Rebecca Black, Who?

I felt like things were clicking on Friday.  My 9th grade classes spent the day writing a literary analysis essay either on their own or with a partner.  We used Billy Collins' "Marginalia" as our text.  Students had already done a close reading of the poem on Thursday, so they were ready to go.

I was freed up to move around the room and read what students were writing and answer any questions they had.

The first few weeks of class were spent working alongside students as the expectations for close reading and writing were being established.  My approach to writing instruction has been to emphasize genre acquisition instead of just the format and style constraints of a type of writing.  Sometimes, showing students this difference in thinking about their writing is as simple as making sure to communicate the purpose behind all of the writing they are asked to do.

I stepped back during my last period to listen intently to the sounds of the room.  I was thrilled to hear students saying to their partners things like, "Make sure to summarize that part of the poem" and "The topic sentence needs to state the theme from the thesis."  I even noticed that my traditionally "distracted" students were more focused on Friday and were asking great questions about their drafts.  Maybe they just needed me to get out of the way and let them write.

I saw students who are beginning to understand the genre of literary analysis, but are also aware that it is just one genre of writing.

Newman and I recently had an article published in English Journal that attempts to make this kind of approach to writing instruction clear.  This is a word cloud that I made from the paper:

I like that students is the most mentioned word.  I like to think that is a reflection on my pedagogy.  Rhetorical situation also shows up a lot.  My students are thinking about their work as rhetorical.  They write according to their purpose, task and audience.

The literary analysis essays from Friday are not perfect.  But, there are some extremely strong essays.

My plan for Monday is to continue to emphasize the genre of literary analysis with them.  They will get a copy of a strong essay and--as a class--we will highlight the key features of the essay.  Then, students will take a look at their own essay to see if they are doing the same kinds of things with their own writing.

This will give us direction for revisions.