Hello all,
As a new teacher to CCTS, I have learned valuable components during my first year. I realized just how strongly I felt about our school, the need for academic rigor, and the overall expectations of our student body. When I received Marc's e-mail regarding Curriculum Writing, I decided there was no better opportunity.
Within a half hour on the first day, Van, Joel, and I were exchanging ideas, suggesting book titles, and creating activities that would compliment our units. The time simply flew by. I appreciated the various input that was put forth. Joel has an extensive list of books that he read, with a magnitude of information floating around in his brain and I looked forward to hearing about them. Also, Van's input from Pennsauken was not only informative, but appreciated as well.
Although, I was originally apprehensive comparing our material and lessons to Social Studies, the transitions that we created and the unit themes that were constructed (such as "Psychology" and "Change") are topics that I cannot wait to teach. I also appreciate the "revisiting"concept, such as the Odyssey in both freshmen and senior year. The depth and details that students will accumulate by the time they are seniors will be far more extensive than we could have ever dreamed.
I must say however I had one major fear before entering this year that Curriculm Writing somewhat alleviated. I have five classes of RPO Junior Read 180 students... and this is their HSPA year. Although the growth they've demonstrated in the past year is remarkable... what if they don't pass? What will come of them? How will that reflect me? (I don't want to be selfish, but I can't help but wonder) However that seemed to dissipate when Dennis and Marc started talking on the last day of writing. They spoke about benchmarks and how a specific group will sit down together and find appropriate tests that will match the skills we have taught during that semester, marking period, month, etc. I know the tests aren't the same, nor are they on the same level of magnitude, but I hold similar expectations and I now feel reassured that my students will be able to pass the test to the best of their ability.
Overall, I feel as though Curriculum Writing will benefit our school. It will also improve the quality of our teaching. I look forward to teaching Macbeth, a Modest Proposal, and even events such as Hurricane Katrina and the aftermass of Haiti. We have now broadened our students' experiences. We have created a curriculum where the English classroom can branch out extend itself beyond what a student's original perception of "class" was. We are now creating experiences, not just lessons and I find that to be far more memorable than any grammar lesson (even though we will be teaching that too!)
-Lauren M.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Friday, May 13, 2011
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
The Power of Words
"There is more than a verbal tie between the words common, community, and communication." -John Dewey
Monday, April 4, 2011
"Getting Students to Talk"
Check out this article on generating engaging, maeningful class discussions that let you be more sure that learning is taking place...
Thursday, March 31, 2011
How Students Cheat in the Digital Age
Check out the slideshow on this site showing 10 common ways in which students use technology to cheat. It brings up some interesting points about what constitutes learning, what's the nature of good assessment, and what kinds of tools should and should not be allowed to be used in class or on tests.
As teachers, it's important to keep up with the technology that our students use-- if we are nervous around technology and uncomfortable using it, we only place ourselves farther away from our students' lives. Our students are digital natives-- by knowing about the tools they use and knowing how to speak their language, we show them that their lives are interesting to us, that we are lifelong learners, and that we recognize the power their technology has when used for learning. That last part is our most important job-- I was always surprised at how much my students knew about using the latest smartphones, applications, and programs, but how little potential they saw for these programs to be used to learn. It was my role as a teacher to take them down that road.
One thing I took from this slideshow is that we need to re-think the format and substance of the assessments we give. If our assessments focus on simple recall, factual knowledge, and memorization-- basically anything a computer can do faster and more reliably than a person-- what are we really asking our students to learn? Outdated skills that won't enable them to be competitive in the job market? If our tests are grounded in real-world application, 21st-century skills, and opportunities for real mastery of the work, then cheating either won't be possible or students won't want to cheat because they'll be vested in the interesting, challenging, meaningful work.
As teachers, it's important to keep up with the technology that our students use-- if we are nervous around technology and uncomfortable using it, we only place ourselves farther away from our students' lives. Our students are digital natives-- by knowing about the tools they use and knowing how to speak their language, we show them that their lives are interesting to us, that we are lifelong learners, and that we recognize the power their technology has when used for learning. That last part is our most important job-- I was always surprised at how much my students knew about using the latest smartphones, applications, and programs, but how little potential they saw for these programs to be used to learn. It was my role as a teacher to take them down that road.
One thing I took from this slideshow is that we need to re-think the format and substance of the assessments we give. If our assessments focus on simple recall, factual knowledge, and memorization-- basically anything a computer can do faster and more reliably than a person-- what are we really asking our students to learn? Outdated skills that won't enable them to be competitive in the job market? If our tests are grounded in real-world application, 21st-century skills, and opportunities for real mastery of the work, then cheating either won't be possible or students won't want to cheat because they'll be vested in the interesting, challenging, meaningful work.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Carving Out our Own Space: Wiki-making in Room 5-10
I'd like to take a few minutes of your time to offer an analysis of a project in which my students, my co-teachers, and I are currently engaged. The over-arching goal of the project was to teach our students some research skills without resorting to the same methods that we learned as high school students. This goal grew out of a concern that the research methods we developed in college differed drastically from the index-card methods of yesteryear. Furthermore, we wanted to provide meaningful and practical learning for students whose careers eliminated the need for college yet still demanded the skills of finding and organizing information. Our dilemma, then, was to fit the important content of research skills into the new forms of our day.
Planning and Justification
As my colleagues--Julianna Tress and Judi Russo--and I fleshed out the details for the research project, we puzzled most over the medium of presenting the research. Conventional methods seemed cumbersome here: to have students research information in hard copy texts, take hand-written notes, and then present their findings in a 5 page paper seemed too abstract and foreign for our students. And so, we tried to imagine different mediums that would elicit the same skills--finding, manipulating and organizing information. We thought of websites, podcasts, video recordings of interivews, a documentary, and too many other ideas to list here. As we calculated the necessary (and available) technology, we ultimately settled on having the students create a wiki using the free, hosted software at Wikispaces. A wiki, we reasoned, would allow them to create a taxonomy of information, list sources for their research findings, and to work on writing the text in smaller chunks.
The Project
The gist of the project is a six-week group research project formatively assessed with deadlines and summatively assessed by a final product--a wiki. Each week, with the exception of the fourth, the students were responsible for handing in (sharing) a document that shows that they met the weekly deadline. The first week was slated for choosing a topic and generating questions to guide research. The second we planned to research answers to the questions, using both library resources and general internet resources. The third week was dedicated to organizing the information first through a mind map and then a formal outline. The fourth and fifth week were setup for writing and editing the copy or text to go on the wiki. And then the final week was to be spent transferring the text to the wiki and editing the style of the pages. Ultimately, the project should produce a five page wiki--each student in a group of four would be responsible for one of the four subpages with a joint effort on the front page.
The Problem Areas
Before talking about why we really like the project, let me outline a few of the problematic areas we have found as we've been working with the students.
1. One week was insufficient to teach mini-lesson on research methods and to give students time for guided practice. The obvious solution to this would be requiring students to complete research outside of classroom, but our general modus operendi has been to keep all of the work in the classroom because of our students' general resources at home and at public spaces.
2. Allowing students to select topics for research necessitated a wider variety of research venues than we anticipated. Topics such as Jersey Shore, partying or even vice in Camden were not easily researched using the wonderful resources that our school library has. Instead, we had to modify, en media res, to help our students find appropriate and informative websites, articles, etc.
3. We ran into a great deal of pacing problems as well because this is our first time working through the project. We've been discovering a great deal about the constraints of working with technology in the classroom. In a certain sense, this has been teaching us all a great deal of patience as well as ingenuity with computers and internet browsing. On some levels, I see this as a bit of success because it's building skills in our students to make them less dependent on a school setting with a teacher looking over their shoulder. Still, we've learned a great deal about adapting projects and stretching our expectations and parameters.
The Success
Throughout the project, we've met with an agreable disposition from our students, and as many of you know, this is a success in and of itself. Even our most problematic students have been at least absorbed in their work, and therefore, they haven't had the opportunity to engage in "non-learning" activities. This has been a certain success for us, at least from a class room management perspective. But we've also had some academic successes: our students have developed (or honed) their analytic skills as they have appraised various websites, databases, and search engines in pursuit of the questions they have developed. While this is a bit more staged than an organic research opportunity (think about the last time you watched a how-to video or looked for reviews of a particular product), the formalization of what we all are already doing has provided the students with an opportunity to reflect upon their learning and skills. This is somewhat like reading poetry: the formality of the poem forces us to become reflective on its means as well as its meaning. Pardon the literary analogy.
Here's the meat of my post, and my real reason for taking the time to write it. Despite the difficulties and experimental nature of our project, we have met with a great deal of academic and interpersonal success. By finding out the kinds of things our students are interested in and guiding them into an organized knowledge about that topic, we've begun to establish a different and perhaps better sort of rapport with them. I'd like to think that this rapport is based on our willingness to learn alongside our students, adapt to real world circumstances, and engage in academic activities that might actually matter to them. In my mind, this is the goal of teaching in the 21st century. And though I detest buzzwords and trendy ways of discussing things, I have to admit that this kind of timely project provides the context in which our kids can at least possibly thrive, learning skills that actually prepare them for the digital world in which we--as American adults--are already thriving. This is mainly a philosophic arrangement of the successes we have encountered as we've been doing the project, but we will keep you up to date via comments as we meet--one hopes--with continual success as a group of learners in room 5-10.
Planning and Justification
As my colleagues--Julianna Tress and Judi Russo--and I fleshed out the details for the research project, we puzzled most over the medium of presenting the research. Conventional methods seemed cumbersome here: to have students research information in hard copy texts, take hand-written notes, and then present their findings in a 5 page paper seemed too abstract and foreign for our students. And so, we tried to imagine different mediums that would elicit the same skills--finding, manipulating and organizing information. We thought of websites, podcasts, video recordings of interivews, a documentary, and too many other ideas to list here. As we calculated the necessary (and available) technology, we ultimately settled on having the students create a wiki using the free, hosted software at Wikispaces. A wiki, we reasoned, would allow them to create a taxonomy of information, list sources for their research findings, and to work on writing the text in smaller chunks.
The Project
The gist of the project is a six-week group research project formatively assessed with deadlines and summatively assessed by a final product--a wiki. Each week, with the exception of the fourth, the students were responsible for handing in (sharing) a document that shows that they met the weekly deadline. The first week was slated for choosing a topic and generating questions to guide research. The second we planned to research answers to the questions, using both library resources and general internet resources. The third week was dedicated to organizing the information first through a mind map and then a formal outline. The fourth and fifth week were setup for writing and editing the copy or text to go on the wiki. And then the final week was to be spent transferring the text to the wiki and editing the style of the pages. Ultimately, the project should produce a five page wiki--each student in a group of four would be responsible for one of the four subpages with a joint effort on the front page.
The Problem Areas
Before talking about why we really like the project, let me outline a few of the problematic areas we have found as we've been working with the students.
1. One week was insufficient to teach mini-lesson on research methods and to give students time for guided practice. The obvious solution to this would be requiring students to complete research outside of classroom, but our general modus operendi has been to keep all of the work in the classroom because of our students' general resources at home and at public spaces.
2. Allowing students to select topics for research necessitated a wider variety of research venues than we anticipated. Topics such as Jersey Shore, partying or even vice in Camden were not easily researched using the wonderful resources that our school library has. Instead, we had to modify, en media res, to help our students find appropriate and informative websites, articles, etc.
3. We ran into a great deal of pacing problems as well because this is our first time working through the project. We've been discovering a great deal about the constraints of working with technology in the classroom. In a certain sense, this has been teaching us all a great deal of patience as well as ingenuity with computers and internet browsing. On some levels, I see this as a bit of success because it's building skills in our students to make them less dependent on a school setting with a teacher looking over their shoulder. Still, we've learned a great deal about adapting projects and stretching our expectations and parameters.
The Success
Throughout the project, we've met with an agreable disposition from our students, and as many of you know, this is a success in and of itself. Even our most problematic students have been at least absorbed in their work, and therefore, they haven't had the opportunity to engage in "non-learning" activities. This has been a certain success for us, at least from a class room management perspective. But we've also had some academic successes: our students have developed (or honed) their analytic skills as they have appraised various websites, databases, and search engines in pursuit of the questions they have developed. While this is a bit more staged than an organic research opportunity (think about the last time you watched a how-to video or looked for reviews of a particular product), the formalization of what we all are already doing has provided the students with an opportunity to reflect upon their learning and skills. This is somewhat like reading poetry: the formality of the poem forces us to become reflective on its means as well as its meaning. Pardon the literary analogy.
Here's the meat of my post, and my real reason for taking the time to write it. Despite the difficulties and experimental nature of our project, we have met with a great deal of academic and interpersonal success. By finding out the kinds of things our students are interested in and guiding them into an organized knowledge about that topic, we've begun to establish a different and perhaps better sort of rapport with them. I'd like to think that this rapport is based on our willingness to learn alongside our students, adapt to real world circumstances, and engage in academic activities that might actually matter to them. In my mind, this is the goal of teaching in the 21st century. And though I detest buzzwords and trendy ways of discussing things, I have to admit that this kind of timely project provides the context in which our kids can at least possibly thrive, learning skills that actually prepare them for the digital world in which we--as American adults--are already thriving. This is mainly a philosophic arrangement of the successes we have encountered as we've been doing the project, but we will keep you up to date via comments as we meet--one hopes--with continual success as a group of learners in room 5-10.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Writing College Essays
The article below offers some good advice on college essay-writing. What else can we, as a dapertment, add to our knowledge of teaching the art of college essay-witing? If you have done this with your students, please post on the topic and I will add it to the department site.
So much of teaching college essay-writing depends on the question, really. I used to say that they had to be sure to do two things:
1) Make it personal and sincere. It's easy to see right through platitudes.
2) Answer the question directly. Being circumspect shows that you're either avoiding the question or can't organize your esay well.
Here's the article.
So much of teaching college essay-writing depends on the question, really. I used to say that they had to be sure to do two things:
1) Make it personal and sincere. It's easy to see right through platitudes.
2) Answer the question directly. Being circumspect shows that you're either avoiding the question or can't organize your esay well.
Here's the article.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Google NGrams
Hi teachers-
I'm really, really excited about this new tool from Google. Google NGrams allows you to search trends of words appearing in a database of 5.2 billion words from all of the millions of books Google has in its digitized Google Books catalog. It's a very interesting tool in that it's a window into people's thoughts over the past 500 years. I can only begin to imagine the new research opportunities available to students. The discussions that you could generate with this tool are limitless. Check the tool out here, and see below for a few examples.
Thanks, and have a great break,
Marc
I'm really, really excited about this new tool from Google. Google NGrams allows you to search trends of words appearing in a database of 5.2 billion words from all of the millions of books Google has in its digitized Google Books catalog. It's a very interesting tool in that it's a window into people's thoughts over the past 500 years. I can only begin to imagine the new research opportunities available to students. The discussions that you could generate with this tool are limitless. Check the tool out here, and see below for a few examples.
 |
Thanks, and have a great break,
Marc
Friday, December 17, 2010
What Kind of Person Are You?
I know many of you like Dan Pink and his works... if you're not familiar with him, I highly recommend reading A Whole New Mind, his book on right-brain thinking and Drive, a fascinating study in what motivates people and what doesn't-- especially useful for teachers. In the meantime, check out this short end-of-year self-reflection guide:
http://www.danpink.com/archives/2010/12/there-are-two-kinds-of-people-in-the-world
Also see relevant Dan Pink info on http://www.first180.org/.
http://www.danpink.com/archives/2010/12/there-are-two-kinds-of-people-in-the-world
Also see relevant Dan Pink info on http://www.first180.org/.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Expository Writing Article
Check out this series of questions and answers regarding expository writing. If you can't read it well, click here and download the file from the bottom of the screen under "attacnhments." Thanks to Dennis for this one....
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Reading Comprehension
Hi teachers-
All of you do a fabulous job with your efforts to understand and employ the strategies associated with reading comprehension. No doubt it's one of the hardest things to teach well, or teach at all. When I started teaching, I soon realized that the literature I had learned in college would quickly take a backseat to what I was really there to do-- teach students how to read complex materials.
This article sums up reading comprehension strategies for expository texts pretty succinctly. Naturally, the topic is more complicated than 5 steps can summarize, but given its nebulous nature, I think this is a good, cogent summary of what's involved.
Enjoy!
____________________________________________________________________________
All of you do a fabulous job with your efforts to understand and employ the strategies associated with reading comprehension. No doubt it's one of the hardest things to teach well, or teach at all. When I started teaching, I soon realized that the literature I had learned in college would quickly take a backseat to what I was really there to do-- teach students how to read complex materials.
This article sums up reading comprehension strategies for expository texts pretty succinctly. Naturally, the topic is more complicated than 5 steps can summarize, but given its nebulous nature, I think this is a good, cogent summary of what's involved.
Enjoy!
____________________________________________________________________________
A Five-Part Strategy for Good Comprehension
“Do you have students whose minds go blank when you ask, ‘What was this article about?’,” ask New Zealand professors Susan Dymock and Tom Nicholson in this article in The Reading Teacher. “Do you have students who write screeds of notes about an article but cannot boil it down to four or five main points?” Their answer is the “High 5” strategy to help students boost comprehension of expository texts:
• Activating background knowledge – Good readers ask what they already know about the text and fill in gaps through discussion or Internet searches.
• Questioning – Good readers generate their own questions about the text at three levels: information that is right there in the text; think and search questions about the author’s intent, and beyond the text questions about what’s not said that needs more thought or research.
• Analyzing text structure – Good readers look at subheads and key words to see what kind of text they are reading, for example, a list, a web, a matrix, a step-by-step description of events, a cause-and-effect sequence, or a problem-solution sequence.
• Creating mental images – Good readers create and often sketch an image of the structure of the text; it’s as if they could see the ribs and bones of the content they are reading.
• Summarizing – Good readers pull together the big ideas, the key skill being to discard unimportant and redundant information and zero in on what’s most important.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Teacher Teamwork
This article from the DuFours says a lot that I agree with regarding teacher teamwork and collaboration. I wanted to send it forward in advance of the data collecting we'll be doing and will continue to do for our benchmarks, starting with this month's persuasive essay grading.
If you don't know, the DuFours are two of education's most trenchant writers on the subject of teachers collaborating to review data, examine their practice, and share in the pursuit of ways to improve everyone's teaching. That's why I was very excited to see the bullet points (highlighted)-- that's exactly what we're doing when we participate in the benchmark grading!
It's good to know we're on the right track. I'm excited to see how the first round of grading goes!
If you don't know, the DuFours are two of education's most trenchant writers on the subject of teachers collaborating to review data, examine their practice, and share in the pursuit of ways to improve everyone's teaching. That's why I was very excited to see the bullet points (highlighted)-- that's exactly what we're doing when we participate in the benchmark grading!
It's good to know we're on the right track. I'm excited to see how the first round of grading goes!
2. Richard and Rebecca DuFour on the Elements of Teacher Teamwork
“Who Decides Who Decides” by Richard DuFour and Rebecca DuFour in Education Week, Nov. 3, 2010 (Vol. 29, #10, p. 14), no e-link available
Monday, November 1, 2010
What To Look For
Lately, I've heard a lot in the news about what bad teahcers do in classrooms, and how detrimental they can be to a student's education. Unfortunately, there isn't nearly as much discussion as to what good teachers do, and how valuable they are to the education of those same students. Lots of research agrees on one thing-- a good teacher makes the most difference in whether a student is successful or not-- more than SES, more than attendance, more than behavior, more than parental involvement, more than any other factor.
I think that a good teacher asks his or her self these questions before each and every lesson:
- What do I expect students to know and be able to do as a result of your lesson?
- How do I “hook” the students in at the beginning?
- How do I make sure students are engaged throughout the lesson?
- How do I know students are understanding the lesson?
For me, being a good teacher amounts to three things: Clarity, Continuity, and Concurrency. Let me explain what I mean by these three:
Clarity is about one question: Is the teacher clear about exactly what his students should do? If a teacher doesn’t know why he’s doing an activity, you can bet that the kids won’t, either. If there’s no objective in mind, whatever learning occurs will be accidental, haphazard, unpredictable. Classrooms without clear expectations for behavior, attitude, and achievement will have kids mired in mediocrity, at best.
Continuity is about putting it all together– one of the most important things a teacher does is make coherence out of complicated, difficult subject matter. A teacher showing continuity begins class with an opening deisgned to pique interest not only for that day’s lesson, but as part of a think-back to the day before. At the end of a class, she does the opposite– make sure students understand all that was done that day, and link it to what’s coming the next day. And most importantly, she doesn’t move on if her students didn’t get it! A teacher with engaged students will also be consistent in policies– if you’re wishy-washy from one day to the next about how things go down in your classroom, guessing your mood will be distracting. Good teachers are also continuous learners– you can’t be finished learning when you’re done your master’s or a workshop or a seminar.
Concurrency is maybe the hardest-to-pin-down of the three because it describes something that’s tricky to articulate: “With-it-ness.” We all know people who are “out of it” and people who are really “with it.” That’s not unique to teaching. But there’s more to concurrency than just being “with it.” Concurrency is about being in the moment, whether we’re talking about in the classroom moment, with our students, engaged in them as we want them to be engaged with us… it’s also about being in the moment with the world, and being aware of what’s going on out there– the issues and problems students in your community have, the digital tools they constantly use as fluently as we drive our cars, the unique structure of their social lives and how different it is than that of kids just 10 years ago– and certainly how different it is than most of their teachers’ K-12 years. Being concurrent means being in touch– in touch with the individuals, the human beings in front of us, the community in which they live, and the world in which they’re situated. Concurrency gives you credibility– everyone, especially kids, knows who’s with it and who’s out of it.
I hope this gives you a sense of what I consider to be good teaching. Please add your own observations. Comment, or write a new post yourself! See me for help with this, if necessary.
-Marc
I think that a good teacher asks his or her self these questions before each and every lesson:
- What do I expect students to know and be able to do as a result of your lesson?
- How do I “hook” the students in at the beginning?
- How do I make sure students are engaged throughout the lesson?
- How do I know students are understanding the lesson?
For me, being a good teacher amounts to three things: Clarity, Continuity, and Concurrency. Let me explain what I mean by these three:
Clarity is about one question: Is the teacher clear about exactly what his students should do? If a teacher doesn’t know why he’s doing an activity, you can bet that the kids won’t, either. If there’s no objective in mind, whatever learning occurs will be accidental, haphazard, unpredictable. Classrooms without clear expectations for behavior, attitude, and achievement will have kids mired in mediocrity, at best.
Continuity is about putting it all together– one of the most important things a teacher does is make coherence out of complicated, difficult subject matter. A teacher showing continuity begins class with an opening deisgned to pique interest not only for that day’s lesson, but as part of a think-back to the day before. At the end of a class, she does the opposite– make sure students understand all that was done that day, and link it to what’s coming the next day. And most importantly, she doesn’t move on if her students didn’t get it! A teacher with engaged students will also be consistent in policies– if you’re wishy-washy from one day to the next about how things go down in your classroom, guessing your mood will be distracting. Good teachers are also continuous learners– you can’t be finished learning when you’re done your master’s or a workshop or a seminar.
Concurrency is maybe the hardest-to-pin-down of the three because it describes something that’s tricky to articulate: “With-it-ness.” We all know people who are “out of it” and people who are really “with it.” That’s not unique to teaching. But there’s more to concurrency than just being “with it.” Concurrency is about being in the moment, whether we’re talking about in the classroom moment, with our students, engaged in them as we want them to be engaged with us… it’s also about being in the moment with the world, and being aware of what’s going on out there– the issues and problems students in your community have, the digital tools they constantly use as fluently as we drive our cars, the unique structure of their social lives and how different it is than that of kids just 10 years ago– and certainly how different it is than most of their teachers’ K-12 years. Being concurrent means being in touch– in touch with the individuals, the human beings in front of us, the community in which they live, and the world in which they’re situated. Concurrency gives you credibility– everyone, especially kids, knows who’s with it and who’s out of it.
I hope this gives you a sense of what I consider to be good teaching. Please add your own observations. Comment, or write a new post yourself! See me for help with this, if necessary.
-Marc
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Flocabulary
Every English teacher has heard about people who use rap and hip-hop to enhance their lessons. Most of the time it's pretty comical. But this is great. Flocabulary is the first site devoted to real, authentic, good rap versions of literature, reading, and other subjects. Check out this Macbeth video.
Explore the site and let me know if it resonates with your students. Holla.
Explore the site and let me know if it resonates with your students. Holla.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
The Value of 5-Paragraph Essays
The article in this post does a great job of putting the 5-paragraph essay in context. I always used to tell my students that there was really no such thing as a 5-paragraph essay outside of school, just the way that surgeons don't go around dissecting frogs in their job (read the article...) But I'd also show them my master's thesis and explain that although it was long, it was really just a huge 5-paragraph essay-- only with a "preface" instead of an "intro paragraph," and so on.
Hope this article puts the purpose and value of the 5-paragraph essay into focus. Don't forget about the video on our persuasive writing page on the CCTS English site!
_________________________________________________________________________________
Hope this article puts the purpose and value of the 5-paragraph essay into focus. Don't forget about the video on our persuasive writing page on the CCTS English site!
_________________________________________________________________________________
Can the Five-Paragraph Essay Be a Useful Teaching Tool?
In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, Georgia Perimeter College English professor Rob Jenkins says he used to believe that the five-paragraph essay was “evil” – he firmly believed that organization should arise organically from the content, as it always had with his own writing. For years, Jenkins refused to teach the five-paragraph formula in freshman composition and other courses, even, he says, “when students practically begged for a handy rubric to help them organize their thoughts.” Instead, he tried to lead them “on a journey of self-discovery, or at least a discovery of what they were trying to say and how.”
But it didn’t work for most students, and Jenkins gradually came to realize three things about writing:
- Organization is vital; this is what makes it possible for the reader to follow the writer’s train of thought.
- Few people are naturally good at organizing their ideas in writing.
- People won’t magically get better at it, even if they are highly intelligent and well-educated.
He came to see the five-paragraph formula as exactly what students needed, not just for their college papers but for all forms of communication, from after-dinner speeches to doctoral dissertations – basically, Tell ’em what you’re gonna tell ’em, then tell ’em, then tell ’em what you told ’em.
The danger of the five-paragraph format is that it can become too rigid and formulaic. To prevent this, Jenkins uses two metaphors with his students:
• The accordion – A piece of writing can expand if there’s more content and contract if there’s less. For example, a major writing assignment might have three or four introductory paragraphs, 18 middle paragraphs fleshing out five or six supporting points, and two or three concluding paragraphs. A brief interoffice memo might be only three or four paragraphs long, with the important points sandwiched between a brief introduction and conclusion. The key, says Jenkins, is that “if students can learn to organize their ideas into five paragraphs, they should be able later on to expand or contract the format as necessary – especially if they understand that the five-paragraph theme is merely a beginning, not an end unto itself.”
• The frog – “A student who wants to become a heart surgeon doesn’t start out by cutting people open,” he says. “That student will probably begin, in an introductory biology course, by dissecting a frog… For student writers, the five-paragraph theme is their frog. It’s not a 10-page term paper, much less a 50-page proposal. But the lessons learned about organization from writing in the five-paragraph format make it possible, later on, to put together longer documents that are more logical and coherent.”
Jenkins goes on to rebut the kinds of objections he himself used to raise about the five-paragraph approach:
- It’s repetitive and redundant. Yes, it is, but redundancy isn’t all bad. “As any teacher, parent, or coach can attest, the way to get people to remember and improve at things is to repeat them over and over,” says Jenkins. To avoid being tiresome, the trick is to “repeat yourself without sounding as though you’re repeating yourself – which can lead to many fruitful discussions about sentence variety, word choice, and the importance of vocabulary building.”
- It’s formulaic. True, but it really helps students to learn how to follow a set formula, because most kinds of writing are formulaic.
- It’s devoid of content. Yes, content comes from students’ knowledge and life experience. This means that as students get older, they have more to plug into the structure of the five-paragraph essay. But the structure is helpful in managing and expressing thoughts in a way that others can understand. And that is what really counts.
The CCTS English Blog
Hello CCTS English teachers!
Lately, I've come across some great articles, websites, and ideas that I think would be great to share with you all. In addition, as I've conducted walkthroughs and observations, I've noticed a lot of things that I'd like to mention to everyone in a group setting. Unfortunately, we only meet as a department once per month. I'd like this blog to be part of my effort to fill in that communication gap. I wish we had time in our schedules to meet every day-- to share success stories, concerns, best practice ideas, and the like. Since we can't meet daily in person, I intend to use this blog as a space to do just that. I beleive its important to have professional discussion and community-- since scheduling makes that hard to do in person, this, I believe, is the next best way, short of flooding you inbox with emails (especially since I keep getting that "over the space limit" notice in Outlook!)
Please keep in mind that I will use email to communicate important things that require attention, and that nothing takes the place of our face-to-face time at department meetings. This blog will be more about providing you with any information, thoughts, ideas, or developments that will assist you in doing your jobs to the best of your ability. You aren't required to check it or contribute, but it's here if you'd like to do so, and I hope it serves as a valuable resource to you.
If you'd like to be able to contribute to the blog, please email me your Gmail address and I will add you as a contributor. Otherwise, please feel free to read and comment.
My goal is to post on the blog several times per week.
Thanks,
Marc
Lately, I've come across some great articles, websites, and ideas that I think would be great to share with you all. In addition, as I've conducted walkthroughs and observations, I've noticed a lot of things that I'd like to mention to everyone in a group setting. Unfortunately, we only meet as a department once per month. I'd like this blog to be part of my effort to fill in that communication gap. I wish we had time in our schedules to meet every day-- to share success stories, concerns, best practice ideas, and the like. Since we can't meet daily in person, I intend to use this blog as a space to do just that. I beleive its important to have professional discussion and community-- since scheduling makes that hard to do in person, this, I believe, is the next best way, short of flooding you inbox with emails (especially since I keep getting that "over the space limit" notice in Outlook!)
Please keep in mind that I will use email to communicate important things that require attention, and that nothing takes the place of our face-to-face time at department meetings. This blog will be more about providing you with any information, thoughts, ideas, or developments that will assist you in doing your jobs to the best of your ability. You aren't required to check it or contribute, but it's here if you'd like to do so, and I hope it serves as a valuable resource to you.
If you'd like to be able to contribute to the blog, please email me your Gmail address and I will add you as a contributor. Otherwise, please feel free to read and comment.
My goal is to post on the blog several times per week.
Thanks,
Marc
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