Highlight Student Ideas

Question: What is an interesting way of highlighting student ideas in the classroom?

Answer/Quote: “Some of my favorite moments as a high school English teacher occurred whenever a student would say something particularly thoughtful, profound, or uniquely hysterical and the class would joyously insist the statement go up on ‘the wall.’ The wall was simply a collection of student quotes gathered together that hung around my room One of my favorite quotes was taped above the chalkboard, written in large, blue capital letters on white typewriter paper: ‘We’re Smarter Together.’ ” P. 199.

Comment: I think that’s an interesting idea. I can think of some of my favorite student ideas. I wish I had thought of putting them on my classroom walls. One of my all-time favorites was Reba Hodson’s  response to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “To be great is to be misunderstood.” She said that in geometry she had learned that for a definition to be valid it had to be reversible. Take that Mr. Emerson. RayS.

Title: “We’re Smarter Together: Building Professional Social Networks in English Education.” James Cercone. English Education (April 2009), 199-206.

Reading Aloud to Young Children

Question: Why read aloud to young children?

 Answer/Quote: “There can be little doubt that young children benefit from being read to during their early years. Studies in home settings have shown that storybook reading is associated with vocabulary growth, increased awareness of the nature of written language, growth in background knowledge, eagerness to read, learning to read before school, and even success in beginning reading in school…. Perhaps the best testament to the power of storybook reading for primary grade children is a study by Feitelson, Kita, and Goldstein (19986). They showed that reading aloud regularly to first graders caused the children to increase significantly their listening comprehension, active use of language, and decoding skills. Therefore, being read to helps a child build an excellent foundation for continued literacy growth.” P. 362.

Comment: Of course everyone knows that reading aloud to young children establishes a basis for learning to read. But it helps to learn some specific outcomes of reading aloud. RayS.

Title: “Cross-Age Reading: a Strategy for Helping Poor Readers.” LD Labbo and WH Teale. Reading Teacher (February 1990), 362-369.

Point of View in Argument

Question: What is a strategy in argument?

Answer/Quote: “However, schemas devised by cognitive and developmental psychologists include a progression from egocentric, ethnocentric or sociocentric psychology to what Piaget termed ‘reciprocal’ thinking, which enables us to see things form others’ viewpoints when we can in fact learn something useful by doing so. Rhetcomp pedagogy applies this progression in approaches like Rogerian argument and Peter Elbow’s ‘believers and doubters,’ in which students are obliged to identify with their opponents’ viewpoint in spoken or written arguments, prior to critiquing it.” P. 537.

Comment: Identify with the opponent’s point of view before critiquing it. An interesting strategy. RayS.

Title: Review: Stanley Fish’s Tightrope Act.” D Lazere. College English (May 2009), 528-538.

A Goal of Higher Education

Question: Is the following statement a goal of higher education?

Statement: “I once heard a university president state, ‘One of the great contributions of higher education is to show people how to deliberate over contentious issues together.’ ” P. 525.

Comment: In my opinion, NO! And the media’s examples do not help. Even the stately Wall Street Journal’s attempts at interviewing put everyone in a situation in which, guests and interviewer rush to get a word in edgewise, resulting in chaotic, unintelligible blabbering at the same time. RayS.

Title: “Texts of Our Institutional Lives: Strategic Speculations on the Question of Value: The Role of Community Publishing in English Studies.” SJ Parks. College English (May 2009), 506-527.

The Graduate Experience

Question: How do graduate students perceive courses in their chosen fields?

Answer/Quote: “Yet, most professors begin in covering ground at a dizzying pace, cutting a wide swath through acres of bibliographic titles, layers of history, thickets of scholars’ names, a morass of acronyms, towering terminology, and a tangle of theories.” P. 435.

Comment: Sound familiar? RayS.

Title: “Representations of the Field in Graduate Courses: Using Parody to Question All Positions.” N Mack. College English (May 2009), 435-459.

MLA Guidelines for Documentation

Question: What are some major change in MLA Guidelines for Documentation in MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (2009)?

Answer: Here is an example—

First, source  must be labeled. Print sources must be labeled as “print.”

Example:
Berthoff, Ann. The Making of Meaning: Metaphors and Maxims. Montclair, NJ: Boynton/Cook, 1981. Print.

From the Web: Old Citation:

Brooke, Collin Gifford. “Picking Up the Pieces: Is Comp/Rhet a Coherent Discipline?” Slide-Share, 2007, 21 May
2007 http:www.slideshare.net/cgbrooke/picking-up-the-pieces. [Indent second line.]

From the Web: New Citation:

Brooke, Collin Gifford. “Picking Up the Pieces: Is Comp/Rhet a Coherent Discipline?” Slide/Share, 2007
Web, 21 May 2007. [Indent second line.]

Comment: What a relief. Copying the URL was a pain. Labeling the source is just common sense. RayS.

 Title: “From the Editor.” John Schilb. College English (May 2009), 433-434.

Previewing Assigned Reading

Question: How can students be persuaded to read assigned literary works?

Answer: Students read an assigned work and review it. They answer the question, “What do you find to be especially striking, notable or interesting?” What questions will the reader read to answer? Compile the reviews into a preview that will encourage others to want to read it.

Comment: In other words, compile what amounts to the blurb on a book cover. RayS.

Suggested by: “Seeing Literature through Students’ Eyes: The Text Preview.” L Zuidema. Teaching English in the Two-year College (March 2009), 301-310.