Finally, we have approached the topic of how to give writing assignments that encourage students to think. I have been conscious over my short time teaching of whether or not I am asking/encouraging students to use critical thinking skills and to use higher order thinking. It is hard as a new teacher to employ these ideals as I spend a lot of time just conveying the content and I spend a lot of time mastering the content that I am teaching as sometimes it is the first time I am teaching something. Knowing something and teaching something are so incredibly different that as a new teacher I find myself putting a lot of time and effort into just designing and delivering the content of a course.
But, I have made small attempts to start to incorporate critical thinking into my content by occasionally taking a few moments in lecture to ask 'why' questions. Sometimes this works and we have a nice discussion where several students participate and other times I hear crickets.
I've also, just recently, tried to incorporate short cases into class and this is something on Bean's list of ten strategies for designing critical thinking tasks (Bean Ch7). Case teaching methodology is huge and wonderful and I certainly aspire to fully use it someday. But, for now, I borrowed the story part of case teaching and the open ended question style of case teaching to give my students a 'design your own experiment' assignment. Instead of just stating the problem or instructing them to : design an experiment to test enyzmatic activity in over-the-counter digestive supplements, I gave them a real life problem to solve. A story about a friend with symptoms that included dialog, some key observations, and an open ending. It was a huge success. Students really go into it. They submitted rough drafts of their background and protocols and got feedback before they carried out their experiments. They were required to gather data and information on the supplements and make a decision (some even withheld judgement and called for more data like good critical thinkers!) on whether or not a supplement was appropriate for their friend.
I like some of Bean's other suggestions like abstract writing and data-provided assignments. I've always wanted to give an assignment where I provide everything but the abstract and have students learn to write one. My fear is that inevitably if I give this assignment out of class, students will use google to find the paper. So, I have been wanting to generate something original as an exercise in abstract writing. After reading Bean, I could be very ambitious and do more than just the abstract--I could provide data and work on writing other parts of a paper. I'd like to spend some time soon preparing such an assignment.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Fourth Class
I really got a lot out of today's reading (Bean Ch13) b/c it focused on strategies for breaking up the writing process and how to handle the grading (or not grading!). This was something that was alluded to in earlier readings and earlier class discussion--the idea of not grading everything. One of my objectives in taking this class was to explore how to go from writing six formal lab reports in seven weeks to creating better assignments to actually teach some writing but still be able to manage grading. This chapter was full of ideas. Some that seem so obvious to me now and others that are quite clever. I will absolutely bookmark this chapter and refer to it as I re-design the writing assignments for the labs I teach.
One particular strategy I am most interested in exploring is the peer review. This is actually the topic I am doing my annotated bibliography and review on. I found five papers on the topic, three which actually discuss the use of peer review in biology writing. I'm looking forward to reviewing these articles and hope they will actually provide some evidence and guidance for using peer review to help 'coach' the writing process, using Bean's term. The articles I found talk about using a formal peer review process that models the real life peer review process for professional journals. I like this idea as a way of introducing students to peer review and as a way to work in revision without the instructor actually collecting and grading drafts.
Back to Bean, I like even the idea of a simple peer review strategies like paired sharing and paired interviews. Spending time in class exchanging ideas, drafts, outlines--whatever can be time well spent. I experienced this first hand in this class and I truly believe it can be time well spent. I like the idea of the instructor as facilitator--maybe giving a few simple instructions on commenting and walking around the room to check in with pairs.
I do see some problems with this approach as some students could be resistant to the idea of having their peers review their work and not the teacher. I know that good students who put a lot of work into their work might feel disappointed by not having the teacher read it. And I know some students may not think highly of their peers and therefore not put much stock in the peer review. But, I think that this can be remedied by the instructor being vigilant about training students on how to comment and by walking around and being active in class. I also like the idea of out of class reviews where pairs could take home each other's draft and a rubric have to return to class with the rubric filled out.
One particular strategy I am most interested in exploring is the peer review. This is actually the topic I am doing my annotated bibliography and review on. I found five papers on the topic, three which actually discuss the use of peer review in biology writing. I'm looking forward to reviewing these articles and hope they will actually provide some evidence and guidance for using peer review to help 'coach' the writing process, using Bean's term. The articles I found talk about using a formal peer review process that models the real life peer review process for professional journals. I like this idea as a way of introducing students to peer review and as a way to work in revision without the instructor actually collecting and grading drafts.
Back to Bean, I like even the idea of a simple peer review strategies like paired sharing and paired interviews. Spending time in class exchanging ideas, drafts, outlines--whatever can be time well spent. I experienced this first hand in this class and I truly believe it can be time well spent. I like the idea of the instructor as facilitator--maybe giving a few simple instructions on commenting and walking around the room to check in with pairs.
I do see some problems with this approach as some students could be resistant to the idea of having their peers review their work and not the teacher. I know that good students who put a lot of work into their work might feel disappointed by not having the teacher read it. And I know some students may not think highly of their peers and therefore not put much stock in the peer review. But, I think that this can be remedied by the instructor being vigilant about training students on how to comment and by walking around and being active in class. I also like the idea of out of class reviews where pairs could take home each other's draft and a rubric have to return to class with the rubric filled out.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Third Class
Now we get to formal writing assignments. Honestly, I am most comfortable here. By comfortable, I mean I am comfortable with assigning the lab report and I know how to grade it and what my rubric will look like and so on... So I don't feel awkward writing and talking about assigning lab reports.
But, still I have many questions and inquiries into how to properly assign/design formal writing assignments. At the beginning of the course, as I said, my big conundrum is that we do 6 labs in 7 weeks and have students write 6 lab reports and only one of these can be re-written! I now know (well I think I already knew) after reading Bean that this is just terrible! There is more to it. There has to be. I can be more creative--so many teachers have already done the work so I don't even have to be creative. I can adapt other's strategies.
So, once again, after reading Bean, I was blown away. So many great strategies were discussed. It almost feels so lame and easy (on the instructor) to just assign lab reports when there are so many other ways to assign formal writing. In particular, I loved the idea of the short write-to-learn assignments that were constructed using 'Dear Abby' scenario. I would like to try this in one of my courses. I think there might be a few concepts (that I see students make very common mistakes on) that this would be a good exercise for. And, I like the added interest or excitement that might be sparked by taking it out of a typical 'answer the following question' format. Student's get to be creative and create a persona to answer the reader with. A also like how, by assigning the student a role to play it may take away any apprehension about 'how' they should write it and they can focus on the actual organization of the concept and the communication and writing of it.
But, still I have many questions and inquiries into how to properly assign/design formal writing assignments. At the beginning of the course, as I said, my big conundrum is that we do 6 labs in 7 weeks and have students write 6 lab reports and only one of these can be re-written! I now know (well I think I already knew) after reading Bean that this is just terrible! There is more to it. There has to be. I can be more creative--so many teachers have already done the work so I don't even have to be creative. I can adapt other's strategies.
So, once again, after reading Bean, I was blown away. So many great strategies were discussed. It almost feels so lame and easy (on the instructor) to just assign lab reports when there are so many other ways to assign formal writing. In particular, I loved the idea of the short write-to-learn assignments that were constructed using 'Dear Abby' scenario. I would like to try this in one of my courses. I think there might be a few concepts (that I see students make very common mistakes on) that this would be a good exercise for. And, I like the added interest or excitement that might be sparked by taking it out of a typical 'answer the following question' format. Student's get to be creative and create a persona to answer the reader with. A also like how, by assigning the student a role to play it may take away any apprehension about 'how' they should write it and they can focus on the actual organization of the concept and the communication and writing of it.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Second Class
Thoughts on Reading (Bean pp37-70): Right off the bat, I was faced with some vocabulary/terminology to look up. As I said, I am so new to pedagogical speak that I literally need a pocket translator. The topic heading that had me reaching for google was: 'The Heuristic Structure of Academic Prose'.
I had already looked up heuristic last week but I had never heard the term academic prose. Google quickly told me that I knew what it was, I had just never heard it named or described in text before. I suppose a lot of the technical writing I do is considered academic prose. It was good to actually see it described and defined, though. It explains where my students may be getting some of their tips and pointers. I always see some odd phrases in lab reports that seem rather out of place such as: hither to, unto, therefore. These are all fine words, but sometimes it looks as though my students have gone through a lab report and thrown these things in to stylize. Perhaps they are trying to make it sound 'academic'. I agree with most of tenants of academic prose--it is how we write in the sciences. But, on the other hand, I am also a fan of being lean and pithy where appropriate. Academic prose can get out of hand just like legalese and in the end you are left wondering what is actually being said! Anyway, if I am allegedly encouraging my students to write in this method, I should know something official about it so I was glad to read about it in Bean. I was also happy to read the 'interrogation' of it.
I really enjoyed the reading on nformal and exploratory writing (Bean Ch 6). I am starting to see the connection between personal writing and typical academic writing. At first glance, I could not really imagine or articulate a connection between the two. Now, after reading and reflecting a bit I see how important it might be to include many types of writing into a science course. I see a clear connection between encouraging personal, expressive writing in a journal (yes, even about science stuff!) and the finished, polished product of say a lab report. Why not? Spending time doing many different types of writing may be key to final organization, fleshing out ideas, and even to collaboration.
Again, we get to the part where as soon as I start talking/thinking about teaching, I suddenly realize how little I know about pedagogy! There is so much to do and so much to think about regarding giving assignments to students. Not to mention the part where you are actually trying to convey some content. This all makes me nervous!
On another note regarding exploratory/personal writing...I had this great idea in another course where my students would keep a lab journal blog. We have gone away from lab journal writing and all my students do is a formal lab report. I had proposed getting students to do a little 'not formal' writing in a blog where they could also post their data, comment on other data (hello collaboration!) and I could easily check in and be part of it. My idea got shot down in spades! First someone commented that blog writing and scientific writing are totally different and informal blog writing in lei of real lab book writing should not be encouraged! AND second that 'sharing data' was a bad idea as it would lead to cheating!
NOW, with my new skills and knowledge from Bean I realized I was going to use personal writing by assigning a blog and that this is beyond pedagogically sound! I may have been on to something with my blog lab journal idea and I think I may pursue it now that I am seeing the connection between doing all types of writing in a course even when the finished, polished product is a lab report.
New Vocabulary:
inchoate: being only partly in existence or operation : incipient; imperfectly formed or formulated : formless, incoherent
This term was used in Bean when talking about how Britton noticed that in the earliest drafts of their work, expert writers showed evidence of doing expressive writing.
I had already looked up heuristic last week but I had never heard the term academic prose. Google quickly told me that I knew what it was, I had just never heard it named or described in text before. I suppose a lot of the technical writing I do is considered academic prose. It was good to actually see it described and defined, though. It explains where my students may be getting some of their tips and pointers. I always see some odd phrases in lab reports that seem rather out of place such as: hither to, unto, therefore. These are all fine words, but sometimes it looks as though my students have gone through a lab report and thrown these things in to stylize. Perhaps they are trying to make it sound 'academic'. I agree with most of tenants of academic prose--it is how we write in the sciences. But, on the other hand, I am also a fan of being lean and pithy where appropriate. Academic prose can get out of hand just like legalese and in the end you are left wondering what is actually being said! Anyway, if I am allegedly encouraging my students to write in this method, I should know something official about it so I was glad to read about it in Bean. I was also happy to read the 'interrogation' of it.
I really enjoyed the reading on nformal and exploratory writing (Bean Ch 6). I am starting to see the connection between personal writing and typical academic writing. At first glance, I could not really imagine or articulate a connection between the two. Now, after reading and reflecting a bit I see how important it might be to include many types of writing into a science course. I see a clear connection between encouraging personal, expressive writing in a journal (yes, even about science stuff!) and the finished, polished product of say a lab report. Why not? Spending time doing many different types of writing may be key to final organization, fleshing out ideas, and even to collaboration.
Again, we get to the part where as soon as I start talking/thinking about teaching, I suddenly realize how little I know about pedagogy! There is so much to do and so much to think about regarding giving assignments to students. Not to mention the part where you are actually trying to convey some content. This all makes me nervous!
On another note regarding exploratory/personal writing...I had this great idea in another course where my students would keep a lab journal blog. We have gone away from lab journal writing and all my students do is a formal lab report. I had proposed getting students to do a little 'not formal' writing in a blog where they could also post their data, comment on other data (hello collaboration!) and I could easily check in and be part of it. My idea got shot down in spades! First someone commented that blog writing and scientific writing are totally different and informal blog writing in lei of real lab book writing should not be encouraged! AND second that 'sharing data' was a bad idea as it would lead to cheating!
NOW, with my new skills and knowledge from Bean I realized I was going to use personal writing by assigning a blog and that this is beyond pedagogically sound! I may have been on to something with my blog lab journal idea and I think I may pursue it now that I am seeing the connection between doing all types of writing in a course even when the finished, polished product is a lab report.
New Vocabulary:
inchoate: being only partly in existence or operation : incipient; imperfectly formed or formulated : formless, incoherent
This term was used in Bean when talking about how Britton noticed that in the earliest drafts of their work, expert writers showed evidence of doing expressive writing.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
first class
general thoughts: whenever i sit down and start talking, listening, or thinking about teaching in any sort of detail i am immediately struck be feelings of inadequacy. i guess it is that typical scenario where when you start to learn about a subject and how complex it is and how deep it goes, you start to realize how little you actually know! this was my experience in the first class and after completing the first readings in Bean (pp1-35).
thoughts on reading: i like the Bean book. i find the level appropriate in that there was a good mix of my understanding or being familiar with the ideas AND a lot of new terminology and pedagogical speak that i will certainly be adding to my repertoire. some things that stuck out in the reading: on the issue of creating a too many writing assignments and therefore too much grading--been talks about giving writing assignments that you don't need to grade. this fascinated me. i never even thought that possible. as a new teacher, i think i am a little naive and also influenced strongly my very simplistic models for teaching: give assignment, receive assignment, grade assignment. how linear and old fashioned! suddenly i am seeing some possibilities. i brought this point up in class and my instructor fully agreed with bean and gave me some examples on how to do such a thing. in fact, we put it into practice by bringing drafts of our first assignments in and then worked in pairs to read and give feedback to each other. the instructor never needed to collect. she got us to work on our drafts, bring them in, and then work on them some more via paired sharing. the important element here was: she trained us on how to respond. she took a few moments to tell us what to look for and what to give feedback on. she gave us a few prompts on a small piece of paper to guide us while reading our partners draft. i am very interested in further exploring this idea of 'ungraded' writing assignments which bean promises we will talk about in ch 13.
another part that sticks out from the first reading is bean's example of the difference in the english words 'rough draft' and the french equivalent 'brouillon' which means to place in disorder, more or less. for the french, the first order of business is to mix everything up intentionally. in english, usually we start with an outline which is highly ordered (even our lettering and number conventions here are quite rigid!) and then we proceed to the rough draft which is not necessarily in a state of disorder it is just in need of being smoothed and refined from its rough state. i find stuff like this so interesting.
new terminology and vocabulary*:
phenomenologically (used in the context of how students need to experience problems in order to become good critical thinkers): A philosophy or method of inquiry based on the premise that reality consists of objects and events as they are perceived or understood in human consciousness and not of anything independent of human consciousness.
epistemological: a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge
heuristic: involving or serving as an aid to learning, discovery, or problem-solving by experimental and especially trial-and-error methods
*Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary: www.merriam-webster.com
thoughts on reading: i like the Bean book. i find the level appropriate in that there was a good mix of my understanding or being familiar with the ideas AND a lot of new terminology and pedagogical speak that i will certainly be adding to my repertoire. some things that stuck out in the reading: on the issue of creating a too many writing assignments and therefore too much grading--been talks about giving writing assignments that you don't need to grade. this fascinated me. i never even thought that possible. as a new teacher, i think i am a little naive and also influenced strongly my very simplistic models for teaching: give assignment, receive assignment, grade assignment. how linear and old fashioned! suddenly i am seeing some possibilities. i brought this point up in class and my instructor fully agreed with bean and gave me some examples on how to do such a thing. in fact, we put it into practice by bringing drafts of our first assignments in and then worked in pairs to read and give feedback to each other. the instructor never needed to collect. she got us to work on our drafts, bring them in, and then work on them some more via paired sharing. the important element here was: she trained us on how to respond. she took a few moments to tell us what to look for and what to give feedback on. she gave us a few prompts on a small piece of paper to guide us while reading our partners draft. i am very interested in further exploring this idea of 'ungraded' writing assignments which bean promises we will talk about in ch 13.
another part that sticks out from the first reading is bean's example of the difference in the english words 'rough draft' and the french equivalent 'brouillon' which means to place in disorder, more or less. for the french, the first order of business is to mix everything up intentionally. in english, usually we start with an outline which is highly ordered (even our lettering and number conventions here are quite rigid!) and then we proceed to the rough draft which is not necessarily in a state of disorder it is just in need of being smoothed and refined from its rough state. i find stuff like this so interesting.
new terminology and vocabulary*:
phenomenologically (used in the context of how students need to experience problems in order to become good critical thinkers): A philosophy or method of inquiry based on the premise that reality consists of objects and events as they are perceived or understood in human consciousness and not of anything independent of human consciousness.
epistemological: a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge
heuristic: involving or serving as an aid to learning, discovery, or problem-solving by experimental and especially trial-and-error methods
*Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary: www.merriam-webster.com
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
introduction
this blog is part of a journal assignment for a course i am taking called 'teaching with writing'.
as a laboratory instructor, the main deliverable for my students is the laboratory report. one of the biggest concerns i have is that i am not teaching writing in my courses--i am only having students practice writing. there are currently no (well, very little) revision opportunities offered to my students in the 7 week lab course i teach in. and i think this equates to them not actually learning how to write in the sciences.
some things i'd like to explore in this course:
is it pedagogically sound to NOT have revision opportunities? and if so, how can i re-think a 7week course where we do the labs but also learn some writing?
what other types of writing can i have my students do in order for them to become better scientific writers?
can content be taught with writing? how?
as a laboratory instructor, the main deliverable for my students is the laboratory report. one of the biggest concerns i have is that i am not teaching writing in my courses--i am only having students practice writing. there are currently no (well, very little) revision opportunities offered to my students in the 7 week lab course i teach in. and i think this equates to them not actually learning how to write in the sciences.
some things i'd like to explore in this course:
is it pedagogically sound to NOT have revision opportunities? and if so, how can i re-think a 7week course where we do the labs but also learn some writing?
what other types of writing can i have my students do in order for them to become better scientific writers?
can content be taught with writing? how?
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