Noel's I Search Presentation

WHERE TEACHING TOOLS INTERSECT:
READING AND WRITING IN THE COMPOSITION CLASSROOM

FOUNDATIONS FOR A READING-COMPOSITION HEURISTIC

1) First Day of Class or Unit

a) Establish expectations for reading, writing and discussion activities in course

i) Readings will demonstrate various ways students can write in genre of particular unit, introduce students to new types of writing, and ask students to consider issues outside of their own experience (multicultural, feminist, race and class dynamics)
ii) Writing/homework assignments will ask students to consider what purposeful decisions author is making in his/her writing, familiarize students with issues of style, and offer students opportunity to experiment with things that other authors are doing in their own writing (take risks risk-free)
iii) Discussions will offer students opportunity to present critical ideas about text and opinions in safe space and will occur in small groups and instructor- and student-led large groups; bridges gap between individual and collective learning

b) If applicable, hand out activity guidelines (see Discussion Guidelines for example)

2) Suggested Guidelines for Choosing Readings

a) Select from both current genre that students are working in and from outside that genre

i) For example, pair a personal essay with a poem that has a personal narrative, an op=ed with satire, etc.

b) Select readings in same genre that demonstrate different ways genre can be written

i) Specifically in form – personal essays, for instance, can be written like traditional essays or journal entries

c) Select readings that challenge genre definition

i) Lyric essays (see Seneca Review) and prose poems (see Sentence or Great American Prose Poems) ask students to consider the lines between essay and poem or poem and fiction

d) Select multiculturally and politically dynamic readings, marginalized voices: welcome difficult discussions

i) Readings that tackle race, class and gender issues (Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs is a good example of feminist-race studies writing that remains accessible to first-year students)
ii) Readings that stand in political opposition to each other

3) Suggested Homework Assignments to Engage Reading with Writing
a) Short writing exercises directly corresponding to readings
i) Question 1: Ask students to identify key style moves in assigned text (frame as author’s purposeful decisions). Question 2: Ask students to write a short piece on a similar theme that engages observed style moves.

b) Variation of Laura Micciche’s commonplace book

c) Autobiographical criticism – short paper or presentation
i) Students pick writer that has had direct impact on their life and analyze/present author through lens of personal experience (i.e. I was introduced to Wilfred Owen, WWI poet, around the start of the Iraq war; his compassionate war poetry helped form/support my political opinions)

d) Student-led reading discussions
i) See Discussion Guidelines


Suggested Reading


Louise Rosenblatt, Literature as Exploration and The Reader, the Text, the Poem
Major texts in reading theory. The first presents Rosenblatt’s “transactional” theory of reading and the instructor’s vital role in reader response; the second elaborates on transactional theory and reader interpretation of text.
Juliana Spahr, Everybody’s Autonomy: Connective Reading and Collective Identity
Essays exploring poets and poetry that exhibit collective and connective models for reading.
Voices from the Middle 12.3 (2005)
Commemorating Louise Rosenblatt, providing an overview of her work, and discussing her impact on the composition studies community.