Literacy Design Collaborative

My thoughts about next Fall and the writing curriculum I will use is all jumbled right now. I am teaching two English 0301 classes, and I am thinking about merging Beans ideas with a project I recently became aware of called the Literacy Design Collaborative.

It has an excellent framework for designing "teaching tasks" that really are writing prompts built on template sentences. Bean talks about template sentences as well. Here's one example from the LDC:

After researching ________ (informational text) on _________ (content), write a _________ (report or substitute) that defines ___________ (term or concept) and explains _________ (content). Support your discussion with evidence from your research. What _________ (conclusions or implications) can you draw?

They have many other template tasks that teachers can fill in with their content to make a "teaching task." My thoughts are to create teaching tasks that are likewise RAFTS.

My thoughts are to design four of these kinds of assignments for my English 0301 class.

Assignment 1--Narrative
Assignment 2--Expository (explain something)
Assignment 3--Argument/Persuasion
Assignment 4--Researched Expository or Persuasive Essay

Assignments 2-4 would involve writing from readings. I am also thinking about adopting topics for some of these essays from the Cal State University Expository Reading and Writing Course since it has some pretty good topics I can choose from, and I may be able to adapt the course materials they have already created. We will see.

These are my rough thoughts for these courses at this point. My English 1301 class is another matter...

Writing Assignment 1

I really don’t have much more to say about the book.  I did find rubric examples helpful.  The section on writing comments on student’s papers was good, but I would have liked more examples of comments such as on pages 83-4.  I have purchased and began reading the book in the bibliography that pertains to math and science writing.   Below is a writing assignment for Intermediate Algebra.  Let me know if you have any suggestions.   Hope everyone is staying reasonably cool.

Assignment for Intermediate Algebra

The Ancient Greeks believed that all numbers were rational.  They also believed that the  Pythagorean Theorem was correct.  However, when they applied the Pythagorean Theorem to a right triangle with each leg measuring one unit, they could not find a rational number for the hypotenuse.   This created a contradiction or paradox.

Take the role of an ancient Greek teacher striving to explain this contradiction to their students.  Assume that the students are not familiar with the Pythagorean Theorem and have only a vague idea of what is meant by a rational number.  Write this with words only; that is, do NOT use any mathematical symbols or diagrams.  Include the following:

1.      what it means to be a rational number 

2.      an explanation of why all numbers must be rational  (We realize that some numbers can be irrational, but you are taking the role of the Greek teacher who did not believe that irrational numbers existed.)

3.      a description of the Pythagorean Theorem

4.      an explanation of how the Greeks arrived at the irrational number, the square root of two, when applying the Pythagorean Theorem to the triangle below

5.      an explanation of why this produces a contradiction

	The diagram is a right triangle with two sides labeled one unit and the hypotenuse labeled the square root of two.

Grading Rubric, 8 points maximum

2 points     Each of the five items above are addressed.

2 points     Explanations and arguments are clear and demonstrate an understanding of the concepts involved.

2 points     Mathematical terms are employed correctly.  Symbols and diagrams are NOT used.

2 points     Writing is easy to follow with attention paid to grammar, spelling, punctuation and neatness .

RAFTS and a TIP

Last Friday I did a presentation at Region 20 for their Keystone Conference on college and career readiness. I spoke basically about Bean's "Two Dimensions of a 'Meaning-Constructing' Task," and I personally am finding this approach to designing writing assignments to be the most significant thing I am getting out of reading his book. I can attest to the truth of his contention (from my own assignments and viewing the assignments of others and hearing their frustration with their students' writing) that the design of a writing assignment is a very very important factor in how well students are able to write on that assignment.

Based upon research derived from the National Survey of Student Engagement (the 4 yr. college/university version), three features of well-designed writing assignments were identified:

1. Interactive components
2. A meaning-construction task
3. Clear explanations of writing expectations

On page 99, Bean summarizes the parts of an effective writing assignment handout, but I want to write on the second feature of a well-designed writing assignment--a meaning construction task. RAFTS and a TIP.

Role
Audience
Format
Topic
Strong Verb

and

Task as Intriguing Problem

Bean's contention all along is that interesting problems or questions are like doorways leading students to think critically about subject matter. What RAFTS offers is some guidance and purpose behind pursuing the problem. The role playing may not always work, and certainly it can become stifling or even artificial, but in many ways we are seeking to get students to evolve from who they currently are into what we might call "disciplinary" insiders. If we get them to play the role of an "insider" with insider knowledge, then the hope is that they actually begin to develop that identity and knowledge.

The other thing I like about RAFTS is that they can be fun. I love the Physics writing assignment example on page 112 where the writer takes on the role of a boyfriend (or I guess girlfriend) in an argument with his or her partner about a physic question. It sounds like the disputes that come up on Car Talk sometimes. If student writers enter into the role playing of the assignment, they have a strong purpose and direction for their writing. They understand what they are after in terms finding a thesis with tension. Bean references a great book that might work as a supplemental text in any class asking students to write and argue from source materials called They Say/I Say.

"Many people think X, but I am going to argue Y"
or
"Before reading my paper, my reader will think X. After reading my paper, my reader will think Y."
(Bean 99).

Most students by long practice write to the teacher alone but following a fiction that they really are writing to "the world." It is like they are addressing the sky. RAFTS gets them to think much more rhetorically, and I love them for that. I've used RAFT-like assignments for years, but reading Bean is getting me to think more deeply about crafting this kind of framework for my writing assignments.

In fact, I am crafting a final exam essay assignment for my Summer I class, and I already know that I will RAFTS it.

The other wonderful thing about RAFTS, and my audience at Region 20 all were nodding their head in agreement, is that it is easily translatable to any discipline.

Linked here is the handout I created for this presentation. In addition to a general description of RAFT assignments, I have helpful resources for designing your own RAFT with a TIP writing assignments:
 http://www.lirvin.net/RAFTassignshandout.pdf

Enjoy!

First Response to Engaging Ideas

I approach the Bean book as a teacher of developmental mathematics and the two part course Fundamentals of Mathematics I and II for Elementary Teachers.   

I enjoyed reading Beans’s description of the writing process as a tool for thinking.   He writes that “writers produce multiple drafts because the act of writing is itself an act of problem solving.”   This has definitely been my experience with writing, and it’s nice to hear someone articulate it so well.    It’s taken me some time to write this, but I feel that I have begun thinking through some issues involved in applying writing to mathematics classes. 

Mathematicians create and write proofs.  This is much like the writing process described by Bean.   Prior to writing a proof, the mathematician must come up with a question, explore and come up with a proposed answer to the question.  They need to have an idea on how to logically show that this is true.  In the process of writing down this idea, they may find that the logic does not hold.  They may find that there is a more clever way to obtain the proof or just a more concise way to get through parts of the logic.  It is even possible to end up disproving your initial hunch.   Mathematics differ from other disciplines in that no one attempts to disprove what already has been proved.   This is because mathematics does not try to understand the world, but merely tries to expand upon something human made.    

The classes that I teach do not ask students to write proofs.  They do ask students to communicate their reasoning.  This is nearly always done through a series of steps using mathematical symbols.  Unfortunately students tend to memorize procedures rather than trying to make sense of them.  Students generally do not appreciate alternative procedures, nor do they attempt to devise their own.  This not only turns mathematics into a excruciatingly dull subject; it also impedes their ability to progress in mathematics.

I believe that writing can help students make sense of mathematics. The text that we use for our teacher classes quotes Einstein as saying  “a description in plain language is a criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached.”  I believe that this is the case, but I am not sure how to get my students to buy into it.    

Two frustrations in assigning writing:

  

   1) Valuing writing in math class

Students simply see any writing in mathematics class as a needless and annoying diversion from the bottom line of applying a procedure to obtain the correct answer.  Something as simple as using a complete sentence for the answer to a word problem is frequently ignored.   Without the sentence, it is difficult to determine whether the student understood the question.  The idea of asking my developmental students to write a complete explanation of how they solved a problem, using Polya steps for example, seems daunting.

My students who plan to be elementary school teachers are more open to writing.  They realize that they need to work on communication.   Unfortunately, what they feel they need to communicate is a simple way for children to perform procedures.  

   2) Challenging students to get beyond procedures

As much as teachers try to emphasize that mathematics should “make sense” and the student’s job is to play around and struggle with it until it makes sense to them, most students resist this.  A major theme of our mathematics for teachers course is the difference between the “how” and the “why”.  Nevertheless, at final exam time many students persist in stating the steps of an algorithm rather than providing meaning to those steps.  In a sense they are giving me the “And Then”  when I have asked for some critical thought.   

The assignments and tests that we typically employ in developmental mathematics classes often allow students to get by largely through memorizing procedures.  I plan to focus on one developmental course this summer.  I think that I can come up with assignments that fit most of Bean’s criteria.  What I hope to get from the book are ways to communicate to students what I am expecting of them and a means to provide constructive feedback.   Although I am convinced that some of students’ difficulty comes from a minimalist approach to studying, I think Bean is correct that other factors also come into play.  I would like to try to identify what these factors are in mathematics writing.   I hope to also apply this to the writing assignments that I already use in my teacher courses.

Critical Thinking is higher order thinking. I didn't know I did it until a neurologist pronounced me "high-functioning." I had no idea that less thinking was so appealing for others until I began teaching. I just thought people were a bit lazy.

I know that most of my students do not get enough practice in problem solving at the higher levels.  Routinization and standardization distill education into a list of facts unreflected upon, as well as encouraging students to accept others' assertions without question. And often students are not pushed,, so I push.

What have my assignments provided for my students? I ask for application of a method of understanding, beginning with knowing the nuances of definition (course terms) and finding examples in the text about which we may discuss attached ideas.  I require that they use higher order thinking by prescribing some of the writing assignment, then allowing the student to choose the focus.  Without using and applying correctly the course terms, the initial assessment always requires that the professional language of the course must be included. in future revisions.

Tutors tell me that my assignments are difficult, but I think that some difficulty is really good.  It sets my courses apart in that I really want thinking to be shared.

For Freshman Comp I, I like to start with a paragraph which asks the reader to consider what the the writer is saying.  Sometimes I use a quotation from a philosopher considering the human condition. What does it mean? What is fact, assumption, unknown to the reader?  What methods might be used to open the door to understanding (and moving on to the next step)? This part becomes quite Socratic, and seems to appeal to students: question authority, perspective, bias, and apply self-reflective strategies. I rarely correct their observations, only in fact, when it's really off the mark. Once we work this as individuals, then I set up groups.  I ask that each group member speak up and share what they think.  I have them draw numbers to set up an order, and I think that this encourages "shy" folks --

For my humanities class, I ask students to consider six themes throughout the American Minorities course: individualism, civic responsibility, spirituality, community, family, and (I can't remember -- brain vacation). Each of these ideas allows them to focus when they write in their journals -- each week  they have to write at least 500 words about what we are learning, discussing, what has blown their minds.  Their reflections are quite intriguing.

I want to know what my students believe, practice in terms of logic. And this is where it gets interesting sometimes. As Bean says, "When students learn to wrestle with questions about purpose, audience, and genre, they develop a conceptual view of writing that has lifelong usefulness in any communicative context" (42). I do make them wrestle, ask questions, seek a tutor, converse about the assignment. And wrestle again. These methods prepared me well for transfer when I was an undergraduate, and I want to share that experience with my students.

Critical thinking is a process by which one may discern the quality of thought through discovery.  The discovery part is difficult -- it means that one must ask precise questions, discover problems, assess information, interpret (perhaps using abstract ideas), reasoning and testing (to overcome biases because we're ego- and socio-centric).

Metacognition: yes.  I love thinking about thinking, but labor-intensive describes this part of my teaching. I am enjoying Bean, and I'm rethinking a lot of what I've been doing.  I am also considering whether I've worked out the assignments well enough, but I know that if I continue to show students how to do this while we're in class together, more of them adapt and apply the model in their writing for our course.

Writing as Critical Thought

A Few Thoughts on My First Reading of Engaging Ideas

1)  On page 4 of the text, Bean shares Brookfield's understanding of critical thinking as being composed of two central activities:  "identifying and challenging assumptions and exploring alternative ways of thinking and acting."   Bean continues, on the same page, that writing should not be primarily seen as a communication skill, but rather as the process and product of critical thought.  The most successful writing assignments are problem-oriented.  That is, following Dewey who saw problems as "naturally motivating," Bean quotes Meyers who argues that teachers should begin class with problems.  Because problems are naturally motivating, intriguing, and attractive to us, they can be used to ground our students' engagment in the subject at hand.  Writing becomes the tool of thinking through the problem.  Writing is a tool of thought. 

I really appreciate the two central activities that Brookfield identifies as the essence of critical thought.  In the philosophy classes that I teach both of these activities are the activities that we are engaged in.  To identify a problem as a problem demands that students come to terms with the fact that they are indeed walking around with assumptions about reality, assumptions that frame their understanding of the world.  Recognizing a problem as a problem usually requires that students come to understand their assumptions as assumptions, and then to ask the questions that will allow them to come to terms with what is the case, and what really is at issue. 

I am reminded here of the Socratic method which involves first getting a person to recognize that he or she does not fully understand what it is he or she claims to know, then bringing them to a point of confusion because confusion is a naturally uncomfortable place and if students are then given the tools to work out of this confusion, they will. 

This is where I see how writing plays an essential role.  For me, writing requires a much deeper level of engagement with the material than talking does, or even reading because writing means that I have to process something for myself in order to be able to put it on paper.  But here there are specific types of writing that are more helpful than others.  So in my classes, what I find is very helpful to the students is to give a very structured assignment based on a problem.  For example, the problem of knowledge.  Here the assignment would require the student to first explain what is the problem, what is at issue.  Then the student needs to reconstruct a particular argument given that strives to resolve the problem.  And finally, the student must consider whether this argument does and explain why or why not and offer his or her own resolution. 

But the difficult part of this is sometimes recognizing the problem because this means that a student has to awaken their own consciousness enough to be able to view her own assumptions of reality.  In chapter 2, Bean discusses the French word, "brouillon," to place in disorder or to scramble.  I found this discussion both interesting and helpful.  It has made me rethink the idea of the rough draft as not the plan or roadmap, but the place for the confusion, the place for recognizing and re-cognizing the problem.  I have found that my most successful teaching occurs when students become intellectually stimulated.  This problem approach that Bean writes about in these first two chapters appears to be a great method to engage students, especially in terms of "ill-structured problems," problems that don't algorithmically yield one single right answer, but that demand that a student process it herself and then make her own argument.

Finally, the suggestions on revision have also caused me to rethink my assignments, to incorporate more creative time in the writing process and to emphasize the process and not just the product.

Further Thoughts on Finishing Chapter 2

I will try not to be as windy as my previous post. I continue to be extremely impressed by John Bean and his work. I think he is right on regarding college students' view of knowledge as being about the acquisition of correct information. They see knowledge in absolutist terms--that there is a right and wrong answer and don't see how knowledge is "dialogic, contingent, ambiguous, and tentative" (22). I think it is this place developmentally where students are that makes critical thinking oriented writing assignments so hard.

What I am taking away is the crucial importance of designing writing assignments (both formal and informal) that give students practice in confronting problems and interesting questions. Part of the fault of my approach last semester is that we dived into a formal writing assignment on a problem. What might have made it worse is that I gave them the freedom to choose a problem. Probably, I should have given them different level of problems to encounter and write about before such a large assignment that they then got to choose a problem for. But again, I face one of the paradoxes of writing courses--we do not necessarily have "disciplinary" content unless I have students write about writing. Usually, teachers will engage students in a theme or some other content and teach writing skills as students write about these themes. Writing is a funny subject to teach.

So #1 moral: design problem/question oriented writing assignments that lead students into active inquiry about subjects that may have no easy answer.

I particularly like the quote on page 23: "Good writing assignments produce exactly this kind of discomfort: the need to join, in a reasoned way, a conversation of differing voices."  I also like his summary of the way his History colleague presented assignments: "In all cases, the writing assignment is the same: 'Present an argument that supports, rejects, or modifies the given thesis, and support your response with factual evidence'" (31). I can say that these kinds of writing assignments have been the staple of my English 1302 classes, but not necessarily for my 1301 classes which have started with more expressivist writing.

Moral #2: encourage revision
I actually have worked hard to encourage revision in my classes, but students still don't always revise much. I really like his 15 suggestions for encouraging revision. I just want to know how to "seize" my students with questions.

As I in the more immediate sense work on preparing for Summer I and in the not so distant sense prepare for Fall, I want to think about how I will revamp/revise my assignments.