Let's try to maintain awareness of the messages we send without speaking--possibly without intending to.
For example, what is the difference between sitting across the table from the student and sitting beside or just around the corner from him/her? (If you are sitting on opposite sides, how do you even share the draft, anyway?)
What is the difference between having the paper in front of you, having it in front of the student, and having it somewhere between the two of you?
And how about that pencil--who is holding the pencil, who is making the marks on the draft, and what is the message there?
Tables needn't come between us and our students. We are engaged in a collaborative venture, not a mini-class. We offer choices, but we don't dictate what to do. There are so many variables, so many solutions, so many approaches--why would I think mine is best? We offer choices and then insist that the student take responsibility for making one.
Don't take the paper away from the student, and avoid just silently reading. Read it together. Better yet, spend five minutes asking questions about it and getting the student to tell you about it before you read at all. Make the student take you on a tour of his paper. Make him point to his thesis statement. Make him point to his topic sentences. Ask him why he put his points in this order or whether he considered rearranging them. Ask whether he presented any counterarguments--and make him point to them.
And pencils! If you, like me, need to fiddle with one, either use it as a pointer or write on a piece of scratch paper. Don't line out (the student's) words on the draft and write in (your) other words! Again, the ownership of and responsibility for the paper is the student's. Offer choices, let him choose, and let him write on his own paper.
I have been trying to read essays aloud, especially if I have a lot of questions. This way, the student hears the errors with me. I have also been trying to stop myself from taking the paper and reading silently. I have been trying to skim through it quickly and then I ask the student to clarify whatever I missed.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of spending five minutes asking questions before reading the paper at all. I usually read the prompt and then jump right into reading the paper.
I have noticed that some student's want to just hand you their pencil and paper. Some of them kind of expect you to do it for them. I sometimes have to catch myself. It can be pretty frustrating. I am still trying to teach myself better ways to deal with this. An example: There was a student a few weeks ago that needed help "starting" her paper. No matter what I said, I couldn't get her to start it (or brainstorming or T charts) on her own. She literally wanted me to write down a thesis statement for her. I kept telling her that she needed to reread her text and pull supporting information from it. I just basically repeated the same thing for 35 minutes. :(
Well, that's a long time. Do you think she understood the text? Maybe you can ask specific questions about the text so she can remember what the supporting info is. (And suggest physically annotating so she can keep track of the author's argument.) Or maybe questions about her opinions/beliefs (because her thesis is a statement of her educated opinion)? Sometimes students haven't done much thinking about a topic, and you need to ask open-ended, probing questions about their beliefs so they can come to some sense of what they do think. But you're right--you can't tell her WHAT to think.
ReplyDeleteAfter figuring out what the assignment is, I often ask students to verbally "map" their paper for me while I take notes. I ask them what their thesis is and then I ask them about the content of each section of their paper and how it proves/ relates to their thesis. We often find things to revise before I even begin reading the paper. After discussing the overall organization and their intended content, we will often read the paper out loud together.
ReplyDeleteI like to sit next to them and read the paper so they can hear their words--I do my best to read it exactly as they wrote it. I ask them to hold a pencil and stop me whenever they want to edit or have a question. They usually catch many of their own errors, but I sometimes put an X in the margin when there is something I want to come back to later.
Also, if it is obvious that they have not self-edited yet, I sometimes ask them to go and listen to their paper on Kurzweil and edit it on their own before we go over it together--this way I will be able to see their error patterns more clearly, and I won't be wasting time explaining things that they already know.
Actually, I've been thinking over Cassandra's comment a little more. I've learned that, even if a student wants to hand over their paper and pencil (and the responsibility for decision-making along with them), I don't have to accept them, at least not on the student's terms.
ReplyDeleteTalking about the paper before reading is a great way to avoid that trap and encourage the student to retain the responsibility for his own paper, for all the choices and decisions involved in drafting and revision. You can re-set the session in your own terms by starting to ask those questions. It's a really good technique for avoiding the expectation that you're going to line-edit. You're still engaging with the student and the paper, but on your terms.
But the really, really great thing about discussing the paper first is that it forces the student to get analytical about his paper, possibly for the first time. This is metacognition, critical thinking--the very thing we want students to learn. It's a win-win: you get your way with the session, and the student learns new ways of thinking about his own writing.
Our WLDC Mission Statement says we want "engaged readers and writers...deliberate in selecting rhetorical tools suited to their purpose...." Asking students questions can foster that deliberation in a way that simply reading and responding to their papers does not.
Having said that, it is good to get around to reading the paper eventually, if only to respect the work and thought that went into it. :-D
I am gulity of sitting across the table and taking the essay to read. However, I am seeing more and more where a student will have the essay on a flash drive, which I love. I suggest instead of printing one out for us to go over, I like to have them pull it up and sit with them at the computer and go over it with them. I tend to highlight trouble sentences and read it out loud to them. I explain what issues I have with that sentence or ask them what they are trying to say. Then I say you will need to go back and work on that, now lets keep moving. Then I may make verbal suggestions about what to add to the paper, but they will have all the highlighted areas to go back and work on later. Most of the time these students take notes while we are going over these highlighted areas so they can remember exactly what issues there are. This tends to get them more involved and I have noticed they read along with me and are catching their own typing errors. They also fix small error right then and there.
ReplyDeleteI still struggle with issues like this on occasion. I like Liberty's idea of going to the computer and sitting side by side. There are always those students that come in specifically wanting their paper read. I have been trying to make sure to ask them questions about their paper first, but sometimes I am still guilty of just taking the paper and reading it myself first. Still sometimes when I am reading a long prompt I notice a lengthy silence. It makes me wonder if I should be doing something differently to make the student interact more. I do feel like I should read the whole paper eventually, "if only to respect the work and thought that went into it". Most of the time it isn't too difficult to get students to do their own critical thinking. Occasionally, I do get someone who just wants me to do it for them and have found that I can be just as stubborn as they are!
ReplyDelete