost any semblance of being objective, non-coded, neutral. Its structured status is literalized" (Veen, 1998). Mitchell's ideological veil has been pulled aside.
Multimodal composition using flash, moviemaker, Imovie...to provide a successful multimodal composing experience for instructors and students which would then offer the opportunity for critical reflection on those texts
Digital portfolios
Marshall McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage (1989, c1967). This book serves two purposes in that not only is it an introduction to ways of looking at media, but it also provides a design template where visual and verbal information are brought together creatively.
hallmarks of a critically literate person in this multimedia environment in which we live:
Understanding that a text is not a transparent window on reality, but is constructed; this understanding grows out of the students' awareness of the message they wish to relay in their composition and the multimodally rhetorical moves they make to accomplish that, and then extends to recognizing the same is true for other texts they encounter in their communication environment;
Developing and demonstrating rhetorical awareness both as a composer of text and as a reader of text (e.g., using the features and methods available to them in their composing environment to, as Janangelo (1998) says, focus, select, and strategically present their ideas; conveying a specific thesis, or message, in a way that is relatively unambiguous; paying attention to transitions and cohesion in the composition, as opposed to simple accretion of links to be followed randomly); and
Developing agency as a communicator and as a reader, rather than opting for the passivity that our popular media environment makes so easy; developing the willingness and the ability to interrupt a familiar cultural story and contribute their own ideas to it, thus complicating it and making it more meaningful for them.
By omitting or shortchanging multimodal forms of composing in our pedagogy, Welch 1999 says we promote a duality which implicitly tells students that print discourse is for "school culture" and that "school discourse is not a place to pour out one's passions" (p. 159).
Music videos use the structure and lyrics of song to help create unity and cohesion and thus to underscore the message
Use of symbols, logos to convey meaning
Mini-Operas
composing in this communication environment urges the author to be aware of the features of the software and how his/her decisions about material (visuals, music, voices, printed words) and organization (arrangement, transitions, timing/speed) will affect how successfully his message as a whole is conveyed
Agency as a communicator and a reader: potential to use composing to re-see something that has already been structured and presented to us in the popular media in a particular way
Conclusion: a professional imperative" to create opportunities for critical literacy development in our classrooms (p. 261), we urge composition instructors to welcome these multimodal forms of composing text, not as trivial, chaotic, meaningless, plebian, MTV-like assaults of sensory material that we can ignore and go back to our "business" of teaching folks to read and write like we were taught to read and write. Our business has changed because our information environment has changed, and we fulfill the professional imperative we all believe in when we persuade students of the importance of—and give them ways of—pushing past the appearance of transparency in text.
Communications Across the Curriculum (CAC)
21st Century definition of literacy:
To be literate in the twenty-first century means possessing the skills necessary to effectively construct and comfortably navigate multiplicity, to manipulate and critique information, representations, knowledge, and arguments in multiple media from a wide range of sources, and to use multiple expressive technologies including those offered by print, visual, and digital tools (Sean Williams, 2001, p. 22).
Definition of Visual Culture:
Visual culture is not limited to the study of images or media, but extends to everyday practices of seeing and showing, especially those that we take to be immediate and unmediated (Mitchell, 2002, p. 170).
Definition of critical literacy:
critical literacy can be defined as the ability to see text (in this case, particularly visual text), not as a transparent window on reality, but as constructed from a viewpoint, with someone's communicative purpose and a calculated effect in mind.
Kathleen Welch (1999) states:
students should have the opportunity "to interpret and analyze electronic and visual texts as a means to understand our culture's "articulation and power" (p. 134).
Hill (2004) argues that:
all students should be educated in visual rhetoric
Mary Hocks (2003) argues that, specifically, this rhetorical education should mean "students ... learn the 'distanced' process of how to critique the saturated visual and technological landscape that surrounds them as something structured and written in a set of deliberate rhetorical moves" (p. 645).
W. J. T. Mitchell (2002) calls on us to help students critically negotiate our visual culture by "overcom[ing] the veil of familiarity and self-evidence that surrounds the experience of seeing, and to turn it into a problem for analysis ... " (p. 166, emphasis added).
We agree with new media and critical literacy theorists who say that
[... ] education [should] concentrate, not on the transfer of information nor on the reproduction of value systems, but on the urgent task of equipping people with the necessary "thinking tools" to make sense of historical processes so that individuals may become better at assessing the "likely" verisimilitude of any account or representation of the world. (Willeman, 2002, p. 20)
"customary distinctions" between the visual and the verbal are no longer useful (a point that W. J. T. Mitchell also makes in his 1992 Picture Theory) and that we have an opportunity, in this communication environment, to "produce more critical forms of consciousness" (Stroupe, 2000, p. 609).
Logan (2002) when he notes that digital possibilities for generating and receiving texts, both visual and verbal, "not only change social patterns but they also affect the psyche and the ways in which people think and learn by creating a new sensory bias and hence a new cognitive style" (p. 13).
Ann Marie Seward Barry (1997) explores in detail in her Visual Intelligence, providing evidence that when we receive multiple, fast, intense, and engrossing messages in our media environment, we suspend analysis and enter a state very like daydreaming: "we become emotionally but not logically involved in the medium, and images stream into our psyche, accepted without critical analysis" (pp. 172-173). (Is a tool in analysic multiple viewings?)
FOR PREFACE: we are concerned about overlooking new methods of composing—methods which fundamentally rely on a mix of the visual, the verbal, motion, and even the aural—that offer students both composing and interpretation opportunities that more closely mirror those surrounding us in the media environment today.
Diana George (2002) makes an important argument for a reexamination of visual communication's place as a part of the necessary literacy skills of our students (p. 14), looking at how communication instructors might go about asking students to create visual arguments in a way that does not necessarily preference either images or text
students do not, for the most part, develop an understanding of the world through conventional and exclusively written or spoken text because our culture's stories and supposed solutions to problems reach us in new ways.
we believe the fact that it is a culture of visuals (and text) in motion, as opposed to the photographic images of a magazine, is extremely important to those of us concerned with helping CAC students compose and critically interpret text.
All of it comes to us in the form of less text, more visuals, moving backgrounds and footage, ticker tapes, and background music, and it is presented as if it is objective and complete information, offered solely for our education and not for any other reason. Our students receive and interpret these kaleidoscopically and heavily visual texts as "natural, unstructured, transparent replicas of reality ... " (Gregory Veen, 1998), when in fact they fit perfectly into Postman's (1970, p. 161) definition of structured message systems which assign us a role to play, feelings to feel, and thoughts to think.
when hypertext remains the primary opportunity for electronic and visual composing we offer to our students, they may come to "confuse the ability to link materials with intellectual enrichment, subscribing to the idea that saying all that you know (or linking as much as you can find) about a topic is better than selecting your evidence based on an analysis of your reader's questions, knowledge, and needs" (pp. 29-30).
multimedia composing process helps students see the rhetorical importance of the unity and coherence of the full composition because students' attention is directed to images and other elements (e.g., sound, motion) not only "as individual carriers of meaning [but] to the ways in which the meaning of the composition in which they appear is conditioned by their combined synthesis ... . [they] are consciously arranged to convey a particular message" (Veen, 1998, emphasis added).
when students reflect on the very deliberate process they have engaged in to choose a particular image and to place it into the composition in a particular way (at a chosen juncture, certain speed, with particular transitioning moves, and with particular music or verbal text accompanying it), that "image has forever lost any semblance of being objective, non-coded, neutral. Its structured status is literalized" (Veen, 1998). Mitchell's ideological veil has been pulled aside.
Multimodal composition using flash, moviemaker, Imovie...to provide a successful multimodal composing experience for instructors and students which would then offer the opportunity for critical reflection on those texts
Digital portfolios
Marshall McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage (1989, c1967). This book serves two purposes in that not only is it an introduction to ways of looking at media, but it also provides a design template where visual and verbal information are brought together creatively.
hallmarks of a critically literate person in this multimedia environment in which we live:
Understanding that a text is not a transparent window on reality, but is constructed; this understanding grows out of the students' awareness of the message they wish to relay in their composition and the multimodally rhetorical moves they make to accomplish that, and then extends to recognizing the same is true for other texts they encounter in their communication environment;
Developing and demonstrating rhetorical awareness both as a composer of text and as a reader of text (e.g., using the features and methods available to them in their composing environment to, as Janangelo (1998) says, focus, select, and strategically present their ideas; conveying a specific thesis, or message, in a way that is relatively unambiguous; paying attention to transitions and cohesion in the composition, as opposed to simple accretion of links to be followed randomly); and
Developing agency as a communicator and as a reader, rather than opting for the passivity that our popular media environment makes so easy; developing the willingness and the ability to interrupt a familiar cultural story and contribute their own ideas to it, thus complicating it and making it more meaningful for them.
By omitting or shortchanging multimodal forms of composing in our pedagogy, Welch 1999 says we promote a duality which implicitly tells students that print discourse is for "school culture" and that "school discourse is not a place to pour out one's passions" (p. 159).
Music videos use the structure and lyrics of song to help create unity and cohesion and thus to underscore the message
Use of symbols, logos to convey meaning
Mini-Operas
composing in this communication environment urges the author to be aware of the features of the software and how his/her decisions about material (visuals, music, voices, printed words) and organization (arrangement, transitions, timing/speed) will affect how successfully his message as a whole is conveyed
Agency as a communicator and a reader: potential to use composing to re-see something that has already been structured and presented to us in the popular media in a particular way
Conclusion: a professional imperative" to create opportunities for critical literacy development in our classrooms (p. 261), we urge composition instructors to welcome these multimodal forms of composing text, not as trivial, chaotic, meaningless, plebian, MTV-like assaults of sensory material that we can ignore and go back to our "business" of teaching folks to read and write like we were taught to read and write. Our business has changed because our information environment has changed, and we fulfill the professional imperative we all believe in when we persuade students of the importance of—and give them ways of—pushing past the appearance of transparency in text.
Writing to Demonstrate Knowledge
A writing-to- demonstrate- knowledge assignment is one that teachers employ when they assign reports, essays, persuasive writing letters and papers, and research papers.
When writing to demonstrate knowledge, students show what they have learned by synthesizing information and explaining their understanding of concepts and ideas. Students write for an audience with a specific purpose. Products may apply knowledge in new ways or use academic structures for research and/or formal writing.
Examples include essays that deal with specific questions or problems, letters, projects, and more formal assignments or papers prepared over weeks or over a course. Students adhere to format and style guidelines or standards typical of professional papers, such as reports, article reviews, and research papers. These should be checked before being submitted by the student for correctness of spelling, grammar, and transition word usage.
Social Studies examples:
1. Strategy: Process Writing
1. a. Form/Format: Essay Writing
1. b. Form/Format: Persuasive Civic Writing
1.c. Form/Format: Reports
1.d. Form/Format: Research Reports
1.e. Form/Format: Using Narrative Writing to Demonstrate Knowledge
Arts examples:
1. Digital portfolios
2. Digital multi-modal story-telling
3. Music videos
4. Mini-operas
When writing to demonstrate knowledge, students show what they have learned by synthesizing information and explaining their understanding of concepts and ideas. Students write for an audience with a specific purpose. Products may apply knowledge in new ways or use academic structures for research and/or formal writing.
Examples include essays that deal with specific questions or problems, letters, projects, and more formal assignments or papers prepared over weeks or over a course. Students adhere to format and style guidelines or standards typical of professional papers, such as reports, article reviews, and research papers. These should be checked before being submitted by the student for correctness of spelling, grammar, and transition word usage.
Social Studies examples:
1. Strategy: Process Writing
1. a. Form/Format: Essay Writing
1. b. Form/Format: Persuasive Civic Writing
1.c. Form/Format: Reports
1.d. Form/Format: Research Reports
1.e. Form/Format: Using Narrative Writing to Demonstrate Knowledge
Arts examples:
1. Digital portfolios
2. Digital multi-modal story-telling
3. Music videos
4. Mini-operas
Writing to Learn Strategies
A writing-to-learn strategy is one that teachers employ throughout and/or at the end of a lesson to engage students and develop big ideas and concepts.
Writing-to-learn fosters critical thinking and learning. It is writing that uses impromptu, short/informal writing tasks designed by the teacher and included throughout the lesson to help students think through key concepts and ideas. Attention is focused on ideas rather than correctness of style, grammar or spelling. It is less structured than disciplinary writing.
This approach frequently uses journals, logs, micro themes, responses to written or oral questions, summaries, free writing, notes, and other writing assignments that align to learning ideas and concepts.
Social Studies examples:
1. Generating interactions between schemata and texts
2. Introducing a famous person
3. Learning Logs
4. List-Group-Label
5. Micro-themes writing summaries
6. Cornell system - note taking
7. QAR - Question-Answer relationship
8. RAFT - Role, Audience, Format, and Topic
9. Reading Response Journal
10. Skimming and scanning
11. Strip stories - story board graphics
12. Summarizing
13. Thinking maps to outlines
14. Word bank writing
Format
1. Strategy: Writing Journal - Dance, Music, Theatre, Visual Arts
What does it do?
Allows students to brainstorm on writing ideas, in a manner similar to a Sketch Journal.
How to implement:
xxxxx
________________________________
2. Strategy: Visual Thinking Strategies - Dance, music, theatre, visual arts
What does it do?
How to implement:
Tally to date:
4 all arts
1 dance
1 music
1 theatre
2 visual arts
_________________________
3. Strategy: Digital Story-telling - Visual arts, music
What does it do?
How to implement:
__________________________
4. Strategy: Artist Statements - Dance, music, theatre, visual arts
What does it do?
How to implement:
___________________________
5. Strategy: Learning Statements - Dance, music, theatre, visual arts
What does it do?
How to implement:
___________________________
6. Strategy: Word sculptures - Visual arts, theatre
What does it do?
How to implement:
____________________________
7. Strategy: Dance stories - Dance
What does it do?
How to implement:
________________________________
8. Strategy: Multi-modal composition - Dance, music, theatre, visual arts
What does it do?
How to implement:
_______________________________
9. Strategy:
What does it do?
How to implement:
________________________________
10. Strategy:
What does it do?
How to implement:
________________________________
11. Strategy:
What does it do?
How to implement:
___________________________
12. Strategy:
What does it do?
How to implement:
____________________________
13. Strategy:
What does it do?
How to implement:
____________________________
14. Strategy:
What does it do?
How to implement:
___________________________
15. Strategy:
What does it do?
How to implement:
Writing-to-learn fosters critical thinking and learning. It is writing that uses impromptu, short/informal writing tasks designed by the teacher and included throughout the lesson to help students think through key concepts and ideas. Attention is focused on ideas rather than correctness of style, grammar or spelling. It is less structured than disciplinary writing.
This approach frequently uses journals, logs, micro themes, responses to written or oral questions, summaries, free writing, notes, and other writing assignments that align to learning ideas and concepts.
Social Studies examples:
1. Generating interactions between schemata and texts
2. Introducing a famous person
3. Learning Logs
4. List-Group-Label
5. Micro-themes writing summaries
6. Cornell system - note taking
7. QAR - Question-Answer relationship
8. RAFT - Role, Audience, Format, and Topic
9. Reading Response Journal
10. Skimming and scanning
11. Strip stories - story board graphics
12. Summarizing
13. Thinking maps to outlines
14. Word bank writing
Format
1. Strategy: Writing Journal - Dance, Music, Theatre, Visual Arts
What does it do?
Allows students to brainstorm on writing ideas, in a manner similar to a Sketch Journal.
How to implement:
xxxxx
________________________________
2. Strategy: Visual Thinking Strategies - Dance, music, theatre, visual arts
What does it do?
How to implement:
Tally to date:
4 all arts
1 dance
1 music
1 theatre
2 visual arts
_________________________
3. Strategy: Digital Story-telling - Visual arts, music
What does it do?
How to implement:
__________________________
4. Strategy: Artist Statements - Dance, music, theatre, visual arts
What does it do?
How to implement:
___________________________
5. Strategy: Learning Statements - Dance, music, theatre, visual arts
What does it do?
How to implement:
___________________________
6. Strategy: Word sculptures - Visual arts, theatre
What does it do?
How to implement:
____________________________
7. Strategy: Dance stories - Dance
What does it do?
How to implement:
________________________________
8. Strategy: Multi-modal composition - Dance, music, theatre, visual arts
What does it do?
How to implement:
_______________________________
9. Strategy:
What does it do?
How to implement:
________________________________
10. Strategy:
What does it do?
How to implement:
________________________________
11. Strategy:
What does it do?
How to implement:
___________________________
12. Strategy:
What does it do?
How to implement:
____________________________
13. Strategy:
What does it do?
How to implement:
____________________________
14. Strategy:
What does it do?
How to implement:
___________________________
15. Strategy:
What does it do?
How to implement:
DRAFT Preface: Writing Across the Curriculum – Arts
Writing: An Important Element in Arts Learning
Teachers of the arts are faced with the task of assisting students in the development of important multimodal knowledge, concepts, and skills. The knowledge, concepts, and skills learned in the arts and other classes will ultimately enable students to become creative, contributing members of their local and global communities.
Effective instructional strategies are always sought after and writing strategies can be useful for teachers of the arts from Kindergarten to Grade 12. Well designed strategies such as the ones demonstrated in this online document, can engage students as critical thinkers who have the ability to integrate knowledge from a variety of topics,disciplines and media and re-present this knowledge through a variety of modes.
This online document was created as a sample of writing across the curriculum strategies which can be applied to arts classrooms. They include strategies to assist students in: xxxxxxxxx.
While these strategies will assist students in becoming better writers, the main focus of these strategies is to assist students in a deeper understanding of the arts. The importance of these strategies is that they promote deep understanding of the knowledge, content, and skills of the arts discipline being taught.
Each strategy includes a quick definition of the strategy and what it does. In addition, each page has instructions on how to implement the strategy and an example of how it could be used in the arts classroom. This online guide is not exhaustive. Each of the strategies included can be investigated further by interested teachers. All of the Strategies have been researched and found effective.
It is our hope that teachers of the arts in grades K to 12 will give careful consideration to each of these proven strategies, and add them to their repertoire of effective instructional strategies.
Teachers of the arts are faced with the task of assisting students in the development of important multimodal knowledge, concepts, and skills. The knowledge, concepts, and skills learned in the arts and other classes will ultimately enable students to become creative, contributing members of their local and global communities.
Effective instructional strategies are always sought after and writing strategies can be useful for teachers of the arts from Kindergarten to Grade 12. Well designed strategies such as the ones demonstrated in this online document, can engage students as critical thinkers who have the ability to integrate knowledge from a variety of topics,disciplines and media and re-present this knowledge through a variety of modes.
This online document was created as a sample of writing across the curriculum strategies which can be applied to arts classrooms. They include strategies to assist students in: xxxxxxxxx.
While these strategies will assist students in becoming better writers, the main focus of these strategies is to assist students in a deeper understanding of the arts. The importance of these strategies is that they promote deep understanding of the knowledge, content, and skills of the arts discipline being taught.
Each strategy includes a quick definition of the strategy and what it does. In addition, each page has instructions on how to implement the strategy and an example of how it could be used in the arts classroom. This online guide is not exhaustive. Each of the strategies included can be investigated further by interested teachers. All of the Strategies have been researched and found effective.
It is our hope that teachers of the arts in grades K to 12 will give careful consideration to each of these proven strategies, and add them to their repertoire of effective instructional strategies.
Designing your writing/writing your design: Art and Design Students Talk about the Process of Writing and the Process of Design
http://wac.colostate.edu/atd/visual/orr_blythman_mullin.cfm
...writing was/is still privileged as a means to analyse and explicate (Orr, Blythman, & Mullin, 2004.
...the reverse is beginning to also be true: students who have been taught to write are being asked to analyze and explicate visual documents in order to create them.
Several key issues emerged for further exploration:
- the role of peers and audience; 2D vs. 3D (page versus object);
- the students' personal relationship with writing and with art and design;
- students' understanding of the process within each area;
- teacher intervention in promoting effective writing/design processes/products.
This article looks at four of the areas of interest that emerged from their data:
1. students' personal relationship with writing/art and design,
2. the role of peers and audience,
3. engagement with process, and
4. conceptions of time.
1. students' personal relationship with writing/art and design
To art students—and probably many others—words in school belong to someone else. While, as with their art, students may have ideas for writing, they don't seem to have, as they do with art, the will to find the tools that shape those ideas.
Whereas their concepts for art seem to take shape from the materials that are themselves plastic, to them words seem static, flat, unable to be shaped. Students in A&D own their art, whereas they believe writing is a guessing game, shaping others' words to fulfil others' ends
If students could see their own visual processes (reading or creating) they might be able to "draw" from them for their writing processes. If they could understand the plasticity of language, they might be able to see words, punctuation, syntax, as tools for their "creations" not barriers. For them to do that, however, we need to revise our own reliance on words to explain words. We suggest mindfully shaping visual metaphors for our students so that the visuality and plasticity of language becomes apparent to them. We need to rethink not only how we speak about language, but how our assignments and feedback might reinforce the static image of language that students hold—the image that reinforces, for them, that words are "not tactile, not personal."
2. the role of peers and audience,
US students understand that there is an audience besides themselves when it comes to their art or their writing; at least, the majority do not think of themselves as an island.
Importance of...geting an opportunity to try out ideas with peers first in class or on-line, and this seems to play a part in their seeking and acceptance of feedback for writing.
All A&D students have an overwhelming willingness to seek feedback for their art, a sense that their tools and the product they produce are malleable and can be changed as a result of audience response; they realize their work can be interpreted differently and "have a real interest in how the intended message may be received."
...teach writing not as static, nor as an isolated, individual activity, but as a social practice that is as malleable and contextual as artistic media. Our own ways of speaking about writing and the feedback we provide might well be reviewed to see which of these views of writing they support.
3. engagement with process, and
Instructors, therefore, face a major challenge over the difference in the emotional response these students have to writing and to art and design: a sense of joy versus a sense of pain; a sense of control versus no control. Their ability to shape their medium is absent when that medium is language
...stopping points in students' writing process again indicated a disconnect from their medium—words.
I get blocked because I don't feel like writing any more.
I can't put my feelings into words.
Art is not easy for these students, but they are willing to work through their difficulty, take time out for the process to gel, or seek inspiration and feedback. Only two describe what, for those teaching with writing, may be a clue to helping students cross the barriers that have been set up between designing and writing. Just as art is a puzzle to put together, a student notes that when his writing is blocked:
I make a puzzle by extracting the nouns and descriptive words into a grammatical diagram. So instead of "earth" it just says "noun goes here." Then I rearrange the blocks until I am happy.
We suggest that there is great potential for teaching writing in the strategies students use to make their art. They first need to see writing more as a creative endeavour instead of "stupid rules." While there may be no help for those few who choose to remain islands in both areas, for the majority of students who are visual learners or learning visuals, it would be useful for them to understand the processes they employ when working in both spheres and determine for themselves how they might be able to use similar strategies not only to unblock themselves, but also to become motivated.
4. conceptions of time.
While these students seemed to know they had to cut time out for writing, they didn't actively describe their timelines and processes for creating it. On the other side, a picture emerges of student-artists attempting to control time, even if they are not always successful. They are, nonetheless, willing to exert control over their process because they value their activity and are willing to devote time to it. Time is as valuable as their art, and they work to create both, even if that means working within a short period to create the rush they need to complete their design.
Recommendations:
There are some common practices that need to be considered more frequently:
- Encourage students to use physical representations of knowledge in order to hone their skills, but also, have them write about their experiences or write up research using visual representations as springboards or accompaniments to text.
- Writing centers have long had students color code parts of their paper using marker pens to enable them to "see" the structure of their writing. The same can be used when students must learn to balance their voice with the views of others; students can color code each to see visually if the proportions are appropriate to the requirements of writing in that particular discipline.
- Teachers with an interest in writing development as an important aspect of student learning are usually keen on planning structures but are perhaps too wedded to this only in a written form. For students who operate through diagrams or story boarding, these have to be developed as design techniques for a piece of writing.
- We saw earlier that students can feel that they have a shortage of ideas for writing unlike design. We should encourage the use of the notebook as an equivalent tool to the sketchbook as a way of gathering lots of research materials, in essence the creation of a textual sketch-book (Orr and Blythman, 2002).
- responses we collected from students argues for a social practices approach when teaching writing to visually adept students.
- Instructors can set up a questionnaire or interviews similar to those in the appendix (shorter or longer) in which they ask students what their processes are for reading and then creating (maps, graphs, websites) . Ask the same about their reading, writing, composing or listening processes (depending on the class). Examine these with each student or let students examine them in small groups, and report on the comparisons among their answers. Let them collaborate about the language in which they articulated their differences; let them teach each other strategies, or point out that they already have strategies that can transfer to writing or imaging.
- Additionally instructors need to build a repertoire of visual metaphors to use when explaining writing so that we are making links between the design process and the writing process. We need to use design metaphors to explain writing processes or compare writing with design processes. For example, students need to understand that surface features are of limited importance since the surface and structural features of text interact. Instructors can refer to what are considered the technical/ surface features in design or art work and expand this vocabulary when providing feedback on student writing.
- Art and design students, and others, may be more confident with electronic and non-linear tools. Many students who are afraid of writing a paper, thesis or dissertation feel quite confident about building a website. Dufflemeyer and Ellertson's article in this issue point to ways that can be done, and advocate for opening our writing classrooms to multimodal forms of composing, but in the meanwhile, even the simple change of discourse to "building" a dissertation can increase understanding and confidence.
...writing was/is still privileged as a means to analyse and explicate (Orr, Blythman, & Mullin, 2004.
...the reverse is beginning to also be true: students who have been taught to write are being asked to analyze and explicate visual documents in order to create them.
Several key issues emerged for further exploration:
- the role of peers and audience; 2D vs. 3D (page versus object);
- the students' personal relationship with writing and with art and design;
- students' understanding of the process within each area;
- teacher intervention in promoting effective writing/design processes/products.
This article looks at four of the areas of interest that emerged from their data:
1. students' personal relationship with writing/art and design,
2. the role of peers and audience,
3. engagement with process, and
4. conceptions of time.
1. students' personal relationship with writing/art and design
To art students—and probably many others—words in school belong to someone else. While, as with their art, students may have ideas for writing, they don't seem to have, as they do with art, the will to find the tools that shape those ideas.
Whereas their concepts for art seem to take shape from the materials that are themselves plastic, to them words seem static, flat, unable to be shaped. Students in A&D own their art, whereas they believe writing is a guessing game, shaping others' words to fulfil others' ends
If students could see their own visual processes (reading or creating) they might be able to "draw" from them for their writing processes. If they could understand the plasticity of language, they might be able to see words, punctuation, syntax, as tools for their "creations" not barriers. For them to do that, however, we need to revise our own reliance on words to explain words. We suggest mindfully shaping visual metaphors for our students so that the visuality and plasticity of language becomes apparent to them. We need to rethink not only how we speak about language, but how our assignments and feedback might reinforce the static image of language that students hold—the image that reinforces, for them, that words are "not tactile, not personal."
2. the role of peers and audience,
US students understand that there is an audience besides themselves when it comes to their art or their writing; at least, the majority do not think of themselves as an island.
Importance of...geting an opportunity to try out ideas with peers first in class or on-line, and this seems to play a part in their seeking and acceptance of feedback for writing.
All A&D students have an overwhelming willingness to seek feedback for their art, a sense that their tools and the product they produce are malleable and can be changed as a result of audience response; they realize their work can be interpreted differently and "have a real interest in how the intended message may be received."
...teach writing not as static, nor as an isolated, individual activity, but as a social practice that is as malleable and contextual as artistic media. Our own ways of speaking about writing and the feedback we provide might well be reviewed to see which of these views of writing they support.
3. engagement with process, and
Instructors, therefore, face a major challenge over the difference in the emotional response these students have to writing and to art and design: a sense of joy versus a sense of pain; a sense of control versus no control. Their ability to shape their medium is absent when that medium is language
...stopping points in students' writing process again indicated a disconnect from their medium—words.
I get blocked because I don't feel like writing any more.
I can't put my feelings into words.
Art is not easy for these students, but they are willing to work through their difficulty, take time out for the process to gel, or seek inspiration and feedback. Only two describe what, for those teaching with writing, may be a clue to helping students cross the barriers that have been set up between designing and writing. Just as art is a puzzle to put together, a student notes that when his writing is blocked:
I make a puzzle by extracting the nouns and descriptive words into a grammatical diagram. So instead of "earth" it just says "noun goes here." Then I rearrange the blocks until I am happy.
We suggest that there is great potential for teaching writing in the strategies students use to make their art. They first need to see writing more as a creative endeavour instead of "stupid rules." While there may be no help for those few who choose to remain islands in both areas, for the majority of students who are visual learners or learning visuals, it would be useful for them to understand the processes they employ when working in both spheres and determine for themselves how they might be able to use similar strategies not only to unblock themselves, but also to become motivated.
4. conceptions of time.
While these students seemed to know they had to cut time out for writing, they didn't actively describe their timelines and processes for creating it. On the other side, a picture emerges of student-artists attempting to control time, even if they are not always successful. They are, nonetheless, willing to exert control over their process because they value their activity and are willing to devote time to it. Time is as valuable as their art, and they work to create both, even if that means working within a short period to create the rush they need to complete their design.
Recommendations:
There are some common practices that need to be considered more frequently:
- Encourage students to use physical representations of knowledge in order to hone their skills, but also, have them write about their experiences or write up research using visual representations as springboards or accompaniments to text.
- Writing centers have long had students color code parts of their paper using marker pens to enable them to "see" the structure of their writing. The same can be used when students must learn to balance their voice with the views of others; students can color code each to see visually if the proportions are appropriate to the requirements of writing in that particular discipline.
- Teachers with an interest in writing development as an important aspect of student learning are usually keen on planning structures but are perhaps too wedded to this only in a written form. For students who operate through diagrams or story boarding, these have to be developed as design techniques for a piece of writing.
- We saw earlier that students can feel that they have a shortage of ideas for writing unlike design. We should encourage the use of the notebook as an equivalent tool to the sketchbook as a way of gathering lots of research materials, in essence the creation of a textual sketch-book (Orr and Blythman, 2002).
- responses we collected from students argues for a social practices approach when teaching writing to visually adept students.
- Instructors can set up a questionnaire or interviews similar to those in the appendix (shorter or longer) in which they ask students what their processes are for reading and then creating (maps, graphs, websites) . Ask the same about their reading, writing, composing or listening processes (depending on the class). Examine these with each student or let students examine them in small groups, and report on the comparisons among their answers. Let them collaborate about the language in which they articulated their differences; let them teach each other strategies, or point out that they already have strategies that can transfer to writing or imaging.
- Additionally instructors need to build a repertoire of visual metaphors to use when explaining writing so that we are making links between the design process and the writing process. We need to use design metaphors to explain writing processes or compare writing with design processes. For example, students need to understand that surface features are of limited importance since the surface and structural features of text interact. Instructors can refer to what are considered the technical/ surface features in design or art work and expand this vocabulary when providing feedback on student writing.
- Art and design students, and others, may be more confident with electronic and non-linear tools. Many students who are afraid of writing a paper, thesis or dissertation feel quite confident about building a website. Dufflemeyer and Ellertson's article in this issue point to ways that can be done, and advocate for opening our writing classrooms to multimodal forms of composing, but in the meanwhile, even the simple change of discourse to "building" a dissertation can increase understanding and confidence.
Across the Disciplines, Vol. 5, Jan.- Dec. 2008
http://wac.colostate.edu/atd/visual/intro.cfm
Incorporating the Visual into Writing/Electronic/Communication/Learning Across the Curriculum
Guest Editor's Introduction
Joan A. Mullin, University of Texas at Austin
Today, "writing" has come to represent for us the more realistic variety of communications across the curriculum: the oral, spatial, electronic—the visual and multimodal.
...the use of the visuals in classrooms provides for us who write in this issue a particularly effective pedagogy that effectively teaches students to think about, engage in, "see" communication.
...multimodal composing reinforces and further develops at least three essential characteristics of a critically literate person, " by:
1) understanding that a text is not a transparent window on reality, but is constructed;
2) developing and demonstrating rhetorical awareness both as a composer of text and as a reader of text; and
3) developing agency as a communicator and as a reader, rather than opting for the passivity that our popular media environment makes so easy.
...by interlacing writing and the visual, their students learn not just how visuals function in conveying a point of view, but how they can use those same techniques to create an argument that will catch the attention of peers largely used to observing but not thinking about images.
"[w]hether we are teaching visually adept students (or teaching students how to be visually adept) we need to understand the students' construction of reality and the way they approach learning."
Incorporating the Visual into Writing/Electronic/Communication/Learning Across the Curriculum
Guest Editor's Introduction
Joan A. Mullin, University of Texas at Austin
Today, "writing" has come to represent for us the more realistic variety of communications across the curriculum: the oral, spatial, electronic—the visual and multimodal.
...the use of the visuals in classrooms provides for us who write in this issue a particularly effective pedagogy that effectively teaches students to think about, engage in, "see" communication.
...multimodal composing reinforces and further develops at least three essential characteristics of a critically literate person, " by:
1) understanding that a text is not a transparent window on reality, but is constructed;
2) developing and demonstrating rhetorical awareness both as a composer of text and as a reader of text; and
3) developing agency as a communicator and as a reader, rather than opting for the passivity that our popular media environment makes so easy.
...by interlacing writing and the visual, their students learn not just how visuals function in conveying a point of view, but how they can use those same techniques to create an argument that will catch the attention of peers largely used to observing but not thinking about images.
"[w]hether we are teaching visually adept students (or teaching students how to be visually adept) we need to understand the students' construction of reality and the way they approach learning."
WAC Bibliography
Arts Discipline Specific
Alfano, C. L., &O'Brien, A. J. (2005). Envision: Persuasive writing in a visual culture. New York: Pearson Longman.
Dir Yanni, Robert. “Sound and Sense: Writing About Music.” Journal of Basic Writing (Spring/Summer 1980): 25.
Faigley, L., George, D., Selfe, C., & Palchik, A. (2004). Picturing texts. New York: WW Norton & Company.Russell, D. R. (2002).
Thaler, Ruth. “Art and the Written Word.” Journal of Basic Writing (Spring/Summer 1980): 72-81.
Ruszkiewicz, J., Anderson, D., & Friend, C. (2006). Beyond words: Reading and writing in a visual age. New York: Pearson Longman.
General
Katherine Gottschalk, Keith Hjortshoj. The Elements of Teaching Writing: A Resource for Instructors in All Disciplines (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2003).
Barbara E. Walvoord, Virginia Johnson Anderson, Thomas A. Angelo. Effective Grading: A Tool for Learning and Assessment (Jossey-Bass, 1998).
John C. Bean. Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom (Jossey-Bass, 1996).
Pratt Institute on WAC
Apart from inquiry, apart from praxis, men cannot
be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through
invention and reinvention, through the restless,
impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry men pursue
in the world, with the world, and with each other.
— Paulo Freire,
from The Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) began in the 1970s as an educational reform movement committed to innovations in curriculum development and movements between disciplinary boundaries. Its organizers recognized that thinking and learning are life-long projects that often move between academic majors and disciplines. WAC hopes to foster creative collaboration between the curricula through writing.
The goal of the project ...was to reflect on the ways that writing can complement the teaching and learning process.
Lol Fow and J. Paul Narkunas expanded the program under the premise...good writing and thinking are inseparable.
As a creative form of expression and a forum for exchanging ideas, writing can foster complex thinking among students, allowing them to act in the larger world.
The practice of critical thinking allows students... to develop more focused and thoughtful
approaches to their creative projects and endeavors.
The practice of critical thinking allows students...to develop more focused and thoughtful
approaches to their creative projects and endeavors.
...(art) students generally tend to be quite skeptical and critical of conventions and norms. Although they sometimes tell their writing professors that they do not write well because they are “visual people,” students also understand that they need language to help them discuss
and analyze the endless stream of images in visual media.
We need to create new approaches that work across curricula to help improve
student writing and critical thinking abilities. As “televisual” and telecommunications
technologies become more pervasive, visually and textually literate students will have a distinct advantage.
Focus on strategies that...enable (teachers) to bring writing into their studio curricula. These services emphasize the relationship between words and images, and the exercises complement each specific curriculum.
Approaches
Artist’s Statements
These workshops help students create their artist’s statements and prepare the
groundwork for their senior projects, their applications for graduate school and
the workforce. They also increase students’ overall ability to discuss their work
with others.
Poets in the Studio
Poetry allows students to think about the relationship between form and content, image and
montage, and figurative and abstract representations. By creating poems and by
working with the connections between word and image, students can see how the
process of composing them is directly related to their work as artists.
"The relationship of painters and poets is an ancient one. In Plato’s Republic,
Socrates recommends that all poets and painters be cast out of his utopian republic
because these “imitator[s] and maker[s] of the image know nothing of true existence.”
For Plato’s Socrates, poets and painters evade truth because they imitate
reality and create imaginary (re)presentations of the world. Thankfully, painters
and poets shatter Plato’s illusion that a perfectly rationalized and organized
world—in other words, a world without artists—is desirable or possible."
Critics in the Studio
Effective ways for your students to present the integrity of their ideas and
artistic projects to those from other creative backgrounds...or the public
Revision and the Creative Process
Writing can be a useful tool in helping your students with the creative process.
Indeed, through writing, students can develop their critical thinking and public
speaking abilities, and learn the importance of revision in all forms of textual and
visual creation.
Jen Bervin, poet and visual artist, is the author of Nets (Ugly Duckling,
2004) and Under What Is Not Under (Potes & Poets, 2001). Her work has
been published in Aufgabe, Chain, Denver Quarterly, and Poets & Poems (a collaboration with Alystyre Julian), among others. Bervin received a B.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of
Chicago, an M.A. in Poetry from the University of Denver, and an Edward M. Lannan Prize from the Academy of American Poets. She teaches an Advanced Poetry Workshop at NYU,
co-curates Pratt’s Friday Forum Reading Series, and directs the writing internships for Writing for Publication, Performance and Media at Pratt Institute.
Michael Eng is adjunct assistant professor of Philosophy and Architecture in the Department of Social Science and Cultural Studies and in Undergraduate Architecture. He is also co-director of Pratt’s International Summer Seminar in Architecture and Urban Planning. Eng’s most recent publications include the essay “‘Every name in history is I’: Bachmann’s Anti-archive” in If We Had the Word: Ingeborg Bachmann, Views and Reviews (Ariadne, 2004). He also
contributed a text on artist Sancho Silva’s work Film Machine (2003) for the series 1A + 1P + 1A (one artist + one piece of work + one author) to the Anamnese project (www.anamnese.pt).
Lol Fow is an author, painter, and musician whose plays and fiction have been performed and published in the U.S., Great Britain, New Zealand, and Australia. Most recently, her short story
“Amelia Too” was included in Juncture, a non-realism anthology of stories and drawings edited by Lara Stapleton (2004). Originally from New Zealand, she has a B.A. in Philosophy and an
M.F.A. in Playwriting from Brooklyn College. She has been teaching creative writing,composition, and literature for eight years at Pratt, and was the Director of Writing Across the Curriculum from 2000–2002.
Marlene Friis has taught academic and content-based ESL in the Intensive English Program for three years. She is currently finishing her M.A. in TESOL at Hunter College. Prior to teaching, she worked in film curation, exhibition and distribution in London, Burkina Faso and San Francisco. Marlene holds an M.A. in Image Studies from the University of Kent at Canterbury.
Nada Gordon has been teaching ESL since 1987. She spent eleven years in Tokyo, where she taught and wrote materials for a curriculum renewal project at a junior college. She has published textbooks with Pearson and Heinle & Heinle, and worked as an editor at Cambridge University Press. An active member of the New York literary community, she has published
three books of poetry and one epistolary non-fiction novel.
Amy Guggenheim is a writer, teacher, and director. Her plays and films have been presented internationally, most recently at Anthology Film Archives, Batofar Paris, Trampoline-Berlin,
Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center, La MaMa in NYC, Nottingham Festival in England, and the International Festival of Havana in Cuba, with support from The Banff Center in Canada, the Mellon Fund, and the Pratt Faculty Development Fund, among others. Her work has
been published in American Letters, Commentary, and Stories Magazine. She is on the faculty of Pratt Institute and NYU, and teaches writing workshops privately.
Jeffrey Hogrefe is a writer and instructor in English and Humanities and works on WAC projects in the undergraduate department of the School of Architecture. He designed and teaches a freshman English course to architecture students. Hogrefe also has developed a workshop series for fifth-year senior thesis students, and regularly serves as an invited critic
for student reviews at Pratt and Cooper Union.
Nathan Keene has taught English and ESL for 17 years. After graduating from college in Portland, Oregon, he lived and taught for six years in Tokyo, Japan. He completed his master’s
degree in Education at the University of California in 1999. He now lives in New York City, where he develops and teaches ESL courses at Pratt Institute, for various corporations, and online. He has published book and music reviews in *Punk Planet* magazine
and online at Bad Subjects. In 2002, he received Mellon Foundation funding through Pratt SLAS to research and present methods of teaching poetry to non-native-speaking undergraduates.
Sean Kelly has taught at Pratt in Writing for Publication, Performance, and Media, along with Freshman English, for the past three years. He has also been a radio actor, newspaper
reporter, and advertising copywriter. In 1974, he migrated to NYC to co-write and co-direct the infamous off-Broadway mock-rock musical Lemmings. He has written extensively for television, and was an editor of the National Lampoon magazine from 1970 until 1978. In 1977, he was
the founding editor of Heavy Metal, “the illustrated fantasy magazine.” His byline has appeared in Bazaar, Interview, Playboy, SPY, US, and The Village Voice, among others. For 20 years, he has been guilty of one book per annum.
Cecilia Muhlstein is a writer and printmaker. Currently on the editorial committee of Downtown Brooklyn, she has articles forthcoming which include an article/interview on Los Angeles based artist Jody Zellen’s ongoing web-site project Ghost City for How2, as well as an excerpt and image from her forthcoming novel for the London based, The Wag.
Ethan Spigland is an award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker, and an associate professor of English and Humanities at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. He has also taught media theory and production at the New School, New York University, Brooklyn College, and the Bauhaus
University in Weimar, Germany. His series of short films, Elevator Moods, won a Webby Award this year and was featured in the Sundance Film Festival last year. His short film The Strange
Case of Balthazar Hyppolite won the Gold Medal in the Student Academy Awards and was a finalist for the Best Short Subject Oscar.
Phal Vaughter is assistant director of the Intensive English Program at Pratt, and has taught for six years in the program. She has been a visiting instructor of Freshman English at Pratt
since 1999, and has helped to develop the curriculum for the international students’ track of English 101 and 103. She has taught native and non-native English speakers in remedial reading and writing classes in the CUNY system. Her overseas work experience includes English language scholarship essay evaluation for the American Council of Teachers of Russian in
Moscow, and she was the recipient of a U.S. Department of Education fellowship for study at Fudan University, Shanghai, People's Republic of China. Suzanne Verderber is an assistant professor of English and Humanities, and member of the Critical and Visual Studies faculty. She has been the academic coordinator for freshman English at Pratt Institute, and has helped revise the freshman English curriculum to highlight the connections of critical thinking and writing. She designs and offers seminars for teachers of writing. She has published work on the intersections of emerging forms of subjectivity in the medieval period, using Gilles Deleuze’s theories of subjectivity.
Liza Williams teaches freshman English and a thesis-writing class in the graduate Art Education Department. She has long been a champion of student writing, editing for a number
of years the annual collection of writing from Pratt English classes, Thought Lines, and advising the student literary and art magazine Ubiquitous. Her classes each produce an informal
anthology of poems or short stories. She is currently working on her own
collection of poems for young readers. WAC at Pratt Director
Richard Loranger is an adjunct instructor who has taught composition, literature, creative writing, and critical thought to both American and international students at Pratt as well as
several CUNY colleges for the past six years. He is a poet, performer, and visual artist, and the author of The Orange Book, Poems for Teeth, and nine chapbooks. At Pratt, he has also
instructed writing labs for undergraduate architecture students, has developed several pedagogical workshops, and has served for three years as a tutor in the Writing and Tutorial Center, where he curates an ongoing exhibition of text-image art.
Writeshop Program
http://www.writeshop.com/article2.htm
...writing as a means of learning.” Simply put, students use their writing assignments to explore other areas of study. Not only does this kind of writing boost a student’s writing ability, it helps him better understand the content and specialized vocabulary of a particular subject.
Beginning with “Describing an Object” (Lesson 1), you can immediately put writing across the curriculum into practice. Instead of describing a teacup, baseball, or Matchbox® car, students can observe and write about an oriole’s nest for science, a carved African mask for geography, a coonskin cap for literature, or a Peruvian flute for music. If you don’t have the object on hand, a vivid photograph can often serve as an acceptable substitute. Usborne, Eyewitness, and DK books make excellent choices because of their clear, intricate photos. Are you studying ancient Egypt or China? Find a detailed picture of a simple item from that culture. And whether you’re writing across the curriculum or not, use the Lesson 1 guidelines to choose an appropriate object that’s neither too elaborate nor too large.
Informative writing is also well suited to writing across the curriculum. Consider Lesson 11’s news article. Rather than make up a “newsworthy” story, students use the five Ws to explore a real incident they’ve been studying in another subject. What a great opportunity to learn more about an historical event, an archaeological find, or a scientific discovery and then write an article about it!
Narratives offer even more opportunity! When it’s time to write a personal narrative about an emotional event (Lesson 12), your student might choose to become Joan of Arc (history), Albert Einstein (science), the Apostle Paul (Bible), or George Frideric Handel (music). After reading about an especially exciting event in her subject’s life, the student must then synthesize and personalize the information in order to write a first-person narrative as if she herself were that individual. Writing from a different point of view challenges critical thinking skills!
Contrasting opposing world views, the paintings of Mondrian and Picasso, or protagonists from two Dickens novels. Student essays not only reflect the topics of study, they allow for expression of personal opinions as well.
First, writing across the curriculum increases students’ knowledge of their subject matter while helping them develop critical thinking skills. To prepare for the assignment, they must do a bit of reading or research. So as they take in the information, brainstorm, and write, they gain a greater understanding of the topic.
Explaining a Process, asks students to design an instruction manual. Instead of writing on lined paper and slapping together a folded cardstock cover, one 10th-grade student created a most unusual instruction manual based upon her readings from Lord of the Rings: She explained how to make an Elven sword! Not only did she cut her own branch and fashion it into a sword, she copied her composition onto parchment paper whose edges she had carefully burned. Writing runic characters with a calligraphy pen, she embellished each page to create a beautiful project worth keeping and treasuring.
WriteShop I Scope and Sequence
Lesson Number
Lesson Title
Lesson Focus
Skill Builder Focus
1a
Describing an Object (part 1)
Introducing WriteShop
Concrete Writing
1b
Describing an Object (part 2)
Concrete Writing
None
2
Describing a Pet
Conciseness
Using a Thesaurus
3
Describing a Person
Learning to Edit
Paired Adjectives
4
Describing a Circus Performer
Concrete Writing
Topic Sentences
5
Describing a Food
Sensory Description
Choosing Appropriate Titles; Its vs. It's
6
Describing a Season
Limiting Narration
Choosing Concrete Season Words; Using Similes
7
Describing a Place
Limiting Narration
Present Participles
8
Explaining a Process
Informative Writing
Arranging in Time Sequence Order
9
Writing a Factual Paragraph
Informative Report; Avoiding Plagiarism
Introductory Participial Phrases; Participles as Similes
10
Writing a Concise Biography
Conciseness
Appositives; "-ly" Adverbs
11
Introducing Journalism
News Article
Five Ws; Writing a Lead Paragraph
12
Writing a Narrative of an Emotional Event
Narratives
Prepositional Phrases
13
Writing a Narrative of Another Person's Experience
Conducting an Interview
14
First-Person Point of View
Point of View, Personification
Using Personification
15
First-Person Point of View
Limited Omniscience
Tense Agreement
16
Third-Person Point of View
Omniscience
Past Participles
WriteShop II Scope and Sequence
Lesson Number
Lesson Title
Lesson Focus
Skill Builder Focus
17
Describing an Object
Reviewing Concreteness
Reviewing Paired Adjectives, Similes, Present Participles
18
Describing a Place (expanded)
Reviewing Sensory Description
Reviewing Prepositional Phrases, Adverbs, Appositives
19
Writing a Short Report
Outlining
Reviewing Personification; Using Past Participles as Adjectives
20
Exaggeration
Descriptive/Informative Descriptive/Persuasive
Communicating Clearly; Incorrect Word Usage; Overly Descriptive Writing
21
First-Person Point of View (part 1)
Limited Omniscience; Descriptive Narration
Writing Descriptive Narration
22
First-Person Point of View (part 2)
Limited Omniscience; Changing Points of View
Descriptive Narration
23
Narrative Voice
First and Third Person Narration
24
Writing an Ad
Persuasive Writing
25
Opinion Essay
Developing Points through Outlining
Using Parallelism
26
Letter to the Editor
Developing Points through Outlining
27
Compare or Contrast Essay
Organizing Information
28
Compare or Contrast Essay
Organizing Information
29
Essays that Describe or Define
Developing Points through Outlining
30
Timed Essays
Writing Within a Time Limit
...writing as a means of learning.” Simply put, students use their writing assignments to explore other areas of study. Not only does this kind of writing boost a student’s writing ability, it helps him better understand the content and specialized vocabulary of a particular subject.
Beginning with “Describing an Object” (Lesson 1), you can immediately put writing across the curriculum into practice. Instead of describing a teacup, baseball, or Matchbox® car, students can observe and write about an oriole’s nest for science, a carved African mask for geography, a coonskin cap for literature, or a Peruvian flute for music. If you don’t have the object on hand, a vivid photograph can often serve as an acceptable substitute. Usborne, Eyewitness, and DK books make excellent choices because of their clear, intricate photos. Are you studying ancient Egypt or China? Find a detailed picture of a simple item from that culture. And whether you’re writing across the curriculum or not, use the Lesson 1 guidelines to choose an appropriate object that’s neither too elaborate nor too large.
Informative writing is also well suited to writing across the curriculum. Consider Lesson 11’s news article. Rather than make up a “newsworthy” story, students use the five Ws to explore a real incident they’ve been studying in another subject. What a great opportunity to learn more about an historical event, an archaeological find, or a scientific discovery and then write an article about it!
Narratives offer even more opportunity! When it’s time to write a personal narrative about an emotional event (Lesson 12), your student might choose to become Joan of Arc (history), Albert Einstein (science), the Apostle Paul (Bible), or George Frideric Handel (music). After reading about an especially exciting event in her subject’s life, the student must then synthesize and personalize the information in order to write a first-person narrative as if she herself were that individual. Writing from a different point of view challenges critical thinking skills!
Contrasting opposing world views, the paintings of Mondrian and Picasso, or protagonists from two Dickens novels. Student essays not only reflect the topics of study, they allow for expression of personal opinions as well.
First, writing across the curriculum increases students’ knowledge of their subject matter while helping them develop critical thinking skills. To prepare for the assignment, they must do a bit of reading or research. So as they take in the information, brainstorm, and write, they gain a greater understanding of the topic.
Explaining a Process, asks students to design an instruction manual. Instead of writing on lined paper and slapping together a folded cardstock cover, one 10th-grade student created a most unusual instruction manual based upon her readings from Lord of the Rings: She explained how to make an Elven sword! Not only did she cut her own branch and fashion it into a sword, she copied her composition onto parchment paper whose edges she had carefully burned. Writing runic characters with a calligraphy pen, she embellished each page to create a beautiful project worth keeping and treasuring.
WriteShop I Scope and Sequence
Lesson Number
Lesson Title
Lesson Focus
Skill Builder Focus
1a
Describing an Object (part 1)
Introducing WriteShop
Concrete Writing
1b
Describing an Object (part 2)
Concrete Writing
None
2
Describing a Pet
Conciseness
Using a Thesaurus
3
Describing a Person
Learning to Edit
Paired Adjectives
4
Describing a Circus Performer
Concrete Writing
Topic Sentences
5
Describing a Food
Sensory Description
Choosing Appropriate Titles; Its vs. It's
6
Describing a Season
Limiting Narration
Choosing Concrete Season Words; Using Similes
7
Describing a Place
Limiting Narration
Present Participles
8
Explaining a Process
Informative Writing
Arranging in Time Sequence Order
9
Writing a Factual Paragraph
Informative Report; Avoiding Plagiarism
Introductory Participial Phrases; Participles as Similes
10
Writing a Concise Biography
Conciseness
Appositives; "-ly" Adverbs
11
Introducing Journalism
News Article
Five Ws; Writing a Lead Paragraph
12
Writing a Narrative of an Emotional Event
Narratives
Prepositional Phrases
13
Writing a Narrative of Another Person's Experience
Conducting an Interview
14
First-Person Point of View
Point of View, Personification
Using Personification
15
First-Person Point of View
Limited Omniscience
Tense Agreement
16
Third-Person Point of View
Omniscience
Past Participles
WriteShop II Scope and Sequence
Lesson Number
Lesson Title
Lesson Focus
Skill Builder Focus
17
Describing an Object
Reviewing Concreteness
Reviewing Paired Adjectives, Similes, Present Participles
18
Describing a Place (expanded)
Reviewing Sensory Description
Reviewing Prepositional Phrases, Adverbs, Appositives
19
Writing a Short Report
Outlining
Reviewing Personification; Using Past Participles as Adjectives
20
Exaggeration
Descriptive/Informative Descriptive/Persuasive
Communicating Clearly; Incorrect Word Usage; Overly Descriptive Writing
21
First-Person Point of View (part 1)
Limited Omniscience; Descriptive Narration
Writing Descriptive Narration
22
First-Person Point of View (part 2)
Limited Omniscience; Changing Points of View
Descriptive Narration
23
Narrative Voice
First and Third Person Narration
24
Writing an Ad
Persuasive Writing
25
Opinion Essay
Developing Points through Outlining
Using Parallelism
26
Letter to the Editor
Developing Points through Outlining
27
Compare or Contrast Essay
Organizing Information
28
Compare or Contrast Essay
Organizing Information
29
Essays that Describe or Define
Developing Points through Outlining
30
Timed Essays
Writing Within a Time Limit
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Meaning in sound...
The meaning of the poem is as much in the sound as in the sense of the words.
John Barr
Poetry Foundation
Video
http://www.poetryoutloud.org/news/nationalfinals.html
John Barr
Poetry Foundation
Video
http://www.poetryoutloud.org/news/nationalfinals.html
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