Computers as Writing Instructors
Charles Nelson’s latest post is a great synthesis of information on the pros and cons of writing instruction on computers. Nelson is an assistant professor of ESL writing at Kean University in Union, New Jersey.
The Kecoughtan High School Writing Tutorial — developed by assistant principal Tiffany Sanzo of the Hampton, Virginia, school — is a very informative writing-process tutorial.
I especially like the “Annotating the Prompt” page, which goes step by step through analyzing and marking a writing prompt. The tutorial also features very detailed information on writing introductions, topic sentences, body paragraphs, and conclusions. All information is supported with graphic examples.
On the down side, I experienced a very annoying plugin issue with every page of the tutorial. The Quicktime audio playback plugin used on each page is apparently not compatible with the latest version of Firefox.
Because of this accessibility problem, every page downloaded slowly, I got an ugly error bar across the top of every page asking me to install something my browser considered “unknown,” and I was not able to experience the entire tutorial with audio, as intended.
None of this occurred in Internet Explorer.
Updates
In 1998, I was experiencing my first year of teaching. It was the proverbial uphill battle, an excruciatingly tiring time that seemed to last a lifetime. And, as most of those really tough experiences are, it was character-building. Once I’d made it through, I was a better person for having done it.
During that year (and several years previous and following), I was a member of a small poetry group made up of Averett family: students, alumni, and faculty. We met about once a month in one of our homes to read and critique each other’s poetry. It was a great honor to be involved (my creative writing professor was a member!), and I learned so much from it.
On poetry nights, we were always supposed to bring in many copies of two poems we’d been working on. I, as a last-minute person, was always pulling something together minutes before I had to be there, and often, it really worked magic. I have always written in pieces: images, sounds, cool wordings, ideas I’d like to work on.
So there I’d be, flipping through my many journals, grabbing at the words that stuck out at me. Sometimes, my poems would essentially be tapestries of ideas that hadn’t seemed to relate until that last-minute session. Other times, they would stem from one image or idea and grow and bloom into something right then and there, before my eyes, through me.
This poem was one of the latter. I’d come home from school, late again and completely exhausted, having spent the 30-minute ride home spinning my ideas for something to take to my meeting. I kissed the family and took off to the basement and my word processor. (For you young people: That’s sort of like a computer, but not…)
I started turning pages of my journals, and an exercise I’d done a year or so before from one of my creative writing books caught my eye. I’d listed nouns (one of them was mountain) and listed verbs (one of them was laugh), and then I’d mixed them up into unusual combinations. One of those was “mountain laughs.”
I pictured a mountain laughing and started thinking about why a mountain would laugh. It reminded me of the times I’d been hiking. I love nature and I love to hike. But I always end up getting out of breath and aching and having doubts about whether or not I can make it — even though underneath all of my insecurities, I KNOW I can do whatever I put my mind to. Regardless, the doubts crop up, and I have to squash each one.
So, in my mind, the mountain became that self-doubt (with an evil-sounding Schwarzenegger-ish accent, maybe): Hahaha! You think you can climb me! You are so weak and out-of-shape! You stink of fear! I will crush you! You might as well turn back now! And, in my mind, that hike wasn’t just about the literal hike up the literal mountain, but the humongous mountains I was climbing professionally and personally.
Once I had that image, it’s like the rest just flowed right out of me.
The Hike
When the mountain laughs,
maybe it’s time to trek down a bit,
blisters and aches.It’s easier going
where you’ve already been.The snow’s no more shallow,
no less in your face;
the sun’s glare, no less blinding.But the holes you trampled
on your first go up
remain to guide you.So get yourself to a lower altitude,
where you can breathe a little easier.But don’t sit down.
Don’t loosen your boots.
Don’t turn your back
even for a second.Wait for the mountain
Originally published in The Ninety-Eight Poets, edited by W. Scott. © 2007 Jo R. Hawke
to nod off again.
And get back at it.
I think now, ten years later, that those “holes you trampled on your first go up” don’t always “remain to guide you.” How could they, when the snow’s so heavy it’s “in your face”? Those holes get covered up, probably, filled in by the snow as footprints will.
But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. After you rest a little and squash those doubts about making it up (when the mountain has gone back to sleep), you’ll make a new way, a better way up that mountain because of having gone before.
And this time, once you get up as far as you got the last time, you’ll be in a better place to go on for having gone that different way.
“Okay,” I told my advanced tenth-grade English students when class began, “take out a sheet of paper and a pen. We’re having a test!”
I smiled around the classroom at the agape mouths and wide eyes.
“A test?” a few managed to ask nervously. “What’s it on?”
I ignored the questions and took on that serious look that means do-what-I-said-now.
“On your paper, I want you to number to ten and write the correct answer for each.”
They looked around the room, and I tilted my head, “This is an individual activity.”
Hands shot into the air. Some faces were puzzled; others were pouting; still others had reached the boiling point.
“How are we supposed to know what to do?” was the general consensus.
This was the beginning of my first lesson on the SOL Writing Domains, and it definitely got my students’ attention! Afterward, they were in agreement that learning what any test constitutes and how you’ll be evaluated on it is a big part of your success.
For those of you not familiar with this concept, the three domains (Composing, Written Expression, and Usage and Mechanics) are used by the state of Virginia to evaluate the Direct Writing portion of the writing SOL test. Here’s a breakdown of the domains and the features that define them:
The Virginia Standards of Learning Writing Domains
- Composing
- Central idea
- Elaboration
- Organization
- Unity
- Written Expression
- Vivid and precise vocabulary
- Selected information
- Voice
- Tone
- Sentence variety
- Usage & Mechanics
- Sentence formation
- Standard word order
- Completeness
- No enjambments
- Standard coordination
- Usage
- Inflection
- Agreement
- Conventions
- Word meaning
- Mechanics
- Formatting
- Spelling
- Standard capitalization
- End punctuation
- Internal punctuation
The direct writing portion is one of two that make up the writing SOL test (the other is multiple-choice), and during it, students are given a writing prompt on which to write. Each essay is then evaluated by at least two people across the state in each of the three domains, according to the following scale:
4 = The writer demonstrates consistent, though not necessarily perfect, control of almost all the domain’s features.
3 = The writer demonstrates reasonable, but not consistent, control of most of the domain’s features indicating some weakness in the domain.
2 = The writer demonstrates enough inconsistent control of several of the domain’s features indicating some weakness in the domain.
1 = The writer demonstrates little or no control of most of the domain’s features.
from Virginia SOL Assessment: End-of-Course Writing Test Blueprint
The readers read; then, the readers score; then, the scores form a mixture that determines whether a student graduates or not. (You can find the specific recipe in the Blueprint.)
This is serious stuff. Students enrolled in English 11 must not only pass the course itself, but also both the Writing SOL and the Reading, Literature, and Research SOL. Or they take it over and over until they do. Or they don’t graduate.
When I started teaching at GW three years ago, the head of the English department sat me and the two other “new” English teachers down for a session on teaching the domains. We went through the meanings of the three domains and their features and evaluated several student writings using the domains as a rubric.
I was no stranger to the domains when I went to GW. I remember sitting in Laurel Park High School’s library (still there, but now a middle school) poring over piles of paperwork that constituted the beginnings of the state’s SOL testing. That was probably nine or ten years ago, and though I’d used my understanding of the domains in teaching writing, I’d never taught them to my students. Live and learn!
Now, I begin every class with a detailed discussion of the writing domains and the features that define them. I found a great resource on the Virginia Department of Education’s website called “The Virginia SOL Writing Tests: A Teacher’s Resource Notebook for Enhancing Writing Instruction and Improving Scores on the State Assessments” that helped describe the domains and features in detail; I used it to create my SOL Writing Domains Notes.
I made a transparency out of my notes; then, I took all the “meat” out of it and made an incomplete outline I call SOL Writing Domains Student Notes. So while we’re discussing the domains and features, students are filling in the blanks on their sheets from the notes on the overhead, as well as adding information in the margins as directed. (We “review” a lot of extra grammar and usage, especially.)
Once I feel like everyone understands the information, we move on to using it — in evaluating student writing samples using first a basic, numbers-only rubric (SOL Writing Domains Basic Rubrics), and then, a more detailed one (SOL Writing Domains Detailed Rubrics) that I designed incorporating the three domains and their features. (I don’t have any of the writing samples in digital form, unfortunately.)
I usually evaluate a few writing samples with my students first, using the rubrics. This modeling has been extremely helpful. Then, I have them work in groups to do the same. Sometimes, I give extra individual practice, also.
Before we move on, students complete a review on the information (SOL Writing Domains Review) and take a test, also (not available for download – but let me know if you’d like a copy).
My next stop on the writing train is the essay-writing process, during which I continuously refer to those domains and features, pointing out how they work together and where they fit. This unit culminates with their writing an essay of their own from a prompt. Once their essays are finished, I have them use those same rubrics to evaluate each other’s papers; we continue this peer evaluation throughout the course. We also use these strategies in evaluating professional writing from their textbook and from newspapers.
The bottom line here is that learning how their essays will be evaluated — via understanding these domains and features — helps students to not only write better, but to understand how and why they write better. This helps improve success rates with not only the essay part of the SOL, but also the multiple-choice section! So in this case, at least, better test-takers are better all around.
If you’ve used other methods of teaching students how to evaluate their own and others’ writing, please let me know! Contact me through this site or e-mail me at mrshawke(at)gmail.com. :)
Available Teaching Materials
Six words, that is. I ran across an old Wired Magazine article with six-word “stories” by science fiction, horror, and fantasy writers. A few of my favorites:
“Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time”
Alan Moore
“We kissed. She melted. Mop please!”
James Patrick Kelly
“The baby’s blood type? Human, mostly.”
Orson Scott Card
According to the article, the idea came from the six-word story Ernest Hemingway once wrote and called his best work:
“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
I think this would make for some interesting assignments in English class. Some possibilities:
Update: 4/28/08
Last week, I used this as a journal topic. I gave students a number of examples, including the ones listed here, and asked them to try to come up with their own. Quite a few coming soon! For now, here are some I came up with to use as examples.
This one reminds me of a much-needed vacation gone terribly wrong:
“Weekend beach trip rained out. Alas!”
The next two summarize two of the stories that we were reading at the time.
My tenth-graders had just read “The Cabuliwallah” by Rabindranath Tagore:
“Fruit seller missed daughter, found substitute.”
And my eleventh-graders had just read the Onondaga-Northeast Woodlands creation myth, “The Earth on Turtle’s Back”:
“Woman fell. Turtle sacrificed. Earth began.”
Update: 4/29/08
Here are some of eleventh-grader Drew’s six-word sentences. He wrote thirty of them as a page of his journaling last week. The first one is probably my favorite.
“New job. No deodorant. Old job.”
“Edgar Allan Poe. Groundbreaking American Writer.”
“Bad hair. No shower. Bad day.”
“Heart beating. Sudden smack. New life.”
“Sleeping soundly. Dog barks. Wake up.”
This one, Drew said, is about 9/11/2001:
“Plane crash. Few survivors. Long war.”
His description of the next: “Keep on walking. Let no one know how you feel, even though it is easy to see.”
“Heart on my sleeve, I walk.”
If you have any six-word sentences you’d like to add, let me know
I contributed this haiku to the Day in a Sentence series, which is now hosted by Kevin at Kevin’s Meandering Mind.
We’re writing away.
SOLs are coming up.
Oh, to know the prompt.
And yes, we are writing. My eleventh-graders will be taking the writing portions of their end-of-course SOL tests the first week of March, and that’s all we’ve been focusing on so far. First, I had them take last year’s released multiple-choice test, which has questions about the writing process. Then, I walked them through writing an essay step-by-step, from analyzing a prompt to four parts of prewriting to publishing a final draft.
This past week, we discussed the Writing Domains, which detail the way in which their prompt-inspired essay will be graded, and they will be taking a test on the domains this week. I will be passing back their essays this week and using a rules-based correction method with them. (I’ll go into further detail on this method soon.)
There’s always so much to do and so little time in which to do it all. Of course, they’re really being tested on what they’ve learned since their last writing SOLs, in eighth grade, but we all know that their scores will reflect on me, regardless. ;)
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