Week+6

The first half of class we had a chance to share our writing autobiographies with our classmates. Our sharing of our writing was in the form of a pass around reading, and students were only allowed to give positive feedback to their classmates' final drafts. The second half of class we started our discussion of designing effective writing assignments as we prepare to create a writing assignment for //To Kill a Mockingbird// for next week. Our discussion will continue next week as we will look specifically at creating writing assignments for responding to literature.
 * __Week 6__**

__**Qualities of Effective Writing Assignments**__:
 * Useful and interesting to students
 * One concise question that students should respond to
 * A rationale for completing the assignment
 * Anticipate students' questions and provide answers to these questions on the assignment sheet
 * Provide student choice
 * Clear, explicit, and thorough
 * Cognitively challenging
 * Steps that scaffold student learning

It is important to model the type of reading and response we want our students to do, showing them the thought processes of an experienced reader and the types of conversations experienced readers have with texts. We also can draw on the ideas and suggestions of reading specialists. For example, we can model and teach different reading strategies such as making predictions; questioning; making connections -- text to self, text to text, text to world; and using textual evidence. Another suggestion is to start small and work with a small piece of text before tackling a larger text for analysis.
 * __Student-Generated Questions in Response to Soven and Bomer Chapters for This Week__**:
 * //How can we encourage reluctant students to think subjectively? How can we get students "to respond as a human being" to literature when their genuine responses and feelings have been consistently squelched by over seven plus years of formal schooling// (Bomer, p. 103)?
 * //How can we get students who are very busy to take the time and energy to invest themselves in the literature?//
 * //How can we teach students to converse// //with literature rather than write// //about literature? How can we get students to feel that they are capable of answering back to a text?//
 * //What are some of the informal writing assignments a teacher could assign that would force a student to respond in all three of the dimensions proposed by Hillocks// (e.g. cognitive, affective, aesthetic)?
 * //On page 159 of Soven, does Hillocks mean that we cannot have a genuine or legitimate aesthetic response without both an affective and cognitive response? Are both necessary for a true aesthetic response//?
 * //On page 160 of Soven, what are the distinctions/differences between the literal level and inferential level of comprehension//?
 * //On page 163 of Soven, Rosenblatt suggests a lot of questions to help students to focus initially on themselves and their reactions to a text. Can any questions be eliminated? Combined? How could these questions be used in the classroom?//
 * //Soven argues, "Moving from 'response to analysis without denying the validity of initial responses' (Probst 63) seems to engage students more successfully than starting off with an analysis paper" (p. 165). How do we get students to make the move? It often seems like they become so engaged in personal story-telling that they struggle to bring it back to the text.//