text: Back to F2020 Group Area
  WID 2021 Spring Institute Brainstorming Place
  Posted on October 30, 2020 November 17, 2020 by Jeffrey Gandell
  Ideas from Nov. 16 meeting: We did a poll of all the topics we've covered this semester, and these came out as the top three we wanted to possibly explore for the Spring Institute: Grading Active Learning & Critical Thinking Genre So, we're thinking of possibly doing a combination of all 3 of those. Some […]
  Week 10: Igniting an interest and a sense of meaning for research
  Posted on November 11, 2020 November 11, 2020 by Gisela Frias
  I signed up to write the blog for this week's readings because of my passion for research. As a geographer with a focus on Latin America, I associate research with an exciting process of knowledge generation that has allowed me to explore issues such as indigenous movements, community-based environmental decision making, and most recently campus sustainability. Through participatory methodologies, I have shared and constructed knowledge […]
  Week 9 – Grading, Evaluation Criteria and Souls of Teachers and Students II
  Posted on November 5, 2020 November 5, 2020 by Catherine Braithwaite
  Our readings this week offer us a nice continuum from last week's discussion on grading and evaluations. After reading Bean's two chapters on Developing and Applying Grading Criteria and Coaching the Writing Process last week, I was totally excited about the world of grading and ways to improve how we grade our students. Our discussion […]
  Grading, Evaluation Criteria and the Souls of Teachers and Students
  Posted on October 26, 2020 October 27, 2020 by Elliot Kerr
  I think a good leading question this week is one that Bean asks "What do teachers actually want when they ask students to write?" (p.268) Is it quality of ideas? Sentence structure? Organization and development? Creativity and/or voice? What I initially learned about grading, I learned as TA in grad school. The profs I TA'd […]
  Week 7 Scaffolding and Formal Assignment Design: Process and Product
  Posted on October 20, 2020 October 20, 2020 by Natalie Olanick
  I have read/looked at the Bean chapters very quickly so I could start the discussion for this week. I think as usual he is very thorough and has many examples of how the structure of an assignment(s) can help a student learn. In chapter 3, he examines and then includes the ideas of […]
  Week 6 A Genre-Based Approach to Writing Instruction
  Posted on October 5, 2020 October 5, 2020 by Natalie Olanick
  Thinking about the variety of approaches in writing that we are exploring this week, I feel moved to talk about happiness, satisfaction and confidence -as motiving forces and also as somethings to be discovered.
  I want to include a short text by Roland Barthes from his book The Pleasure of the Text. It is a short piece with the heading of Phrase/Sentence- "The pleasure of the sentence is to a high degree cultural. The artifact created by rhetors, grammarians, linguists, teacher, writer, parents-this artifact is mimicked in a more or less ludic manner; we are playing with an exceptional object, whose paradox has been articulated by linguistics: immutably structured and yet infinitely renewable: something like chess.
  Unless for some perverts the sentence is a body?" (51). I find Barthes' writing touch on the notions of emotional exchanges that are embedded in language and images. He makes us think of the structure of language as part of the content, meaning, message. I was working with a similar idea(s) when I made the print, that is the image for this week. The chart of writing over top of the knitting, is the flow chart from my masters' thesis. When the flow chart was made, it crossed my mind, the chart itself could become part of my practice- the spacing of the words and the lines that connecting them. So maybe fifteen year after the thesis was done and I am teaching art, I had an opportunity to use the flow chart in a print project. The work is not a specific genre, but it does take things out of context to suggested other possibilities.
  Chapter 4 in the Bean reading is true to his form, giving a clear list of the pros and cons of traditional essay writing and alternative genres. The one thing I found that was missing was the acknowledgment of enjoyment and the emotions on the part of the teacher and the students. The feelings of satisfaction and/or pride of doing their research and producing works.
  Charles Bazerman's writing made me start to think about the idea of the students as well as the teacher creating content for a class. That there could be the possibility of shared goals and outcomes, with students having a role in the defining of how information is shared and learned.
  I have just started to read Patrick Sullivan, Unessay…and it look rich with ideas. I will have more to say when we meet next week. My questions or thought for consideration are- How can students become part of the creation of content for a class? Again, the importance of feelings, emotions on the part of the teacher and the student in learning- something to talk about.
  A Proposal for Fellows Final Output
  Posted on October 2, 2020 October 2, 2020 by Jeffrey Gandell
  Each year, at the end of the Winter Semester (usually at the end of May or first week in June), WID has traditionally held the Spring Institute. The Spring Institute is usually a one or two day workshop that allows WID ideology and techniques to be accessible to wider set of Dawson faculty. Each Institute […]
  Week 5: The Politics of Literacy II: What is at Stake?
  Posted on September 29, 2020 September 29, 2020 by Elliot Kerr
  What we imagine and expect out of our students often does not connect with the reality we face in the classroom. We like to imagine thought provoking discussions, but in reality mitigate confusion, anxiety and boredom. I feel like the readings this week addressed the cultural divide that exists between some students, and the expectations […]
  Week 4: The Politics of Literacy I: Whose Language? Whose Grammar?
  Posted on September 21, 2020 September 21, 2020 by Eliza Wood
  There is so much to unpack from this week's readings. I am going to start with my thoughts on Bean chapter 5 which overlaps with my thoughts on Matsuda and Cox. Overall, I think Bean has some great points in this chapter. It is important to remember that over-correcting student errors can be demoralizing, and […]
  Week 3: Designing for Active Learning and Critical Thinking II
  Posted on September 16, 2020 September 16, 2020 by Eliza Wood
  Because our reading experiences will be different this week (considering all the optional chapters), I wanted to begin by creating some discussion surrounding the ten strategies for designing critical thinking tasks in Bean chapter 8. Which chapter 8 strategy or strategies inspired you to develop new assignments to foster critical thinking? What might those new […]