Final Reflection - Mar. 16

How do you believe different kinds of writing will inform your teaching in your content areas?
           First, I would like to say that I love writing. Teaching is and always has been my first career choice, but writing professionally has always been a close second. I hope to share that passion for writing with my students, no matter which course I am teaching.

           I hope that I am able to inspire them to grow their abilities and improve their writing without making it feel like I am constantly assigning 'boring' writing tasks. I feel there is a fine line there and I hope I am able to tread it without falling into the rut of redundancy. I would like to be engaging and inspiring. I would like to teach my students to express themselves and to explore new ideas. I would like to explore new tasks, challenge my students to make discoveries and to record everything. I especially like a lesson I learned in English last semester about making journals and having students record in them each class. While I am not always a fan of doing reflections, I think they have their time and their place, and there can be merit to them when done correctly.
            As mentioned earlier in this blog, I like the lesson put on by Mike Ward that discussed how to structure your week so that students are doing their own research and following their own interests. There are all kinds of different styles of writing we can do as a class to grow our skills and our abilities. We can write essays (I know, boring). We can create journals. We can make blogs and learn to integrate technology. We can write reflections. We can write book, journal, or article reviews. We can write research reports (or really all kinds of reports). We can write creative fiction pieces, or historical non-fiction. We can write poetry or stories. We can engage in explorations and self-analysis.

Above all else, I would like to teach my students to follow their dreams.

Rita Pierson: Every Kid Needs a Champion - Inspirational TED talk

Third Visit to Hawthorne - Mar. 2

             So far on our excursions to Hawthorne my work with Prince has focused on trying to refine ideas for his creative fiction piece he is working on. I have still been unable to get him to focus on any class work and he maintains that he has nothing which needs to be done. He promptly turns our focus to his extra-curricular work and excitedly shows me what he has accomplished so far.

             I feel Prince and I have made a lot of progress through our writing workshops and he has begun to develop in his writing abilities. At the beginning of our time together he presented me with a writing sample which contained many ideas jumbled together and spit out onto the page in a somewhat cohesive manner. There were a lot of holes in his plotline, a lot of inconsistencies in his writing style, and a lot of indications that he was still developing as a beginning writer. I used the Beginning Writer’s Continuum to evaluate his work and determine where he sat in terms of writing ability. I found that Prince showed a lot of promise and a lot of the hallmarks of a developing writer who was still fine-tuning and growing his abilities. To that end, we spent most of our time together focused on developing ideas and editing pre-existing work to try and develop some consistency. Our work today focused on editing what he had already written.

            We looked at his use of dialogue and tried to normalize how he interjected dialogue (in some areas it would be introduced, in some cases he used quotation marks, in others he used the French style of using a dash, in others he did not distinguish it at all). We also looked at his sentence structure and tried to work on his overall grammar. He made many common errors that could be easily corrected through proof-reading. We worked on his use of tenses – Prince often tended to switch back and forth between past and present within a single paragraph, or even a single sentence. We looked at his sentence structure and tried to eliminate errors like run-on sentences of areas where he had lost his train of thought and the story seemed to falter. I think having another set of eyes to read through it with him helped a lot. We would read the text together and he would look at the errors as we got to them.

We also continued to make adjustments to the story outline and to jot down ideas for where he wanted to take his tale. One thing Prince is still working on is trying to come up with a central theme or message for his work. I think at this point in his development he does not yet understand the notion that great works of writing all contain a central theme or message which the author is trying to share with his audience. The story is a medium for relaying that message. We talked about this a little bit in our work today and tried to explore what kind of commentary he was trying to make.

            I feel that Prince has come a long way in his writing since we first began to work together. He has learned how to effectively outline where he intends to go in his story and to make a visual representation of all his ideas so that he can decide what will best fit with his storyline. I think the biggest obstacles for Prince really revolved around getting that outline down and deciding on the purpose and direction of his writing. Once we were able to sort those out, a lot of his corrections were just cosmetic – spelling, grammar, sentence structure. In a second Writing Continuum which I have found online, I have assessed that Prince is transitioning from a Fluent Writer, which is typical of children ages 9-11 to a Proficient Writer which is typical of children ages 10-13. He achieves some of the benchmarks from both categories and is steadily working towards honing his abilities. Prince has a lot of great ideas and a lot of drive to pursue his writing. I think he will go on to complete many great works and I hope that he has benefitted from our time together and the skills and tools I have shared with him.

Taylor Mali - Totally like whatever, you know

Second Visit to Hawthorne - Feb. 23

              Today I worked with Prince on developing the ideas for his story. Our first task was to try and develop a clear outline for Prince’s story. I had noticed in my original read-through that there were a lot of inconsistencies in storyline and the plot was rather unclear. I got that it was set in a post-apocalyptic world and that it involved aliens, mutants, robots, and humans; but the roles of each were rather unclear – and indeed Prince had not fully flushed out what he intended each of these factions to do within the story. In light of this, we sat down and had a very productive session of brainstorming. I showed Prince a couple of different mind mapping templates and discussed the benefits of having a clear outline of your story already written down. Prince is very keen on keeping his ideas safe in his mind and is not a big fan of the idea of writing things down until they are ready for the story. While this could be manageable for a short piece, Prince keeps talking about making this an epic tale that could span several books. In light of such magnitude, the story is going to need some clear direction which he can follow in his writing.

We hashed out some very interesting plot possibilities and Prince used me as a sounding board for his ideas. I helped him to bridge the gaps in some of his ideas – such as what the purpose of the alien queen might be in coming to Earth in the first place, or why Scarlet needed to combat the robots. We were able to work out a main conflict for the first story – the humans all live below the surface at different levels, the better off you are, the farther underground your residence. Recently, large subterranean mutants had invaded the lowest level of residences, pushing the higher class humans up into the next level, which in turn pushed that level up, and pushed the third level up onto the surface. Our story takes place on the surface where Scarlet and her troupe now have to face the invaders to save mankind. We developed the characters of Scarlet and Bug, and tried to determine their relationships to one another. We also tried to eliminate some of the meandering subplots such as Bug’s incessant need to wander off for no conceivable reason, and to either take them out of the story, or tie them into the action in some understandable way. Prince has come up with some very interesting ideas and found a way to lay out the groundwork for where he wants his story to go.

What Teachers Make -- Taylor Mali

The Game Plan - Hawthorne Student Mentoring

February 23^rd

Our first task will involve brainstorming and mind-mapping techniques to forge a clear storyline for our tale. I will bring some templates and some techniques that we can use to try and develop a clear outline of where the story is headed and who our main characters are [i.e. what kind of people are they, what kind of roles will they play, and what purpose do they serve to our deeper meaning?]. We will also explore the five main elements of a short story – Conflict, Theme, Plot, Setting, & Character. We will look to generate some new ideas and try to develop an overall schema for the entire story.

March 2^nd

Our second task will involve proof-reading the text he has already produced. We will aim to look for and correct minor problems with his grammar, sentence structure, tense usage, and word choice. We will also look to edit how he incorporates character dialogue as this is fairly inconsistent within his writing. I would like to teach him how to review his own writing in terms of using proper pronouns by asking himself the questions; who or what am I referring to? And is this clear from my sentence structure? I am hoping that through this instruction he will be able to improve his writing not just in this piece of work, but in all future endeavours as well (because it sounds like he intends to go on to become a fairly prolific writer).

March 9^th

Our third task will involve putting these elements together and working on further developing our main characters. As mentioned earlier, Mr. Harder has spoken about the need for identifying and developing the self in all our writing. As Prince is attempting to write from the perspective of a female character, this is a new and unknown realm for him and will require some fine tuning. Our aim for this session will be to improve upon our presentation and to attempt to incorporate a consistent representation of the characters we have encountered thus far.

Fiction Writing Resources & Links

Fiction Writing Resources;


How to Write a Science Fiction Novel using the "Snowflake Method"
http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/


The Fiction Writer's Virtual Toolbox by Josh Vogt
http://www.jrvogt.com/writerresources.htm


102 Resources for Fiction Writers
http://www.heretocreate.com/2007/11/01/resources-for-fiction-writing/


The Creative Writer's Toolkit: 6 Tools You Can't Write Without
http://thewritepractice.com/creative-writing-tools/


Fiction Addiction.net
http://www.fictionaddiction.net/


Rules & Tools for Writing Short Stories
http://www.danielpublishing.com/resourcesback.htm


Tools for Writers on Reddit
http://www.sfwa.org/2013/09/tools-writers-reddit/


1001 Creative Writing Tips
http://fictionwritingtools.blogspot.ca/


How to Master Pacing in A Story
http://www.writersdigest.com/tip-of-the-day/7-tools-for-pacing-a-novel-keeping-your-story-moving-at-the-right-pace


Tools for Emerging Writers
http://www.how-to-write-a-book-now.com/


Top Tools for Writers
http://www.fictionschool.com/top-tools-writers-fiction-school-podcast-30/

Our first visit to Hawthorne - Feb. 9

Today we ventured to Hawthorne Public School and met the students we would be mentoring over the next four weeks. My student, let us call him ‘Prince’ (his nickname), is an ambitious fiction writer who hopes to publish his stories one day. Despite repeated attempts I could not get him to focus on any A Midsummer Night’s Dream work – indeed he even indicated that he did not know what I was talking about and thought our time together should be focused upon his creative writing. He has been working on a fictional post-apocalyptic story in which mankind has very nearly eradicated itself with nuclear war and the survivors are divided into three categories – or classes of humans. His division of the classes is reminiscent of the castes present in Brave New World where each individual has his place and role within society. The twist brought about in his story – one caste has been pushed out of their living quarters by the robots and is moving into another area of living quarters; thus pushing out the next caste of citizens which is in turn pushing the final caste up onto the surface and into danger.

Thrown into this melee of human versus human are three other threats which can be found on the surface – the robots who have achieved consciousness/intelligence and want to overthrow the humans; the mutants who have been affected by the nuclear radiation; and the alien invaders who have come to take over the planet. He shared with me some of his writing so far and I was able to get a glimpse at his story development to date. I would say that he falls somewhere between a 3 and 4 on the Beginning Writer’s Continuum [http://schools.nyc.gov/documents/d75/ais/BWC.pdf] in relation to the 6+1 Writing Traits.

I found our biggest challenge lay in getting a coherent narrative. Prince has lots of great ideas but is very reluctant to sit down and think/write out where he wants his story to go. So what gets produced is a rambling chain of words that lack focus or purpose. He has a general idea of what he wants to happen, but hasn’t solidly planned out the storyline – indeed he is not even sure which characters will survive the story, what is actually going to happen, nor which faction will be the victor in the end. There are even parts in the narrative where it almost seems as though he deviates with a side-story that has no major contribution to the plot. At one point we get a flashback into Scarlet’s childhood but there does not seem to be any important message or purpose for the flashback. At another point we go on a meandering exploration with Bug that serves only to reiterate the bleak description of the landscape which we already experienced earlier in the chapter. Another big setback is his tendency to change tenses often: the story will switch from first person to third, and past tense to present tense frequently and without justification. There are frequent spelling mistakes, some repetitive word usage, and some shaky sentence structure which are all indicative of a developing writer (level 3) who is progressing towards becoming a capable writer (level 4). I think that with the benefit of someone to work with him on his writing that Prince is fully capable of honing his writing skills and progressing to the next level in his writing abilities.

I believe my plan for trying to help Prince develop in his writing will involve the following:

• Work on brainstorming techniques so we can hammer out a plan for where he wants his story to go.
• Work on getting his ideas laid out in an easily-comprehensible manner.
• Work on going through his text together (proof-reading) to make editing corrections [things such as spelling, sentence structure, idea cohesion, etc.]
• Work on identifying the key components to the story [beginning, middle, end]
• Work on creating a story outline.

He has lots of great ideas and has a general notion of where he wants his story to go, but I think he could benefit from a session of sitting down and trying to organize his intentions for his story. Our next session following Family Day will focus on trying to brainstorm and mind-map his storyline. I will first and foremost try to get him focused on the assigned class work, but he seemed very adamant that his assignment involved writing fictional work and that his story is what he wants to work on. I recall Mr. Harder talking about the need to find the self in all of our writing work and so I think our focus will be on trying to create solid, believable identities for our main characters.

Sample Rubric

Marking Rubric

Criteria	Re-Do	Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4
A2.2 did you locate and select relevant information to your topic/investigation?	None/insufficient	I found some interesting things on Wikipedia and made the rest up	I mainly used Wikipedia and had some relevant information	I made good use of research sources and had a good amount of relevant info in my paper	I did a thorough job researching lots of reliable sources and including interesting and relevant info.
A4.3/4.4 did you clearly communicate the findings of your research and demonstrate an understanding of the research process?	None/insufficient	Maybe only a little bit	Some of my findings were clearly expressed, but it was mostly unclear	I did a pretty good job expressing my findings. Some of my details were randomly added in and a few main points were missing.	I did a thorough job of expressing my findings and I understand how to conduct useful research.
Did I spell-check and proof-read my work before submitting it?	Nope	I read over it, but there were still a lot of errors	I read over it and only had 3-5 mistakes.	I read over it, had a friend read over it, and we missed 1 or 2 mistakes.	I had no spelling, grammar, or sentence structure errors.
B2.1 did you clearly describe the basic thinking of your chosen major philosophical tradition?	None/insufficient	I had 1 or 2 points, but I left a lot out	I got some of the main points and used a couple of quotes to back up what I was saying.	I got most of the main points and used a fair number of quotes to support my work.	I completely understood the main points and was able to clearly put them in my own words.
B2.2 did you clearly explain how your chosen philosopher contributed to our understanding of the Big Questions?	None/insufficient	Maybe only a little bit	I had some of his key contributions, but I was still missing a lot	I got most of his key contributions and explained a good deal of his ideas.	I understood his thinking so well that I could even consider being a follower.

Conventional Writing Methods - Feb. 2nd

            My subject areas are History and English, and I believe that the most conventional form of writing is the essay (be it literary or argumentative). These two subjects most often rely on essays in order for students to convey their learning. While I am personally a fan of essays, many students fear and dread essay writing. I feel a lot of this is linked to that fact that many students do not know how to effectively write an essay, and many teachers do not know how to effectively teach their students the elements of a successful essay. (I am not saying I know how to do any better, I am just saying there are a lot of students who never master essay writing).  And so essay-writing remains the dreaded assignment of high school students everywhere. Can we successfully complete English and/or History without essay writing? I don't think so. I believe the essay is an integral part of these courses and needs to be built upon. So how do we find effective strategies for helping our students develop the skill of essay writing?

           In one class I observed, I noticed the teacher trying to work on essays with his grade 7 students. He had an activity where the students first learned to pick apart an existing essay. They had to come to class with four coloured highlighters and were then given an essay to work with. The students had to go through the essay and using their different highlighters pick out the thesis of the essay and the three main arguments - each with a different colour. This enabled the students to visualize the structure of the essay and easily identify the main arguments.

           Following this, the students had to go into each of the main paragraphs and further select the central argument, and using the same colour, highlight the supporting evidence. In this way, the students could learn to identify the important information and distinguish it from the "filler" of the essay. They were then given a handout (see below) on which they had to fill out the information they had discovered.
           Over the next few lessons, students were working on writing their own essays and beginning to develop the skills around developing and supporting an argument. The students were working with standard five-paragraph essays and they went through building each paragraph one-at-a-time. First they would fill out the same handout with the points they wanted to make. After this, they would construct the introduction and submit it for revision. In the next class they would work on Paragraph 1, and again submit it for revision. They would also have received their introduction back and would have to make the necessary corrections before resubmitting it. In this way, students were able to work on their essays piece by piece and to see how to effectively construct an argumentative essay.
          This type of essay instruction would most likely not work in a high school setting because the students will have already been working with essays for some time, but it did seem to be a rather effective way to introduce essay writing to a younger class who had not had much experience with essay writing.

Essay Writing Handout
Main argument (thesis): (blue) ______________________________________________________
Argument 1: (yellow) _____________________________________________________________

Argument 2: (pink) _______________________________________________________________

Argument 3: (orange) _____________________________________________________________

Paragraph 1

Argument 1: (yellow) _____________________________________________________________

Supporting Evidence: (yellow) ______________________________________________________

Supporting Evidence: (yellow) ______________________________________________________

Supporting Evidence: (yellow) ______________________________________________________

Paragraph 2

Argument 2: (pink) _______________________________________________________________

Supporting Evidence: (pink) ________________________________________________________

Supporting Evidence: (pink) ________________________________________________________

Supporting Evidence: (pink) ________________________________________________________

Paragraph 3

Argument 3: (orange) _____________________________________________________________

Supporting Evidence: (orange) ______________________________________________________

Supporting Evidence: (orange) ______________________________________________________

Supporting Evidence: (orange) ______________________________________________________

Conclusion

Main argument (thesis): (blue) ______________________________________________________

Argument 1: (yellow) _____________________________________________________________

Argument 2: (pink) _______________________________________________________________

Argument 3: (orange) _____________________________________________________________
Conclusion