Teaching With Student Texts: Essays Toward an Informed Practice

9. Product as Process: Teaching Publication to Students

The Low-Stakes, Risk-Friendly Message-Board Text 101 Note that everyone must post a primary post here. Go back over your own Discussions posts. Pick two longish ones (probably primary posts) and cut and paste them into a separate document. Now, go through them carefully, seeking out writing errors. Correct those errors or comment on them in ALL CAPS. At the bottom of the document, write a sentence or two about what you think about the posts after reading them again. Cut and paste the whole thing into a post here on this thread (don’t attach a separate file). Let me know if you have questions, Prof. Warnock With message boards, they can write thousands of low-stakes words, and perhaps that low-stakes environment is more conducive to their learning what we really want when we ask them to see a piece of writing again, removing their fear of finding mistakes in projects that are worth a significant part of their final grade. My favorite Post(er) This assignment asks students to review all class posts up to a certain point and then either identify one especially strong post or a collection of posts written by another student. I typically assign this at midterm for individual posts and at the term’s end for a particular poster. Here is the midterm assignment: Subj: My favorite post Hi everyone, Please look back/think about our message boards and pick one stellar post by one of your colleagues. Clearly identify the post so the rest of us can find it, and then describe why it was your favorite. Looking forward to some well-earned compliments, Prof. Warnock Here is the way I alter this at the end of the term to focus on another student, not just a post: Subj: My favorite poster Hi all, Everyone must post at least one primary post to this topic. 102 T EAC H In G WI T H ST U D EnT T ExT S As we did a few weeks ago, I want you to look back through the archives of our message-board threads this term. However, this time, I want you to identify someone whose posts stood out for you all term. Identify a few examples by this person, and use actual quotes to demonstrate the talent of this writer and to provide evidence for your choice. Give out some compliments, Prof. Warnock These assignments ask students to take a close, critical look at each other’s writing, reflecting on what about writing appeals to them: clarity ? diction? humor? evidence? The answers to these questions perhaps lead to a better question: do these same traits apply to my writing? Assignments like this also build assessment into the course, as Katrina Meyer (2007) points out, bringing “a form of useful feedback into earlier stages of the course.” Students, by “voting” for favorite posts and posters, determine class excellence. Finally, this assignment helps build a constructive class environment: these compliments appear to build camaraderie, which is especially useful in online courses. writing Puzzles Because message boards provide us with lots of informal student texts, I believe they can help us with the instruction of grammar and mechanics. I use writing puzzles for this: I cut and paste grammar and style issues from posts, including my own, and I have a separate thread during the term for this material. I call them “writing puzzles” so students can approach them as playful examples to help them work on mechanical issues specific to their own writing, not as oppressive “problems .” For instance, I posted this snippet as a writing puzzle: Many whom argue to legalize drugs are only doing so for marijuana, making him guilty of over-exaggerating and over-stating the issue, and those who support legalization of cocaine and heroin should be quoted directly on the topic. Students often respond with surprising interest to these puzzles, sometimes commenting in multiple-screen posts that elicit multiple responses. The author or other members of the class can work on the writing issue without worrying about grades. Elaine Maimon says, “Too often talking about commas becomes a safe substitute for teaching and demonstrating how writers behave” (1979, 365); by putting the puzzles The Low-Stakes, Risk-Friendly Message-Board Text 103 in their own thread, I use the LMS space itself to indicate that while grammar is not always the focus of instruction...