Questions:

Since I saw the syllabus in Comp Camp, I’ve been thinking about how I can add more reading into the curriculum. As we’ve gone along, I’ve refined my ideas significantly. At first, it was just a vague desire to assign/read/talk about useful and interesting writing. I wondered: where was the place for literature in this curriculum? Now that I’ve done some teaching and done some research, I have many more questions that I’d like to pursue. Some of which include:

• How do you go about teaching reading while staying centered on writing?
• How do you connect the act of reading to the act of writing in a systematic, useful way?
• Can you measure the results or impact of reading?
• Do reading different genres, or lengths, or the kinds of activities attached to reading make a difference in its efficacy?
• What about in the pleasure we can get from reading? Does assigning reading automatically make it unpleasant? Can you teach reading in a way that is both useful and enjoyable?
• Is there a point of diminishing returns? Too many activities? Too much reading?

I’m not sure yet how to refine this idea down into something concise and clear. I mainly just want to pursue how to teach reading in a way that strikes a balance between being fun and being useful in the context of becoming better writers.

I had another idea which could kind of work in conjunction with this idea too. After many of my students complained at midterms about the lack of impetus to excel, I thought about having one or to “A”s available per each WordPress assignment. After the assignment was turned in, we might anonymously vote on our favorite and I could give out 2 extension points to the top vote getters. This might encourage the class to read each other’s writing as well as create a reward for doing interesting, unique, provocative writing. The question then, I guess, is how best to work with peer review. Can we do it in a way that doesn’t hurt anyone’s feelings? Does it only create more trouble than it’s worth? Would I get genuinely better writing? Would I get bad writing winning the vote and being rewarded and how would I feel about that? Is there a better way to focus on and interact with our peers writing in meaningful ways?

These are just some of my questions…

Sources/Discourse:

There is quite a robust discourse around reading in the new world of writing-centered English. I perused and printed four articles read by my classmates (thanks for finding interesting articles y’all!) about reading and writing. There is so much more out there. I’m planning on tracking down Thomas Newkirk’s Slow Reading article too as I’ve seen it mentioned quite a few times. Here’s a preliminary list of sources:

Addison, Joanne, “Narrative As Method and Methodology in Socially Progressive Research.”

Carillo, Ellen C. “Engaging Sources through Reading-Writing Connections Across the Disciplines.” Across the Disciplines, vol. 13, no. 2, July 2016, p. 19.

Hallstead, Tracy, and Glenda Pritchett. “Reading: The Bridge to Everywhere.” Double Helix, vol. 1, 2013, pp. 1-12

Newkirk, Thomas. “The Case for Slow Reading.”

Salvatori, Mariolina. “Conversations with Texts: Reading in the Teaching of Composition” College English 58:4: 4401-454. Web.

Tremmel, Michelle. “Forget Formulas: Teaching Form through Function in Slow Writing and Reading as a Writer.” Composition Studies, vol. 45, no. 2, Fall 2017, pp. 113–129. Web.

Methods:

There are a number of ways to go about this research. My first thought was to assign a longer novel as a part of the curriculum, to kind of simmer in the background during all of the rest of the class. Every two or three weeks, we would check in with the novel, see where we were, have discussions about how it relates, what’s going on, etc. I would see if 1) students might enjoy reading an entertaining novel in a more relaxed format. And 2) if it had an noticeable effect on their writing.

There are number of problems with this idea though. First being that many students would simply not read, which would destroy our conversations. Those who did read might be embarrassed or unwilling to share. And there would be no way to accurately or even inaccurately measure the impact (if any).

My second thought, with help from a class-time brainstorming session, was to read two shorter novels, one fiction and the other nonfiction. I’d assign half the class the fiction first and the other half the nonfiction. At midterms, we would switch, the fiction group reading the nonfiction and vice versa. This would give me an opportunity to see if different kinds of writing led to different approaches as readers and different outcomes as writers.

A third thought, as I go along, is to assign a number of smaller readings instead of novel length works. We could split into groups like Jo, Destiny, and Megan showed us, giving each group a different genre. This would allow those small groups to share their annotation techniques and discuss the works together in a less formal, less scary way than full class discussion.

No matter what I choose, I see now that there must be real tangible work (assignments) attached to the readings. All of my research points to the value of annotation. So that’s where I would start. Our first text could be my syllabus. We could work as a class to develop annotation techniques like symbols (!=surprising ?=questions), note-taking, underlining, etc. We could try different ways of annotating, like the “yes, no, maybe” technique discussed by Hallstead and Pritchett, or some of the RAAW techniques. It might be a first day homework to come back with their syllabus marked up. I might have one or more come up to the doc cam and show how they marked. We could talk then about how annotations are a like a map of how you read. This might get us started on that metacognition piece of beginning to notice how and what we think or notice as we read.

Developing these annotation techniques early seems to be a key in training readers. Some of my early work as a teacher will be to try to convey the importance and usefulness of slow reading, annotation, and engaging with texts for something other than surface level memorization. I will have a challenge ahead of me too, because my class will have more reading than other English 101s and I want to be upfront about that. If I don’t sell my vision well, I may have everyone drop my class! Which, while potentially interesting from a research perspective, would be personally disappointing.

Transition from reading into writing also seems like a useful and important tool. For this, I love the idea of the Passage Based Paper (PBP). I want to teach my students to slow down, take the time to go deeper into small bits of text. And I want them to slow down with their own writing. To be better editors and better revisionists. We might even do some of this kind of work in class. For instance on a computer lab day, I could have them choose a paragraph of their current reading to respond to. We might do this a few times throughout the quarter. We could potentially begin with the Brandt, doing either an annotation assignment in lieu of the Says/Does (or tweaking the Says/Does to be more explicitly an annotation tool) and then adding a PBP either in-class or as homework. I imagine revisiting and growing these techniques as the quarter goes on, using them to engage with all the multiple genres we will encounter.

Finally, I would want my students to produce a piece of writing in the style of one of the works they read. This is how I would see if their reading has had an impact on them as writers. This is also how I hope to engage them on the concept of their own work being equal, existing alongside of, rather than subordinate to the things they’ve read. I love the idea of writing with great writers instead of doing imitation or analysis.

There are a lot of moving parts to this right now and a lot of refinement that still needs to be done. But I’m excited to create a plan and to try an execute it next quarter!