UIWP Summer Institute, First Day!

Some time for reflection on my first day as a participant in the UIWP...

After brief introductions around the table and sorting out our payment paperwork through the university, we were given a brief overview of what our plans will be for the day and for the rest of the week.  Participants will start bringing in student work for analysis beginning this Tuesday and participants will begin delivering their teaching demonstrations beginning this Wednesday.

At this point, I have a solid choice for my own teaching demonstration and I was given the "Thumbs Up" to proceed with it after some discussion today.  I have given a lot of thought and preparation to revisiting one of the foremost and fundamental story lessons I have ever learned:  The 6 C's of Storytelling.  I first learned of this lesson when I was a student at Ventura College in Ventura, CA enrolled in an Introductory Screenwriting class with the one and only Professor Jon O'Brien.  His words and ideas have stuck with me over the years through my time at film school, my time spent working in the industry after college, my time going back to school to earn my teaching certification, and finally through my initial years as a teacher.  I remember teaching this lesson in my 8th grade English Language Arts class my first year as a teacher at UMS and the students really enjoying it and using that lesson as a foundation to discuss and identify story elements in many different works throughout the rest of the year.  I am excited to share this lesson with the rest of the cohort in this year's Writing Project!

We then listened to an example teaching demonstration by Tiffany Bui, the librarian at Leal Elementary School in Urbana, on Zines.  Tiffany not only gave us an overview of what a zine is and how it has evolved over the course of history, but she also shared several examples of published zines to help us get an idea of how diverse zines can be in their subject, content, and style.  Tiffany then shared several examples of student created zines that she has kept from projects she has done with her students at Leal.  Essentially, the most important thing about creating a zine is expression and communication.  Spelling, grammar, usage, punctuation, and all the "boring" parts of writing ideally take a back seat.  There really is no one way to correctly create a zine, as zines are by definition very personal in their nature.  Tiffany closed our her demo by giving us all time to create our own 8 page zine by folding a single sheet of paper and cutting it so that it would resemble a small book.  I choose to write a zine about coffee (some brief history of how and where it was first discovered, what coffee looks like in modern American society, how to order various kinds of coffee, and why people drink coffee).  We then had the instant gratification of having our zine "published" once it was copied onto a piece of colored paper.  Overall, I really enjoyed this process and I will definitely look into exploring this project as something I can do in an electronic form in one of my technology classes next year...

After having lunch on campus, I returned to reflect and write about one of the shared readings, “A Tale of 3 P’s—Penmanship,Product, and Process:  100 Years of Elementary Writing Instruction” by Hawkins and Razali.  During the reflection, I thought what others would think about how I choose to teach writing based on what resources I have in my classroom.  I think that in retrospect, I could provide a few more examples of previous student work for some projects as well as creating some individual instruction sheets and/or examples.  Overall though, I think I choose to heavily show my students how to properly format and set up their scripts and writing projects, but I really try to be very open about what my students choose to write about.

I wasn't really to surprised about what I read in the article.  It seems like the way that writing has been taught over the years has been shifting, especially as things are now really beginning to transition from a world of handwriting to a world of typing... The question remains which skills should be taught to students, when should those skills be taught, and who should be teaching students those skills.

The following discussion was very fruitful, it was refreshing to hear other teacher's frustrations about how they face similar things that I have faced trying to teach writing to students.  Really, the biggest hurdle is to have students accept that good, quality writing is not something that can be knocked out in a single draft.  The thought and act of revision is really the only way to make meaningful and positive gains in one's writing style, tone, and voice... Not to mention it is the simplest and most effective way to catch typos, correct spellings, improve irregularities, and reduce clutter... How to get students to embrace the process that is effective writing remains to be the million dollar question?

One thought I had was to have students orally present final drafts of their writing assignments to the class in either a formal or an informal setting.  This would build in some ownership of their work and would also create incentive for some students to take assignments more seriously knowing that there was actually going to be a physical audience that would hear and offer feedback on their writing.

I have attached my full reflection and discussion notes below.
https://docs.google.com/document/edit?hgd=1&id=1-o2IJJUJnxtXVH8qjlfaqWqyCDntfhacsq0QaeF6LBY

That's enough reflection for today... It's too nice outside not to enjoy it :)