Re: [xmca] FW: The Shadow Scholar - He writes your students' papers.

[Greg Mcverry <jgregmcverry@gmail.com>]

Phillip,

I have to agree with your approach to writing instruction. I think it is no
mistake (even if you do not agree with the  methods) that collaborative
writing had such a strong effect size as reported in WritingNext.

It gets at the idea of Nancy's comment that Larry pointed out: teach them to
feel proud that they can cite and DIALOGUE with a scholar's text" Having
others to dialogue with gives control to the students instead of punishing
them through the "fear" of prompts that Jenna discussed.

Reminds me of the work Peter Smagorinsky does in comprehension (sorry
meaning making..I just love the alliteration) through composition. Students
do need to construct their texts through dialogical interactions with
scholars.

I don't have an answer, but I am going to use many of ideas folks have
outlined in my thread. My hardest part of teaching writing is in the
activity itself. I do my best writing (which is still quite mediocre) when
walking my dogs. How can you possibly teach to that level of participation?

Thanks for the ideas,
Greg



On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 11:04 AM, White, Phillip <Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu
> wrote:

>
> Greg, you wrote:
>
> snip
> We, as educators, simply do not do justice when it comes to teaching
> students to use multiple sources in primary and secondary school.
>
> and
>
> I think though, instead of trying to catch plagiarism we need to teach
> students to use multiple sources and introduce academic discourses much
> earlier in education. It is the only way to stop the cycle of Colleges
> claiming high schools are to blame and high schools laying the blame at the
> doors of middle schools.
> snip
>
> having taught MA and PhD classes in education for the last twelve years or
> so, and for the last several years i'm also working with undergraduate
> students who wish to become elementary school teachers it has not been lost
> on me that many students are not fluent writers.
>
> following my understandings of Gregory Bateson's theory of systems, i
> subscribe to the notion that an individual can't "change" a system, but an
> individual can change her/himself;
>
> also, building on my understandings of Lave & Wenger's writings on
> legitimate peripheral participation & aprenticeship, not to mention
> Vygotsky's theories of learning as embedded in social activities and
> relationships;
>
> and remembering my days in elementary education when kindergarten teachers
> would complain that parents weren't adequately preparing their children for
> school with the necessary skills for kindergarten;
>
> i decided to build a strand of writer's workshop within classroom
> instructional time so that students working together in cooperative groups
> would jointly compose major written products that would be handed in at the
> end of the semester.
>
> and i could rove from group to group keeping my own monitoring notes
> regarding individual student progress to give me deeper understandings
> regarding students' strengths, weaknesses and instructional next steps.
>
> for me, now, the issues of poor student compositions as well as ghost
> writers, plagiarism, etc., is now a non-issue.
>
> what it took was a change in my identity and introducing different teacher
> directed activities.
>
> my two-bits worth.
>
> phillip
>
>
>
> Phillip White, PhD
> University of Colorado Denver
> School of Education
> phillip.white@ucdenver.edu
>
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-- 
J. Gregory McVerry
Neag Fellow
University of Connecticut
New Literacies Research Lab
http://newliteracies.uconn.edu
twitter: jgmac1106


" [Champions] have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be
stronger than the skill." -Ali
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