Day 6: Writing Workshop

I had planned to spend the entire class workshopping 3 essays, but the results of the reviews of reviews from Monday were so uneven that I wanted to spend time on them. So, here is what I did in class:

I started with a qw about the first essay they were turning in·
Qw (20 m): Describe the experience of writing the essay. What surprised or challenged you in writing? How did you meet the challenges that arose? What are you pleased with in the essay? Why? What would you like to work on more and why?

The students turned the qw in with their essays. Next, I pulled up three of the strongest reviews the students had done on Monday and we read them aloud. I said they were extremely good reviews and asked the rest of the class to tell me what they saw the writers doing in them, what was successful. The students talked about the detail the writers used and how the reviews were put together.

None of the students cited their review correctly, so I had sent an email asking them to bring in their writing handbooks (I also put the OWL website info on the board). I realized last year that students don't necessarily realize that EVERYONE looks up citations -- I think they think you are supposed to somehow just know. I also realized many students aren't sure how to use the handbooks, so I had them move through the handbooks as I talked about how they were organized. We moved to the MLA section and I asked them to find the information about how to cite from scholarly journals and periodicals (this also led to a review of the difference between them). Next we talked about what an anthology is and then they looked up the citation for that. The students wanted to know how you know if titles go in quotes or italics. I had them look in the index to find out where to find the info.

After all this business, we started our writing workshop. I introduced the terms I wanted to use for talking about writing (project and "what's at stake"), explaining why I was purposely moving away from the language of thesis. I also explained that I will always bring in strong papers that would allow us to talk about issues facing all the students when we workshopped.

Next, I put on the board what I wanted us to look at in talking about the papers. Here's what I wrote:
o What's the writer's project?
o What's at stake?
o Where are you most interested?
o Where would you like to know more?
o Other suggestions?

We then sat in a circle and students volunteered to read each paragraph of the first essay aloud. After the reading, I gave them about 15 minutes to work through our questions in relation to the paper.

During discussion there were a couple different ways the students named the writer's project. What was so cool is that they would then refer back to B and P's introduction and their point about individual readings.

Overall, there were 3 magically exciting moments to me in this workshop (never happened to me before!):
1. A students said that the essay made her re-see Wideman's essay. I freaked out, shouting, "yes! exactly! That's what we are doing in here, that's why you are writing -- to show all of us in the class, not just me, your take on the reading. Wonderful!"

2. When I asked what they said for what was at stake, a student who is a self-professed English hater said, "This is a really weird thing to ask us to think about. I don't get it. How can there be something at stake?" I freaked out with excitement. I said, "You're right, it does probably seem like a strange thing to ask you to think about. I bet, correct me if I am wrong, that you've never had reason to write something for any other reason than to fulfill a task set by a teacher and get a grade. Is this fair to say? What I am suggesting to you is that now, in university, you are writing because you have something worth saying and that you need to tell your reader why it is worth saying. It is not just a task for a grade." I then talked about how we professors write and in our writing we have to give our readers a reason to read, otherwise why would they keep reading. I said that as university students, the students in the class were in the same position and that this is exciting.

3. A student raised a question during our workshop discussion, saying, "If we are saying that everyone reads differently and has their own interpretation, how do you know your reader will see what you want them to see in your quotes?" SO EXCITING!!! I wasn't even going to talk about quotation today, but there it was organic and framed brillantly! From there I talked about the quote sandwich and telling your reader what you want them to notice in the quote. We then looked at the quotes in the student essay and noticed that one of the most important quotes did not do -- in its content -- what the writer claimed it did. We talked about what the writer would need to revise this.

In the last 5 minutes I asked the students what they could take away from this workshop and they discussed using quotes, saying why what they were doing was significant, etc.