Chapters 5 and 9 Response

While going through these two chapters, I reflected a lot on how I have already taught and what techniques I have used—with some assistance from my cooperating teacher—in trying to help my students understand the part of the writing process that we were trying to convey to them.  Found the bit about the author throwing away his notes after each lecture to be very interesting. I hadn't ever thought of starting from scratch for each class before because it seems like so much more work that I feel I won’t have time for. And although I don’t think I’ll use this technique when teaching my students specifics that they might need more focus on, I found the level of connection to be incredible. The fact that he wanted to focus his presentations on the specifics that each class needed speaks volumes about his level of commitment to his students.

There was so much crammed into these two chapters that I feel this short reflection won’t do any justice to the amount of information I enjoyed and retained. The author’s break-down of inviting surprise, constructing a syllabus, selecting your assignment styles, and the manner in which the students receive the information was phenomenal. I understand why everyone was raving about the textbook in class last Wednesday. My favorite portion of the text was where he broke down the different aspects of a closed assignment. Having that laid out to me—as well as the importance of using both and how neither one is necessarily right or wrong—helped me to visualize it so easily! Not only that, but reading about the importance of having discussion and demonstrations helped me see how vital it is for the students to get multiple forms of examples and explanations. By having feedback in different ways, my students will hopefully have a better grasp of what I am asking them to produce.

Along with demonstrations and assignments, I also had the opportunity to read the assigned chapter nine which deals with different ways the group can respond. I enjoyed how the author talked about the importance of the students seeing the process as a whole and understanding that writing does not come out beautiful and perfect for writers who publish novels or popular pieces of work; professional writers go through the same processes as my students. Being able to focus that during feedback and evaluations will help my students drive for a higher level of perfection than they thought possible of themselves. I am really looking forward to using many of the tools from these chapters in my classroom. Although this text is geared a lot toward college level writers, I look forward to adapting it to my high school or middle school students when going over the writing process with them.