1 – In Portfolios in the
Writing Classroom: A Final Reflection Kathleen Yancey says that “teachers
will read not so much to see how their students are developing or to suggest
new directions, but to assess, to assign value (Purves 1984). In this
situation, teachers' reading of and response to text are directed in large
part, first, toward providing such an evaluation and, second, toward providing
a justification of the reading and of the assigned grade” (111). Do you agree
with her assessment of the effect that responding for evaluative purposes can
have on a teacher’s responsive priorities? If possible, draw on your own
experiences. If you think she is correct, do you think there are ways other
than portfolio grading that can prevent this?
2 – In her
pedagogical insight essay, Mary Joe Reif says that “Approaching writing through
a contextual genre theory consists of using genre as a lens for accessing,
understanding, and
writing in various situations and contexts. A genre approach to teaching
writing is careful not to treat genres as static forms or systems of
classification. Rather, students learn how to recognize
genres as rhetorical
responses to and reflections of the situations in which they are used” (159).
What are some of the approaches that you might take as a teacher to avoid teaching
genre as a static form? If possible, provide an example of a less that you
might employ.
Hi there!
ReplyDeleteI'm going to address your second question posed, on how to avoid teaching genre as simply a form. I was thinking, well if genre is a social reaction, not just the form for which a social response takes, then perhaps it would be useful to allow students to decide what type of response is most helpful for a prompt or research question. Project three seems to be a great place to start, because students are allowed to go beyond simply form, and decide what method is best for transferring their research information.
Also in response to #2: In order to avoid teaching genre as a static form we can show our students examples from popular culture on genres that break form. It can be things that they see all the time but maybe never considered before how it breaks genre conventions or a more obscure example they are experiencing for the first time. For example, in my internship we are going to watch a scene from the musical Hamilton to examine how it breaks musical theatre genre conventions.
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