Essay Writing

Dornan, Chapter five: this reading connected back to our Deeper Reading text in Reading Methods course. A lot of practical applications for the classroom. Generally quite useful; I loved how they squeezed the five-paragraph essay into a triangle! It seems like my question last week of 'how to get ideas going in the struggling literature student's mind' is more a matter of having intentional design in your curriculum and helping the student use tools to make connections in the reading.

Culham, Chapter three: I did like the 'transitions chart.' I think it would be helpful to use with post first-draft writing, if the student was struggling with organization. I think the 'scoring guide' is generally good. It reflects a lot of the major sticking points in organization--although I'm still concerned that a rubric combining all of the scoring guides across all traits would be unwieldy.

Gillespie: the idea of multi-genre writing is really promising. The concern that presents itself immediately is that this style would be incompatible with the high-school classroom. Most college-bound student writing at the secondary level should be concerned with the formal essay writing process, shouldn't it? It is the form they are going be required to use as undergraduates. Maybe this would be better used in the middle school classroom, or as a possible differentiation for students who are struggling with the formal essay process.

Wesley: the author makes good points. Her example of the 'stunted student' is relevant, but it seemed that maybe the student just outgrew the form she was being told to use, not that it was a problem with the form itself. The idea of having even the paragraphs modeled is the same as the idea of a Cloze passage. The student masters the form by repeating it over and over again. I agree, teaching a more simple ABA form makes good sense. However I do believe the FPT will still have relevancy for the intermediate writer.

Novick: all praises to the FPT! In Kimberly Wesley's defense, I don't think she was 'tearing the FPT limb from limb.' I think she was arguing for a little differentiation. She was also arguing in favor of teaching the essay as an ABA form, with the possibility of using the strict FPT format if need be. All students will need the structure of the FPT at some point, but allowing form to stifle creativity is really just one extreme among many.

Resource Link: this is part of the Canadian Academy's website. Canadian Academy is an IB international school located in Kobe, Japan. It has quite a few examples of student writing, the rubrics, and the commentary to explain both the grading and writing processes. I think it's kind of helpful...

http://intranet1.canacad.ac.jp:3445/High/749