Entry #11: On Teaching in Cyberspace Pt. I

BLOG #11  Jeanne Nixt

 The paper on writing assignments helped to put me at ease; there are others out there for whom creating a meaningful assignment truly aligned with both teaching techniques and student levels of ability and engagement, is tough.  It also gave me some guide posts, some directional signs and referred back, for me at least, to the article on templates we read. Using the writing assignment guidelines can function like templates – as a starting place, a way to learn patterns, to ‘chunk’ the material.  If you’re not from the linguistics side of things, ‘chunking’ means that when you learn a chunk of something, you can apply it to something else.  For example, “How are you?” can become “Where is John?”  The chunk being the simple question format.  We are chunking, in this paper, the ways to create good writing assignments – the simple and not so simple system needed. 

The pyramid of student, teacher, audience was referenced for me in the way that the authors gave us three points to keep in mind when creating assignments, which were: Specify the content, suggest or identify some prewriting stimuli, give the paper some rhetorical context – give the students an audience.  This sounds so simple, but when you are deep into a lesson planning session it is sometimes hard to remember all of the relevant factors which seem so picayune on one hand, when you create an assignment. As a student, these details can be summed up in simple “W” questions, and feel inconsequential.  Who is reading my paper does not weigh on me the same way that What is my paper about, and How will it be graded, does.  These little details are yet are so monumental and can change the flavor and quality of our writing as students, and can allow for immense leadership as teachers.  We lead our students to finding their voices, leading them towards better writing, better product and a deeper confidence in themselves.