assignments ENGL301 Writing & The Teaching of Writing: Book Club
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LEE TORDA 310 Tillinghast Hall Bridgewater State University 508.531.2436 ltorda@bridgew.edu www.leetorda.com |
Fall 2018 Office Hours:
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OVERVIEW: This will be the major project of the first half of the semester and will, hopefully, begin to answer the question most often asked by new reading/writing teachers: if we aren’t teaching grammar, how do we teach writing? Book club is also a moment, in a class filled with theories of writing, to take a moment to understand theories of reading and the intimate connection between the two. This semester, you will be reading along with my first year students. Each book club will pair with a book club from my first year class. Your book club journals will consist of two parts: one part where you are making sense of the text and, secondly, a part where you help a less skilled reader make sense of it.
There are three book club choices for four groups:
Three Day Road, by Joseph Boyden
(2 groups of) Behold The Dreamers, by Imbolo Mbue
The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead
Click here to read brief descriptions for these three texts (NOTE: other texts that students did not select are also annotated here, but the above are the books they selected and so are the texts we'll read). I've placed an order in the bookstore, but it will be faster and probably cheaper to order them from Amazon. Each of the above titles are live links to the Amazon page for each.
We will use book clubs to delve in to the important connections between reading and writing. We will also consider the role conversation plays as well. Besides the journals, you will meet regularly in class with your small group of classmates to discuss what you think about the book and about it’s significance. At the end of the club, you will each write a brief analysis of the connections between reading, writing, and collaboration you made during the book club experience. Finally, your small group will do a brief presentation on your respective analysis.
WHAT TO DO DURING BOOK CLUB
At the start of each book club (held in class—see the syllabus for days), you will write a reading journal that will chronicle your process of making meaning as you read the book and a sort of letter to your fellow readers from ENGL 101E. Then you will meet in your small groups for a group discussion where you will talk about what you have read/written about.
Once you have finished the book, you will write, as an individual, a journal cover letter where you analyze the journal you've kept to see how you made meaning in the text, and how it felt to work with less skilled readers reading the same text, and to put into words your ideas of the connections between reading and writing and teaching reading and writing. To help you in this, you will have read some material on Reading Theory during the course of the book club.
WHAT TO DO DURING EACH BOOK CLUB
BOOK CLUB REFLECTION
When we are finished reading the book, you will write a two-page, typed, reflection that analyzes three things:
BOOK CLUB GROUP PRESENTATIONS
THE FORMAT
You have some leeway in how your organize your presentation and what you decide to spend more or less time on (which, if you are wondering, tops out at 6.20 minutes), but do include some of all of the following:
Why am I making you do this? I am attending a conference in Portugal from 29 October 2018 until 6 October 2018. This falls right in the middle of the semester. Normally, we would do these presentations in class. Since that will not happen, we need to develop an online format to do this work. Please check the syllabus for your respective class (301 Day or 301 Evening) to know when your project is due.
For a general introduction to Pecha Kucha and a sample presentation, click here .
To re-watch my Pecha Kucha on our class reading from Wolfgang Iser click here.
There are three book club choices for four groups:
Three Day Road, by Joseph Boyden
(2 groups of) Behold The Dreamers, by Imbolo Mbue
The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead
Click here to read brief descriptions for these three texts (NOTE: other texts that students did not select are also annotated here, but the above are the books they selected and so are the texts we'll read). I've placed an order in the bookstore, but it will be faster and probably cheaper to order them from Amazon. Each of the above titles are live links to the Amazon page for each.
We will use book clubs to delve in to the important connections between reading and writing. We will also consider the role conversation plays as well. Besides the journals, you will meet regularly in class with your small group of classmates to discuss what you think about the book and about it’s significance. At the end of the club, you will each write a brief analysis of the connections between reading, writing, and collaboration you made during the book club experience. Finally, your small group will do a brief presentation on your respective analysis.
WHAT TO DO DURING BOOK CLUB
At the start of each book club (held in class—see the syllabus for days), you will write a reading journal that will chronicle your process of making meaning as you read the book and a sort of letter to your fellow readers from ENGL 101E. Then you will meet in your small groups for a group discussion where you will talk about what you have read/written about.
Once you have finished the book, you will write, as an individual, a journal cover letter where you analyze the journal you've kept to see how you made meaning in the text, and how it felt to work with less skilled readers reading the same text, and to put into words your ideas of the connections between reading and writing and teaching reading and writing. To help you in this, you will have read some material on Reading Theory during the course of the book club.
WHAT TO DO DURING EACH BOOK CLUB
- Share your written responses.
- Just plain talk about the book. Figure out what you don’t understand. Try to come to a group consensus about what you think the book is all about. Find proof in the text to support it. Argue a little, in a spirited but civil kind of way. Try to enjoy yourselves.
- Write a group letter to ENGL101E counterpart book club (one letter per group). Consider what you know about reading and readers from the reading theory we will cover in class. Consider what you know from what I tell you about my students and what you can read about them from their journals. Finally, think about what you feel like you know, as a group, about the book as readers and think about what you might talk about, ask about, point out to help these ENGL 101E readers/writers be more fluent readers on their own.
BOOK CLUB REFLECTION
When we are finished reading the book, you will write a two-page, typed, reflection that analyzes three things:
- what you noticed about your own set of reading practices, again, considering the supplementary reading we’ll have discussed;
- what role writing played in either of the above;
- what you noticed about conversation and your group experience and your understanding of the text.
- what you noticed about what it takes to help other readers, potentially less skilled reader, understand a text--and, reciprocally, how working with these other readers affected your own reading process.
BOOK CLUB GROUP PRESENTATIONS
THE FORMAT
- A Pecha Kucha requires 20 slides at 20 seconds per slide. This is non-negotiable. It is like saying you need to write a 10 page paper, not a 9 page paper and not an 11 page paper, but a 10 page paper.
- You will locate or produce 20 images, one per slide. There is some wiggle room here, as you’ll see in any examples you check out. You might repeat images. You might add to an image for a second 20 seconds on the same image.
- Using the “RECORD SLIDE SHOW” feature in PowerPoint, which is located on the “SLIDE SHOW” tab, you will actually record your twenty, 20 second scripts for each of your slides.
- If you are wondering, this means you are recording a 6 minute, 20 second presentation.
- You will work in your book club groups to complete this project. You don’t need to meet to do it. You could do this largely online. YOU CAN’T USE THE GOOGLE DOCS VERSION OF POWERPOINT TO DO THIS ASSIGNMENT. It won’t work because you can’t record in the google.doc version. I will give you time in class on 22 October 2018 to do as much of the physical work on this project as possible. I'll be here to help you.
- To use the template I made for your Pecha Kucha and for a copy of the instructions I passed out in class on how to record your Pecha Kucha script, click here.
- I will send you an invitation and a link to dropbox (if you don't already have it) and you will join a team folder. You'll upload your presentation there and you will be able to watch the presentations there. You will respond in your classes respective all class discussion board after watching the presentations for your class.
You have some leeway in how your organize your presentation and what you decide to spend more or less time on (which, if you are wondering, tops out at 6.20 minutes), but do include some of all of the following:
- A short, short, short summary of the text you read
- A sample analysis--like any English major would do, do a reading of this text as a literary text
- Talk about what the communications with the ENGL 101E students said to you about how less-skilled readers dealt with this text.
- Talk about how you saw the theorists and their ideas (Rose, Smith, Weaver, Rosenblatt, Iser, Freire) playing out in your own reading and the reading of your 101E counterparts.
- Talk about what you as a more skilled reader/teacher of a text would suggest for how to help readers of this particular text do a stronger (more balanced) reading).
Why am I making you do this? I am attending a conference in Portugal from 29 October 2018 until 6 October 2018. This falls right in the middle of the semester. Normally, we would do these presentations in class. Since that will not happen, we need to develop an online format to do this work. Please check the syllabus for your respective class (301 Day or 301 Evening) to know when your project is due.
For a general introduction to Pecha Kucha and a sample presentation, click here .
To re-watch my Pecha Kucha on our class reading from Wolfgang Iser click here.