To say that teaching the writing process has been a challenge would be an understatement. Our first writing workshop, composing an analytical essay to wrap up our study of Ender's Game, was, naturally, structured chronologically: thesis, intro paragraph, body paragraphs, conclusion. Everything you need to know to write an essay, right?
Obviously wrong. Writing is so hard to teach because it involves dozens of interrelated skills and techniques that are virtually impossible to isolate and teach, since most proficient writers perform them completely unconsciously. As my students attempted to follow my instructions, I found them too often getting tripped up on some skill or technique that somehow never occurred to me to include in my direct instruction or in composing any of the copious handouts I was sure would guide students painlessly through the process.
Obviously wrong. Writing is so hard to teach because it involves dozens of interrelated skills and techniques that are virtually impossible to isolate and teach, since most proficient writers perform them completely unconsciously. As my students attempted to follow my instructions, I found them too often getting tripped up on some skill or technique that somehow never occurred to me to include in my direct instruction or in composing any of the copious handouts I was sure would guide students painlessly through the process.
A potential solution presented itself in a technique we'd been practicing for several weeks in my Social Studies methods class: cognitive apprenticeship. In apprenticeship of a craft, the student first observes the instructor in the completion of a task, then, gradually, is integrated into the process until they can independently complete the task. Likewise, cognitive apprenticeship attempts to "deliberately bring thinking to the surface... [so] students can observe, enact, and practice... the cognitive and metacognitive processes that comprise expertise" (Collins, et al 1991). In this case, I would select a step of the essay writing process and model it aloud to my students as I wrote, verbalizing my thought process. I attempted to isolate one skill to model, landing, eventually, on “incorporating evidence.” In the context of our writing workshop, this meant effectively embedding quotations from Ender’s Game into the body paragraphs of a 5-paragraph essay.
Even this limited scope of “incorporating evidence” entails more steps than could be realistically modeled for 9th graders without putting a substantial portion of the class to sleep. To speed up the process, I started off with an effective thesis statement, a topic sentence for the body paragraph I would be developing, and a quote preselected. I projected these for the class on a word document, and, for my reference, I had a pre-written the final version of the paragraph with the quote effectively embedded and analyzed. This amounts to a substantial amount of preparation and writing, which presupposes student proficiency in a number of skills. I think this was a necessary decision--even with these steps taken care of ahead of time my modeling ran way too long--though I worry that without reinforcing these skills beforehand, the modeling may not have been useful to some students. For example, I know that several of my students still have trouble with writing effective topic sentences that guide body paragraphs to advance the argument made in their thesis. Without this understanding established, evidence really cannot be effectively incorporated.
Further, even with all these pieces prepared beforehand, I found that this process involved many more steps and skills than I anticipated. The whole process took about 9 minutes, almost twice as long as recommended in my Social Studies Methods class. Most of the class remained engaged throughout the whole process, though, and once I turned them loose to work on their own essays, I had lots of students looking for feedback on their quote usage, so at the very least the model had students cognitively engaging with the process of incorporating evidence.
In spite of these unexpected challenges, I believe that modeling could be an effective tool for my freshman writers. My students come from middle schools across the city, and one of the big challenges for 9th grade teachers at my school is scaffolding and differentiating for students at a broad range of proficiency in all areas. A series of models embedded into the workshop, each one advancing the writing process skill-by-skill, could help address diverse needs and proficiencies, since an effective model can focus on one discrete skill, while still demonstrating that skill’s relationship to other skills within a complex process of composition.
Works Cited
Collins, Alan, Brown, John Seely, and Holum, Ann. (1991). Cognitive Apprenticeship: Making Thinking Visible. American Educator.
Even this limited scope of “incorporating evidence” entails more steps than could be realistically modeled for 9th graders without putting a substantial portion of the class to sleep. To speed up the process, I started off with an effective thesis statement, a topic sentence for the body paragraph I would be developing, and a quote preselected. I projected these for the class on a word document, and, for my reference, I had a pre-written the final version of the paragraph with the quote effectively embedded and analyzed. This amounts to a substantial amount of preparation and writing, which presupposes student proficiency in a number of skills. I think this was a necessary decision--even with these steps taken care of ahead of time my modeling ran way too long--though I worry that without reinforcing these skills beforehand, the modeling may not have been useful to some students. For example, I know that several of my students still have trouble with writing effective topic sentences that guide body paragraphs to advance the argument made in their thesis. Without this understanding established, evidence really cannot be effectively incorporated.
Further, even with all these pieces prepared beforehand, I found that this process involved many more steps and skills than I anticipated. The whole process took about 9 minutes, almost twice as long as recommended in my Social Studies Methods class. Most of the class remained engaged throughout the whole process, though, and once I turned them loose to work on their own essays, I had lots of students looking for feedback on their quote usage, so at the very least the model had students cognitively engaging with the process of incorporating evidence.
In spite of these unexpected challenges, I believe that modeling could be an effective tool for my freshman writers. My students come from middle schools across the city, and one of the big challenges for 9th grade teachers at my school is scaffolding and differentiating for students at a broad range of proficiency in all areas. A series of models embedded into the workshop, each one advancing the writing process skill-by-skill, could help address diverse needs and proficiencies, since an effective model can focus on one discrete skill, while still demonstrating that skill’s relationship to other skills within a complex process of composition.
Works Cited
Collins, Alan, Brown, John Seely, and Holum, Ann. (1991). Cognitive Apprenticeship: Making Thinking Visible. American Educator.