WeNeedInfoOnUKWritingInstruction < Kitchen

14 Nov 2005 - 16:11

desperately seeking UK technique

Now that I know we've got an Expository Writing Problem here in Irvington, I am desperately seeking information about British writing instruction.

How do they do it?

British subjects are the best writers in the English language, bar none. They're incredible.

back in the day

I taught writing for years, btw. I taught the Freshman Rhetoric course at the University of Iowa & later on a variant of that course Cal State Long Beach & UC Irvine. I also taught freshman writing to gifted 11 & 12-year olds for the Johns Hopkins GTY program. That was a blast.

In all of these courses I used the approach I was taught at the University of Iowa. Lou Kelly's book, From Diaglogue to Discourse: An open approach to competence and creativity explains it fairly well, IIRC.

Her title has probably raised some eyebrows around here. The Rhetoric Department was anchored by two diametrically opposed personalities, Lou Kelly, an avowed leftie-hippie with flowing gray hair whose emotions ran the gamut from furious to still-furious-again-today, and Donovan Ochs the Chair who, looking back, was the Sean Connery of Freshman Rhetoric.

So now your eyebrows are up and your heads are spinning—this is why you come here, right?! To read stuff straight out of left field!

Back to Don: I have no idea why I came up with 'Sean Connery,' except that Don was kind of....gruffly masculine, if you know what I mean, and you probably do. Dark brow, beard, direct gaze.

He was the bane of Lou Kelly's existence, and enough of a gentleman to hide the glaring fact that she was the bane of his. (The 'enough of a gentleman' part is what separates Don Ochs from Sean Connery.)

I once had to be Talked To by Don, because a black student had accused me of racism. She was a hostile, complaining sort of girl, and one day in class she'd sighed loudly and said, 'This is boring!'

I snapped right back at her. "Bored people are boring!" I said. That woke her up.

Next thing I knew I was in Don's office.

He fixed his direct gaze on me and somehow managed to convey the idea that I could figure out a way to be more tactful and more authoritative in my own classroom, and that was that.

So the department revolved around these two polar opposites, and yet both agreed on a specific approach to teaching freshman writing. This made their instruction of us novices incredibly powerful & compelling. It was another case of binocular vision, of seeing the same ideas from different vantage points & thus understanding them far better than I would have if I'd been taught by either Lou or Don alone.

back to the future

So while I could probably go out and teach a decent expository writing course today, teaching my own eye-rolling 11-year old is a different story.

The eye-rolling isn't the problem.

It's the afterschooling.

I need KUMON for expository writing; I need a systematic, structured program of supplemental writing instruction that can take place in 10 to 20 minutes a day.

And I don't have one.

I don't think the Brits have one, either, but I'd like to know how they do what they do.

If any of you knows anything at all about British writing instruction, please let us know.

Thanks.

brief report

[Judith] Koren describes how two British women she knows became effective essayists and speakers. “Each week, they’d had homework exercises like this: While preserving every essential point, reduce a 100-word essay to 50 words, then to 20, then to 10. Reduce 500 words to 50, 1,000 words to 100. Week after week, year after year. A grind? Sure it’s a grind. Who said literacy is easy? It takes practice. Few kids want to put in that amount of work. The schools have to demand it.” (By the way, anyone trained in this method should contact me immediately—I have a job waiting.)

And, from the same article:

In an article in The Executive Educator, an Israeli mother named Judith Koren who relocated her two children to one of the best public schools in Westchester County, New York, laments that “at the start of the U.S. school year, my son’s sixth-grade class was getting about an hour of homework a day. But after three months, a group of parents complained to the school that their children were overworked…. The teachers cut back on assignments.” She concludes that “no one expects very much of American kids,” and warns this is why U.S. students often test lower than foreign counterparts. Arriving from Israel, Koren reports, “my sixth-grader was a full year ahead of his classmates in mathematics, and my third-grader—who could barely read English on arrival—tested only six months below the class average.”

how Ben Franklin taught himself to write

Franklin was entirely self-taught.

He started his program of self-instruction by cutting apart other people's persuasive essays, and then trying to put the sentences & paragraphs back together in order, like a puzzle.

I think that's a fabulous technique. It's far harder to do than it sounds. Shortly after I read about Franklin's technique i accidentally jumbled up some passages from a science article I was cutting and pasting, and when I tried to put it back together I failed.

I did piece it together so that it flowed logically, but I didn't re-create the author's original order, which was superior to mine.

The summer before last I started experimenting with this technique with Christopher, but didn't get far. For one thing, it was pretty hard, and for another I was distracted by the other things we were doing, and didn't stick with it.

Science News for Kids

The couple of times I tried having Christopher assemble a cut-up essay, I used the articles from Science News for Kids, which are excellent. A terrific resource, some of the only decent nonfiction writing for grade school kids I've found on the web.

I may experiment with this approach again. (If you try it, use just one paragraph. It's far too confusing to use more than that.)

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Look here for syntax help.

I've heard good things about writing Strands, but I have no first hand experience.

-- KDeRosa - 14 Nov 2005

I've heard good things about Andrew Pudewa's Institute for Excellence in Writing http://www.writing-edu.com/index.phtml.

-- LoneRanger - 14 Nov 2005

"how Ben Frankling taught himself to write Frankling was entirely self-taught.

He started his program of self-instruction by cutting apart other people's persuasive essays, and then trying to put the sentences & paragraphs back together in order, like a puzzle."

This is kinda like what the Greeks called Progymnasmata. The authors of "Classical Writing" describe it as:

"a sequenced series of writing patterns or outlines, which show how to put thoughts together and arrange them for a given rhetorical purpose."

For more info:

http://home.att.net/~MikeJaqua/CW-what.html

-- NicksMama - 14 Nov 2005

Ken

I checked out Writing Strands again, but all of the levels are about literature—literature meaning fiction.

He has one book on expository writing, which he says is for use after the rest of the series is completed!

I'll have to look more closely at Pudewa. His web site is dense, so I didn't feel like wading through it yesterday.

-- CatherineJohnson - 04 Dec 2005

Nick's Mama

The classical writing book looks interesting.

The idea of starting with proverbs, and having kids 'exposit' them, strikes me as promising.

-- CatherineJohnson - 04 Dec 2005

This is proving more difficult than expected.

-- KDeRosa - 04 Dec 2005

Part of the problem is that, like New Math and Whole Language, there is a movement afoot to push what I consider middle school skills down into grade school, all with the assumption that grade school skills will just be learned by osmosis (or shoved onto the middle school teachers...again.) These are your two camps.

In the beginning this new way of teaching writing looks very impressive as little persuasive essays come home and state tests appear to improve. Like math, we didn't learn it that way and so what do we know? I believe this is what you would label teaching Whole to Parts.

The traditional way of learning writing (or math, for that matter) has always been Parts to Whole, starting with building blocks for younger children (handwriting, grammar, sentence structure, punctuation) and then moving to more complicated techniques requiring better critical thinking skills (notetaking, outlining, etc.)that actually match the child's growing opinions and ideas. This strikes me as common sense, but what do I know?

Whether this new way is really better in the long run is still unsure, from everything I've read, yet one can't help notice that something is wrong when college professors complain loudly about students' bad writing skills, and then even request a grammar section on the SATs.

SusanS - 04 Dec 2005

It was professors requesting a grammar section?

I didn't know that.

-- CatherineJohnson - 04 Dec 2005

That's what I read. Somewhere. I have no idea where. It was a while back.

-- SusanS - 05 Dec 2005

Susan,

I think you are absolutely right about Whole to Parts writing. My husband and I look at each other and ask, "did you ever have to write this much when you were in elementary school?" and the answer is always "no". I'm sure that part of our older boys' problem with writing is how much unsupervised writing they have had to do at school, day in and day out. They are not motivated to improve their handwriting or punctuation. It's all about volume.

I went to a writing workshop for parents at our elementary school last week. First, we shared with each other in small groups why we thought writing was important. Then, the workshop leader told us a story. We were told the story of two groups of pottery students. One group was told to make as many pots as they could in a period of time. The other group was told to make only perfect pots according to external criteria. And then we were asked to guess: which group of pottery students made the best pots at the end of the time period?

I felt sorry for the poor schmucks, mostly uninformed asian fathers, who raised their hands to vote for the group that was told to make perfect pots. They were set straight.

And then the workshop proceeded to explain state testing and rubrics, and teachers read some sample essays. I actually did get a nice little handbook for parents, $8.35, on specific questions to ask students regarding each of the 6+1 Writing Traits, in order to target improvement in each of the 6+1 Traits.

Anyhow, our experience with our older son convinced us to accelerate teaching our younger son to read and write prior to kindergarten, because the writing is incessant.

-- BeckyC - 05 Dec 2005

I felt sorry for the poor schmucks, mostly uninformed asian fathers, who raised their hands to vote for the group that was told to make perfect pots. They were set straight.

This is a classic.

We really are going to need a collection of KTM anecdotes at some point.

-- CatherineJohnson - 05 Dec 2005

I've got to debrief the guy Ed knows, who went to the major private school in Boston.

He said they began an intensive writing program in 6th grade and all of them were terrific writers by the time they got to college.

I need details.

-- CatherineJohnson - 05 Dec 2005

I would love to see handwriting practice in school.

-- CatherineJohnson - 05 Dec 2005

I would love to see handwriting practice in school.

That will never happen again. They do as little as possible. Kill and drill, dontcha' know.

I know plenty of teachers who want to do away with it altogether along with cursive because, well, technology does this all for us now. The same goes for math. We have calculators, we don't need all of those algorhithms.

I always ask them if it's a good idea to raise a generation unable to read the Declaration of Independence, or their grandparent's letters. Is it really a good idea to work for less literacy in changing times?

-- SusanS - 05 Dec 2005

That will never happen again. They do as little as possible. Kill and drill, dontcha' know.

We're loaded for bear at this point.

Christopher is being graded for neatness in two of his classes. English and social studies.

He was never taught neat handwriting, and he's not going to acquire neat handwriting without a great deal of practice. (I worked with him two summers ago on a handwriting program, which helped some, and his BRILLIANT 5th grade teacher improved his handwriting a lot. Now he's regressed.)

We are going to tell the school district that if 6th graders are to be graded on neatness, neatness needs to be taught in the earlier grades.

We're also asking the principal to switch him out of Mrs. Roth's class.

They won't do it, but the fact that we're going to press it is going to mean she gets some supervision.

-- CatherineJohnson - 05 Dec 2005

They do regress, don't they?

No one has expected my son to be neat or hardly even legible. I finally started making him rewrite things that were already graded. I also told him that if I couldn't read his assignment sheet, he'd be doing it again. He was horrified at this and said that his teacher doesn't care so why should I. I told him I am his teacher and that if they weren't going to have consistent standards then he'd have to get by me. He's somewhat used to this stance, so he just grumbled and rewrote some stuff. Only then does he improve.

I was also surprised that he didn't know what side was the front side of notebook paper. He had the holes on the right several times before I told him about this. He also seemed clueless about the concept of a margin and what the thin red line constituted. This is kind of basic as far as neatness goes, but no one has ever said a word to him about it.

I also mentioned that all things being equal, a legible essay or report will get a higher grade than a messy one. He was surprised by this notion, but immediately began to write nicer handwriting and better sentences to the stuff he had to turn in just to see if mom knew what she was talking about. Sure enough, his shocked teacher started writing comments about how much he was improving and how good some of his writings were. He was blown away by this.

-- SusanS - 05 Dec 2005

I finally started making him rewrite things that were already graded.

Oh Man, I feel so much better. I have taken to doing this.

The boys have to write so much in school, in all subject areas, and these sentences they write are not checked for grammar, punctuation, or legibility. The thinking is that: their thoughts are what counts so we don't want to grade them harshly on their writing, especially when the subject area is geography or history or science or math or character education or personal journaling. But not checking is killing them with kindness.

I get direct instructions from teachers, when I come in to help grade papers, to ignore everything but the kids' ideas. I'm supposed to wade through their writing and determine only if their ideas are correct.

But, wait a minute! Isn't that what multiple-choice quizzes and tests used to do in all these non-English subject areas? Test for content knowledge without the child having to write sentences and the teacher having to read sentences?

Imagine if Kumon gave kids worksheet after worksheet, but never checked them. Imagine if Kumon assumed the kids would be self-correcting. You'd want your money back! Even if they told you an emotionally affecting story about two groups of pottery students!

I think there is also a gender difference here. Too much of school is a chick flick.

-- BeckyC - 05 Dec 2005

BTW I'm glad you guys have tackled the issue of writing. Keep on keeping on.

Next up: piano lessons. Has constructivism infected music pedagogy?

-- BeckyC - 05 Dec 2005

Wasn't Suzuki violin a discovery method?

-- CatherineJohnson - 05 Dec 2005

Hey Becky,

Our kids may need therapy when they grow up due to their demanding moms, but at least they'll have a job. I can live with that.

I also agree on the gender thing. My son's greatest misery is when he is asked to explore feelings or journal in any way, or like Doug said, some open-ended "what did you do on summer vacation?" He just stares at the page. But if you ask him to tell the story of an exciting battle or even a football game he comes in with pages and pages of paragraphs, asking questions about how to make it better.

-- SusanS - 05 Dec 2005

Susan: high five Yes! A job!

We do sit down from time to time with the boys and explain that their dad has good job that pays well and it's all about Extracting Patterns From Numbers and Communicating the Results in a Productive Way. Dad's job is as hard for dad as Boys' afterschooling math is for boys. What they are doing is just as important for the future.

Catherine:

I know nothing about Suzuki violin or the Suzuki method, except I have old piano books that my husband's mother saved for him, including a couple of Suzuki books from the late 1960s. I'd be happy to search the books for a representative quote, if you'd like to start a new thread on the topic of teaching music.

Thanks!

-- BeckyC - 05 Dec 2005

Had I ever been asked to write a paper exploring the issue of why summer vacation was too short or too long, and asking me to explain and support my answer, I suspect the result would have been far better. I really think that most writing assignments for young people are dramatically underspecified.

The worst thing is that I think that teachers who make these assignments are trying to be kind. "I'll not try to limit their creativity too much", goes the thought. In my experience, it's when the limits are present that the creativity kicks in, not when they're absent.

-- DougSundseth - 05 Dec 2005

Here's everything I know about Suzuki for music (not much, but more than has been posted so far). Suzuki instruction involves teaching the child the correct posture for playing the instrument - posture is important. Suzuki also has children playing music before they can read music - they do this by listening to music and mimicking it. Your child can talk before they can read, so it's no problem for them to play music before they can read music (according to the Suzuki people). I am fairly certain that Suzuki instruction includes learning to read music, too.

The few detractors comments I've read are afraid that Suzuki will produce "robot" type players who are unable to interpret music. Sounds kind of like the same argument we get from fuzzy math lovers.

-- StephanieO - 05 Dec 2005

Both my daughters are Suzuki piano students. It's working well for us. Stephanie has it right as far as I can tell. They listen to songs a lot before they learn them. They work their way through the book of songs in order. We went to a Suzuki summer camp two years ago. It's cool that kids from all over know the same reportoire of songs and can play together. They certainly do learn to read music.

-- DanK - 05 Dec 2005

I'm back from taking the girls to their piano lessons.

I'm not an expert on Suzuki, but we are going through it. I don't know if our instructor is completely typical.

I think the other key aspect of Suzuki is that the parent is in the room taking notes during the lesson. Then, the parent is expected to coach the student as he/she practices throughout the week. Once every two weeks, there is a group lesson where all of the instructor's students get together to play for each other and engage in music games and exercises.

-- DanK - 06 Dec 2005

Thanks for the report!

My boys are taking piano lessons from a lady who uses an eclectic mix of books, and some computer work. The boys have done a lot of playing by ear, which is new to them and good for them. They have not naturally remembered melodies in the past, but it's fantastic to hear them pick out the tunes, missing and finding notes, as they practice each week.

That's one great thing about learning music -- you can hear the wrong notes immediately as you play them and then hunt around as necessary to play the correct note. Much different than spelling. If only mispelled words made a bad noise when the first incorrect letter was formed, we'd all become perfect spellers.

-- BeckyC - 06 Dec 2005

I was on my teaching rounds recently, and all the kids were doing only passable handwriting. Their teacher said "rewrite it". Most of them ignored her. I mentioned that in future years you'll lose marks for bad handwriting because if the teacher can't read it she isn't going to give you a good mark, even if your essay is the best one in the class. It's too much work, especially when you're an outside examiner marking final year exams, to try and decipher a essay and then grade.

-- SamanthaRawson - 06 Dec 2005

Really, it could be worse. Your child could be going to school in Baltimore.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/metro/20051205-102844-7332r.htm

-- NicksMama - 06 Dec 2005

Nick's Mama

That is just horrifying.

I'll get it put up front.

Unbelievable.

At least the State Superintendent is calling for an audit.

-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Dec 2005

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Title:	desperately seeking UK technique
TopicType:	WebLog
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desperately seeking UK technique

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