Let’s Talk it out: a Social Approach to Writing and Learning
I observed Ms. P's [1] English Composition class of 22 students for three different days. The classroom was in _____, which is a triangular corner room, and almost all of the chairs were filled, so the class was crowded into a small space and students were seated close together. The first day students posed questions for their inquiry projects and watched the end of a movie, the Truman Show. The second day the class discussed two articles from their texts and also gave midterm evaluations for the teacher. The third day (after Spring Break), genre was discussed using music. Additionally, she used Elvis as a main point for comparison to link back to the previous lesson on Truman. I also gathered information in two interviews, one before the observations, and another as a debriefing after the observations.
The semester’s theme is the American Dream and clearly the students are being asked to observe themselves as Americans in a critical way. The assignments that were discussed were a movie review and the inquiry project. The inquiry project included several parts: the question (the brainstorming), the proposal, and the annotated bibliography. She did not mention the final stage of the inquiry project, but did give written information about it on Moodle.
Her class is fast paced and interactive. She incorporates technology into her classroom and is well prepared with prompts, music clips, movie clips, and assignment sheets on Moodle. She incorporates a lot of informal collaborative learning activities as well to keep the students engaged. They use daybooks and write in them almost everyday to respond to specific prompts that she gives. Additionally, she is open with her students about feedback and grading. The students were asked to respond to a midterm evaluation of the teacher on the same day that they received their own midterm grades, showing that she has a reflective teaching practice.
Ms. R’s theory of writing, as implied in her teaching practice and discussed in her interview, follows a social constructivist model. She is currently doing research on power in the classroom. Specifically, she is looking at writing teachers’ power in a critical way, and also trying to determine how much agency they have in the classroom. Also, she is studying how much agency first year writing teachers think they have in relation to the university. To her, agency deals with “decision making and being able to articulate why you are doing what you are doing” [as a teacher]. The content of her classroom usually deals with themes like class and socio-economic status, as well as the role of education and technology in developing good writers. Also she started her class with the conversation discussing what writing is. She said, “A lot of students have an aversion to writing, because it’s like, here’s the five paragraph model, follow this to pass the test.” She wants to give students the opportunity to write creatively and in different contexts. Therefore, I deduced that, not only is she interested in writing teacher agency within an institution, but also student writer agency as well. Her classroom follows this pedagogy in that it is student centered and not teacher centered. Lastly, she has a philosophy about writing that one should “talk it out” and this belief manifests itself in the structure and content of the classroom.
Classroom Management and Procedures:
From the very first class I observed, it was clear that students were accustomed to Ms. P's classroom procedures and comfortable with her interactive classroom discussion style. Because she told me that the students were a little talkative in the pre-observation interview, I was looking for ways she managed the class.
One typical procedure involves writing in the daybook journals to get the classroom started. Then she usually introduces the topic and has organized groups do critical reading and discussion about a topic. She collects student responses (either verbally or in writing on the board) and then uses the small group discussions to have a larger discussion with the class (to “go over” the answers that they found). In the first class, she did not follow this procedure, because more than half of the class time was used for watching the end of a movie, The Truman Show, but during the other two classes she followed this procedure.
Ms. P is reflective about her teaching practice and she evaluates herself mid-semester. She also is open to students when communicating with them about grades and participation, which was evident when she gave students a midterm evaluation. At the beginning of class on March 1st, she passed out the mid-term evaluation (of the class), she told them that it was anonymous and to take it seriously when filling it out. Here were the questions she asked them:
1. What was your favorite activity/discussion in class so far this semester? Why?
2. What was your least favorite activity/discussion in class so far this semester? Why?
3. What specific skills would you like to work on or need help with in this class?
4. How would you character this class?
5. How would you improve this course?
This was a very useful way for her to evaluate her students’ progress in the class and her effectiveness as a teacher without looking at specific students. After the observations, I asked Ms. P about these evaluations, and students were generally happy with the class, although some complained about having too much work. Most of the students like the Truman show and music and media activities, but many were not fond of the Conflict Project from the beginning of the semester. Ms. P believes this is because the Conflict Project may have been “too personal,” because it made students think about their lives from a historic perspective, which could be a little painful. Surprisingly, she reported that students were getting tired of group work, which I will discuss later in the ethnography.
At the end of the same class, she passed out the midterm student evaluations (grades). She reminded them that they had three homework assignments, a conflict project, and ten points as a participation grade. She said the participation grade could go up or down. Then she said, “Let’s reiterate: the class communication goals are: to be here on time; be productive; be an active learner (not on your cell or on Facebook).” She warned them that their usage of electronic devices would be accounted for in the participation grade, and that she noticed them. She had also told me in the interview that she had decided not to comment daily on the use of electronic devices (for example: cell phones) in class because she did not want to disrupt her lesson. However, she admitted that texting in class really bothered her, and she addressed this issue by noting this behavior in the participation grade. She told her class that it would be hard to get the full ten points. Later she told me that she “very rarely” gave ten full points for participation. She noted that absences and tardies were on the evaluation too.
I could tell from the first day that she was strict about tardies because one student came late why they were watching the movie. Ms. P looked at the student with raised eyebrows and a reprimanding expression and then looked down at her watch. The student acted like she wanted to explain and Ms. P told her to explain it (the tardiness) to her at the end of class. Ms. P was playful but firm, showing that she noticed the student’s tardiness, but was not overly judgmental. Also, requesting a conversation after class gave the student a chance to explain herself. This specific interaction is a good example of how Ms. P manages behaviors in the classroom. She uses non-verbal cues to express her expectations. Her interaction is friendly, but also firm.
Additionally, she has other verbal cues to get students to stop talking. During her animated classroom discussions, sometimes several students give oral responses (to her) at once, while sidebar conversations break out. At one time on March 13, about five people were talking at once when she was eliciting responses from the class. She said, “alright, alright; ok, ok, let’s look at…” and could not hold the class's attention. As suggested by Tanya Stivers, the repeated use of multiple sayings indicates that a speaker is trying to address an issue from before or go back to the larger context[2]. In other words, it was like Ms. Randle was saying, wait, let’s back up. However, the students kept talking and interrupting each other so she said, “Time out!” After this all voices were silent and she continued on in her lecture using a Power Point presentation. She then went back into class discussion. The flow of her class is smooth, and she transitions from lecture to discussion about every three to five minutes, so students are never given a long lecture without a chance to respond.
She uses PowerPoint to structure her lessons and often projects assignments on the board. She usually discusses homework and writing assignments in detail to make sure students understand the instructions. She often reminds students of assignments that are due at the beginning and at the end of each class, giving a specific deadline. For example she said on March 13th, “Remember your proposals are due by eight on Moodle.”
She sometimes uses the traditional Initiate, Respond, Evaluate (IRE) process that is common in educational discourse. However, her evaluations are often used to elaborate on a students comment or connect it to another comment. She does not usually critique a response in a critical way; if the response is incorrect or irrelevant, she sometimes avoids evaluation, and goes directly into another question (initiating). When I asked her about her verbal discussion patterns, she told me that she does not like to evaluate, but rather extend the conversation and to further probe the student’s answer. Therefore, this habit is a conscious and intentional pattern. Sometimes she has a dialogue with students in front of the whole class to model the thinking process, where she breaks out of the IRE pattern. This occurred between Ms. P and S on March 1st:
S raised her hand and called out, “I don’t know about my topic…?”
Ms. P said, “Well let’s talk it out.”
S asked, “Why do people curse?...I don’t know about it…”
Ms. R, “You’re asking about social rules…when it’s appropriate?
S, “It seems like everybody curses nowadays—I wanna know why.”
Ms. P then directed her to free-write a little bit to “talk it out” with herself on the page, or to talk it out with friends and then find research to back up her ideas. I heard Ms. P use the words “talk it out” about writing at least five times during the course of the observations, which shows how much she values discussion during the writing process, and writing as a social process that requires or mimics talking. S seemed satisfied with the suggestion and said, “OK.”
During group work on several occasions, Ms. P told everyone to take notes during the group discussion. On March 1st, during group work, most students had not brought their books and so Ms. P had to adapt to accommodate to the lack of resources. Instead of immediately discussing “what they had read,” (which most had not read) they were instructed to reread the articles out loud in a group and then discuss them. There was about one book per group. During discussion time, I heard Ms. P tell a group to focus on the images. A student said, “I see the culture part…” Ms. P joked with her, “You get my book with the notes in it <<laugh>> so that helps you a little bit…” because she had loaned her own book to one group. In another group, I heard a classmate say, “Be sure you write that down…oh yeah, we’re all supposed to write.” Therefore, I knew that her often repeated instructions to “write it down” had actually been heard and were being followed.
I was surprised that so many students had not brought their books or done the reading. I asked Ms. Randle what she thought about that. That activity that she selected was not a typical procedure, as she mostly just has class discussions about a reading. However, this was created as a sort of “test” to gauge whether or not the students were reading and were prepared for class. Therefore, most students failed the “test.” She adapted quickly to student’s lack of preparation, and this was probably because she expected it. She wanted to make a point to the students. Later, after the observations, she told me that she had a serious talk with the class about their failure to keep up with their homework and responsibilities outside of class. As I was observing, she made many reminders to students about upcoming due dates. Most of her reminders were made in a serious tone of voice, as if to give a warning. It seemed like she anticipated that many students would not turn their work in on time, and so she was sure to give them ample advance notice.
Also, during group work, Ms. P circulated around the room and observed students’ participation in groups. For example, on March 1st, she went around and asked each group, “How we doing?” to gauge how much more time they would need to complete the task. She asked each group individually, “I’ll give you 15 more minutes, is that good?” She also told each group that if they finished they needed to start talking with their groups about their inquiry projects to get more ideas. This helped to keep the class moving and give the students an opportunity to “talk out” their writing with others. Circulating in the classroom was an important tool for keeping students engaged in groups.
Promoting Student Engagement through Talk:
Student engagement is crucial for learning, and Ms. P’s class is highly engaged and interactive. She uses collaborative learning, a fast pace, and incorporates multiple media in order to engage her learners.
During class time I observed the behaviors of students in order determine the amount of engagement in writing and discussion. On February 28th, Ms. P prompted the students to pose questions about their inquiry projects in their day books in order to “talk it out” on the page: “Where are you at? How are you feeling about it?” T, a student sitting near me, asked others about the spelling of the word actualization, and others in the back corner were talking it out with each other in order to clarify the assignment. Ms. P did not redirect students to their daybooks, because they were on task (even though they had not started writing). After about three minutes of settling down, the class was silent as students wrote in their daybooks. All students around me wrote about half a page, but T was still stuck on the word actualization. What was notable here was that students were so accustomed to working with each other that it was an automatic response to a prompt to talk out writing before actually writing. These behaviors and the suggestion to “talk it out on the page” indicate that Ms. P’s pedagogy promotes writing as a social process. As such, several other instances incorporated collaborative learning and group processing into learning. This strategy surely kept the students engaged, since it was a talkative class that enjoyed discussion.
One interesting example of writing as a group process also occurred on February 28th. Then students used markers to write questions on a large sheet of paper in order to get anonymous feedback. The large sheet of paper (wall sized) was used as a sort of forum for two of her classes in order for them to interact with each other. One paper was blank, and there they wrote their possible inquiry project questions. The other paper had another class’s individual inquiry questions written all over it, and students in this class critiqued the other class's questions by asking follow up questions or suggesting answers to their questions. The anonymity of this activity reminded me of an online chat-room, because it functioned in a similar way. Indeed, this was a form of collaborative learning, using informal writing as a tool for brainstorming, feedback, and written discussion between peers of two different 1102 classes. On March 1st, during a transition point in class, she told her students to go check out what the other class said about their inquiry comments (questions and responses), which were laid out on a large piece of paper on the table. One sheet had their questions and responses from the other class. Again, they were asked to respond to the other class’s inquiries (anonymously) in order to continue the dialogue.
On March 13th, Ms. P used music to complement the learning process. Its function was the content and context of writing and genre. She prompted them, “Okay I am going to give you a question and start the music; you need to start writing right when I start the music. Then, when the music stops, you stop writing. You cannot stop writing while the music is still going.” The prompt was “Music is __________” and she played Dancing in the Streets while students wrote. After about a minute, the music stopped and the whole class discussed what they had written. She repeated this with different prompts and different songs three more times. As I noted above, T had been stumped on the spelling of a word during the daybook process on February 28th. Although in this previous daybook assignment, he had only written one word in the time that it took most students to write half a page, this time I looked over and his pen was moving rapidly over the page during each music cycle. Perhaps both the sound of music and the topic of music had unblocked him and it helped him become more engaged and fluent in his journaling. Based on the enthusiastic discussion and the student involvement, I concluded that her incorporation of audio and later visual (video) media helped promote student engagement and keep the class moving. The music helped the class flow from one prompt to another.
After the writing prompts about music, she asked them to discuss the best musicians now and the best musicians of all time. They were in small groups and shared their conclusions by writing on the chalkboard. This process of group processing, and then writing the responses on the board, also helped students stay engaged. Providing students with the opportunity to get up and write on the board (one group member per team) gave students a form of agency that does not often exist in the classroom: the opportunity to write on the board. Ms. P then had a class discussion and reviewed all of the names of musicians and bands on the board, using the students’ collective writing as a visual for her lesson. Her range of musical knowledge went from Lil Wayne back to the Temptations, and the students were highly involved in the content of this lesson. She used this activity to spring board (back) into genre and to remind students of the multi-genre project that was coming up later in the semester.
Lastly, I discovered in the post-observation interview that students had recently started to complain about group work. Also, a few people wrote complaints about it on their midterm class evaluation. Ms. P speculated that the group work was not functioning as well as usual because the students knew each other too well. 16 out of 22 of her students had had her as a teacher in the prior semester, and they came from four different classes. Therefore, the class was broken into four to five cliques or sub-groups. It is important to note that teams of friends do not often function well. Also, when cliques have already been established, students may resent a teacher breaking them up and forming different groups for classroom activities. However, this may be the only option to keep the team work functioning smoothly. This being said, the team work I mentioned appeared to be highly productive and collaborative. Ms. P also thought that some students were just complaining because they were getting tired of working towards the end of the semester.
What I learned and I how I will apply it in my classroom:
Ms. P’s students are highly engaged and like to shout out answers and responses. Some students raise their hands, while others call out, and sometimes there are multiple voices going at once. In our pre-interview, Ms. P said that the class was a little bit talkative and outgoing, almost hyperactive. I related to her interaction style with the students which showed them respect, but clearly indicated her high expectations. However, when the IRE pattern is broken and when the floor is more open, interruptions are more likely to take place. This instructor is effective at managing a class when it gets too noisy, and I believe that this particular group of students is probably more challenging than a typical class. I learned that teaching College English in 1101 and 1102 could be similar to my experiences teaching in some high school classrooms. A “hyperactive” classroom is just as difficult at a higher level, and Ms. P used some verbal and non-verbal cues that were effective communication tools for management.[TS1]
I was very interested in the content that Ms. P used for her class. First of all, she had the theme “The American Dream.” The theme made the class more cohesive. Students watched the Truman Show and also listened to songs from Elvis, and other singers. It was a theme that all students could relate to and talk about easily. Using “The American Dream” as a theme made it easy to discuss genre as action and how genres change over time. Clearly, the contextual factors of genres are the focus, if the theme is based on a self-reflective cultural analysis. This theme challenged students to think critically and question reality (because of the Truman Show), helping them develop critical thinking skills for their inquiry projects. Additionally, critical thinking was stressed when they read the articles and critiqued the authors for bias. Finding bias in a published author’s work (hopefully) helps them become more self aware and critical of their own writing. Although the pre-established theme for 1101 is literacy, I would like to use the theme of communities and individuals to complement this topic. Ms. P demonstrated how a theme can be effectively incorporated into the curriculum.
When we discussed the syllabus and activities in the class, I really appreciated the Conflict Project. Ms. P told me about some of the pitfalls and strengths of the project. First of all, students were supposed to chose a conflict (in their lives) and investigate that conflict from an ethnographic or historical perspective. There are multiple stages of the project, one of which requires a personal narrative that describes the conflict in action. Some students chose to write about choosing which college to go to, a parents divorce, or dealing with a parent who had cancer. I believe that I may use a conflict project instead of a personal narrative assignment, but I have to figure out if I can somehow relate it to my class theme. Additionally, I would like to use the midterm assessments to gather the students’ suggestions and ideas about the class. Students do not always have a chance to provide feedback, and I think Ms. P demonstrated this as a useful tool to help the class reflect on the learning process. Also, these forms can prompt the teacher to address issues and make small adjustments based on students’ critiques.[TS2]
Additionally, as I discussed above, Ms. P’s students were not well prepared for class on March 1st, and approximately 25 percent of them brought their books which they had been required to read for homework. During this group work time, I asked one group of four that worked in the hallway if anyone of them had read and they said no, but begged me not to "give the teacher a bad grade." I assured them that I was not there to evaluate the teacher, but to learn from the teacher. T, a student with whom I interacted several times, told me, “She is a great teacher-give her a 100!”
I agree with the student that Ms. P is an exemplary teacher in many ways. I suspected that her students truly loved and appreciated her teaching style, and this comment helped confirm my thoughts. What I learned from this experience is that students are not always going to read or do their homework, but a teacher should not take it personally. Each student should be respected as an individual, no matter how well he or she writes, and no matter what their classroom behaviors are. An atmosphere respect for learning and enthusiasm for oral class participation was apparent, even though, at times, students were a overly talkative with each other. The best word to describe this atmosphere is to call it a classroom community.
An Interactive and Dialogic Class:
When students are highly engaged and the classroom is based on discussions conducted mostly in groups, the room can get really loud. It is essential for a teacher to consistently circulate in order to interact with students and groups individually, as well as to keep them on task. Class transitions from group discussions to whole class discussions can be difficult to manage, but Ms. P transitions smoothly and often. Still, there are sometimes interruptions and overlaps in conversations. How does a teacher manage such a participatory classroom without letting some dominant voices drown out the silent ones? How can a teacher promote free discussion while promoting an environment in which one speaker has the floor at a time? She is always able to get the student’s attention while she is talking, but not always able to get the students to quiet down, while other students are contributing to a class discussion[TS3] .
However, I have sat in the audience, and I know that the sidebar conversations are not actually off task. The reason why the students are talking is because they are so engaged, and most of the time their discussions are about what the teacher asked. [TS4] Ms. P has a philosophy that students should “talk out” their writing on the page in their daybooks and in group and class discussions. She has promoted talking to the point where the classroom is bursting with discussion and activity. I think in this class particularly, the overlapping conversations may actually be conducive to learning, although they do not follow typical classroom norms where one person talks at a time. There is almost a blend between group and class discussions, because sometimes group discussions occur in front of the class and sometimes they co-occur while the teacher is engaged in discussion with a different person.
Hence, Ms. P promotes talking in the classroom, and talking is what she gets. I think she is satisfied with the student enthusiasm and engagement, and her dialogue among students shows an interactive and personable teaching style that promotes solidarity and good rapport. Since she said in her pre-interview and post-interview that she takes a more social constructivist approach to writing, her pedagogy and practice appear to match. Her students are quite social and benefit from talking out their writing. Talking is definitely part of the writing process.
[1] Pseudonyms were used for the teacher and the students.
[2] Tanya Stivers at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics studied the use of multiple sayings, and her conclusions about them have been demonstrated in many other languages besides English.
Feedback
Laura,
You provide a very detailed account of what you saw. The “play-by-play” is mostly summative, but you do also characterize some of what you saw as “teacher-centered” and “constructivist.” I am happy that you got to see someone using a theme in a way that you would like to emulate. I thought conflict was her theme, rather than The American Dream. I am wondering how those connect at any rate.
In terms of IRE. It is certainly not necessarily a bad thing, but it is important to understand that it can truncate possibilities for class discussion, as potential avenues are cut off, and it typically prevents students from addressing each other—asking questions, building on someone’s statement, disagreeing.
In terms of the group work: it sounds as though she could have fallen into a pattern and over-used it.
I very much agree that talking is a part of the writing process.
A good job here. You do what the assignment was intended to enable you to do. You focus on the nuts and bolts of a class, try to establish some relationship between classroom practices and the theory that seems to drive them, and you situate yourself and your plans as a teacher in relation to what you saw.
Tony
[TS1]Most of these students were high school seniors a year ago.
[TS2]Remember that 1101 is writing about writing. 1102 can have a variety of themes.
[TS3]With some fyw classes, only two or three people will dominate the discussions, with others completely silent. Having a number of people talking at once is a challenge I would rather have.
[TS4]This is important to note.
I observed Ms. P's [1] English Composition class of 22 students for three different days. The classroom was in _____, which is a triangular corner room, and almost all of the chairs were filled, so the class was crowded into a small space and students were seated close together. The first day students posed questions for their inquiry projects and watched the end of a movie, the Truman Show. The second day the class discussed two articles from their texts and also gave midterm evaluations for the teacher. The third day (after Spring Break), genre was discussed using music. Additionally, she used Elvis as a main point for comparison to link back to the previous lesson on Truman. I also gathered information in two interviews, one before the observations, and another as a debriefing after the observations.
The semester’s theme is the American Dream and clearly the students are being asked to observe themselves as Americans in a critical way. The assignments that were discussed were a movie review and the inquiry project. The inquiry project included several parts: the question (the brainstorming), the proposal, and the annotated bibliography. She did not mention the final stage of the inquiry project, but did give written information about it on Moodle.
Her class is fast paced and interactive. She incorporates technology into her classroom and is well prepared with prompts, music clips, movie clips, and assignment sheets on Moodle. She incorporates a lot of informal collaborative learning activities as well to keep the students engaged. They use daybooks and write in them almost everyday to respond to specific prompts that she gives. Additionally, she is open with her students about feedback and grading. The students were asked to respond to a midterm evaluation of the teacher on the same day that they received their own midterm grades, showing that she has a reflective teaching practice.
Ms. R’s theory of writing, as implied in her teaching practice and discussed in her interview, follows a social constructivist model. She is currently doing research on power in the classroom. Specifically, she is looking at writing teachers’ power in a critical way, and also trying to determine how much agency they have in the classroom. Also, she is studying how much agency first year writing teachers think they have in relation to the university. To her, agency deals with “decision making and being able to articulate why you are doing what you are doing” [as a teacher]. The content of her classroom usually deals with themes like class and socio-economic status, as well as the role of education and technology in developing good writers. Also she started her class with the conversation discussing what writing is. She said, “A lot of students have an aversion to writing, because it’s like, here’s the five paragraph model, follow this to pass the test.” She wants to give students the opportunity to write creatively and in different contexts. Therefore, I deduced that, not only is she interested in writing teacher agency within an institution, but also student writer agency as well. Her classroom follows this pedagogy in that it is student centered and not teacher centered. Lastly, she has a philosophy about writing that one should “talk it out” and this belief manifests itself in the structure and content of the classroom.
Classroom Management and Procedures:
From the very first class I observed, it was clear that students were accustomed to Ms. P's classroom procedures and comfortable with her interactive classroom discussion style. Because she told me that the students were a little talkative in the pre-observation interview, I was looking for ways she managed the class.
One typical procedure involves writing in the daybook journals to get the classroom started. Then she usually introduces the topic and has organized groups do critical reading and discussion about a topic. She collects student responses (either verbally or in writing on the board) and then uses the small group discussions to have a larger discussion with the class (to “go over” the answers that they found). In the first class, she did not follow this procedure, because more than half of the class time was used for watching the end of a movie, The Truman Show, but during the other two classes she followed this procedure.
Ms. P is reflective about her teaching practice and she evaluates herself mid-semester. She also is open to students when communicating with them about grades and participation, which was evident when she gave students a midterm evaluation. At the beginning of class on March 1st, she passed out the mid-term evaluation (of the class), she told them that it was anonymous and to take it seriously when filling it out. Here were the questions she asked them:
1. What was your favorite activity/discussion in class so far this semester? Why?
2. What was your least favorite activity/discussion in class so far this semester? Why?
3. What specific skills would you like to work on or need help with in this class?
4. How would you character this class?
5. How would you improve this course?
This was a very useful way for her to evaluate her students’ progress in the class and her effectiveness as a teacher without looking at specific students. After the observations, I asked Ms. P about these evaluations, and students were generally happy with the class, although some complained about having too much work. Most of the students like the Truman show and music and media activities, but many were not fond of the Conflict Project from the beginning of the semester. Ms. P believes this is because the Conflict Project may have been “too personal,” because it made students think about their lives from a historic perspective, which could be a little painful. Surprisingly, she reported that students were getting tired of group work, which I will discuss later in the ethnography.
At the end of the same class, she passed out the midterm student evaluations (grades). She reminded them that they had three homework assignments, a conflict project, and ten points as a participation grade. She said the participation grade could go up or down. Then she said, “Let’s reiterate: the class communication goals are: to be here on time; be productive; be an active learner (not on your cell or on Facebook).” She warned them that their usage of electronic devices would be accounted for in the participation grade, and that she noticed them. She had also told me in the interview that she had decided not to comment daily on the use of electronic devices (for example: cell phones) in class because she did not want to disrupt her lesson. However, she admitted that texting in class really bothered her, and she addressed this issue by noting this behavior in the participation grade. She told her class that it would be hard to get the full ten points. Later she told me that she “very rarely” gave ten full points for participation. She noted that absences and tardies were on the evaluation too.
I could tell from the first day that she was strict about tardies because one student came late why they were watching the movie. Ms. P looked at the student with raised eyebrows and a reprimanding expression and then looked down at her watch. The student acted like she wanted to explain and Ms. P told her to explain it (the tardiness) to her at the end of class. Ms. P was playful but firm, showing that she noticed the student’s tardiness, but was not overly judgmental. Also, requesting a conversation after class gave the student a chance to explain herself. This specific interaction is a good example of how Ms. P manages behaviors in the classroom. She uses non-verbal cues to express her expectations. Her interaction is friendly, but also firm.
Additionally, she has other verbal cues to get students to stop talking. During her animated classroom discussions, sometimes several students give oral responses (to her) at once, while sidebar conversations break out. At one time on March 13, about five people were talking at once when she was eliciting responses from the class. She said, “alright, alright; ok, ok, let’s look at…” and could not hold the class's attention. As suggested by Tanya Stivers, the repeated use of multiple sayings indicates that a speaker is trying to address an issue from before or go back to the larger context[2]. In other words, it was like Ms. Randle was saying, wait, let’s back up. However, the students kept talking and interrupting each other so she said, “Time out!” After this all voices were silent and she continued on in her lecture using a Power Point presentation. She then went back into class discussion. The flow of her class is smooth, and she transitions from lecture to discussion about every three to five minutes, so students are never given a long lecture without a chance to respond.
She uses PowerPoint to structure her lessons and often projects assignments on the board. She usually discusses homework and writing assignments in detail to make sure students understand the instructions. She often reminds students of assignments that are due at the beginning and at the end of each class, giving a specific deadline. For example she said on March 13th, “Remember your proposals are due by eight on Moodle.”
She sometimes uses the traditional Initiate, Respond, Evaluate (IRE) process that is common in educational discourse. However, her evaluations are often used to elaborate on a students comment or connect it to another comment. She does not usually critique a response in a critical way; if the response is incorrect or irrelevant, she sometimes avoids evaluation, and goes directly into another question (initiating). When I asked her about her verbal discussion patterns, she told me that she does not like to evaluate, but rather extend the conversation and to further probe the student’s answer. Therefore, this habit is a conscious and intentional pattern. Sometimes she has a dialogue with students in front of the whole class to model the thinking process, where she breaks out of the IRE pattern. This occurred between Ms. P and S on March 1st:
S raised her hand and called out, “I don’t know about my topic…?”
Ms. P said, “Well let’s talk it out.”
S asked, “Why do people curse?...I don’t know about it…”
Ms. R, “You’re asking about social rules…when it’s appropriate?
S, “It seems like everybody curses nowadays—I wanna know why.”
Ms. P then directed her to free-write a little bit to “talk it out” with herself on the page, or to talk it out with friends and then find research to back up her ideas. I heard Ms. P use the words “talk it out” about writing at least five times during the course of the observations, which shows how much she values discussion during the writing process, and writing as a social process that requires or mimics talking. S seemed satisfied with the suggestion and said, “OK.”
During group work on several occasions, Ms. P told everyone to take notes during the group discussion. On March 1st, during group work, most students had not brought their books and so Ms. P had to adapt to accommodate to the lack of resources. Instead of immediately discussing “what they had read,” (which most had not read) they were instructed to reread the articles out loud in a group and then discuss them. There was about one book per group. During discussion time, I heard Ms. P tell a group to focus on the images. A student said, “I see the culture part…” Ms. P joked with her, “You get my book with the notes in it <<laugh>> so that helps you a little bit…” because she had loaned her own book to one group. In another group, I heard a classmate say, “Be sure you write that down…oh yeah, we’re all supposed to write.” Therefore, I knew that her often repeated instructions to “write it down” had actually been heard and were being followed.
I was surprised that so many students had not brought their books or done the reading. I asked Ms. Randle what she thought about that. That activity that she selected was not a typical procedure, as she mostly just has class discussions about a reading. However, this was created as a sort of “test” to gauge whether or not the students were reading and were prepared for class. Therefore, most students failed the “test.” She adapted quickly to student’s lack of preparation, and this was probably because she expected it. She wanted to make a point to the students. Later, after the observations, she told me that she had a serious talk with the class about their failure to keep up with their homework and responsibilities outside of class. As I was observing, she made many reminders to students about upcoming due dates. Most of her reminders were made in a serious tone of voice, as if to give a warning. It seemed like she anticipated that many students would not turn their work in on time, and so she was sure to give them ample advance notice.
Also, during group work, Ms. P circulated around the room and observed students’ participation in groups. For example, on March 1st, she went around and asked each group, “How we doing?” to gauge how much more time they would need to complete the task. She asked each group individually, “I’ll give you 15 more minutes, is that good?” She also told each group that if they finished they needed to start talking with their groups about their inquiry projects to get more ideas. This helped to keep the class moving and give the students an opportunity to “talk out” their writing with others. Circulating in the classroom was an important tool for keeping students engaged in groups.
Promoting Student Engagement through Talk:
Student engagement is crucial for learning, and Ms. P’s class is highly engaged and interactive. She uses collaborative learning, a fast pace, and incorporates multiple media in order to engage her learners.
During class time I observed the behaviors of students in order determine the amount of engagement in writing and discussion. On February 28th, Ms. P prompted the students to pose questions about their inquiry projects in their day books in order to “talk it out” on the page: “Where are you at? How are you feeling about it?” T, a student sitting near me, asked others about the spelling of the word actualization, and others in the back corner were talking it out with each other in order to clarify the assignment. Ms. P did not redirect students to their daybooks, because they were on task (even though they had not started writing). After about three minutes of settling down, the class was silent as students wrote in their daybooks. All students around me wrote about half a page, but T was still stuck on the word actualization. What was notable here was that students were so accustomed to working with each other that it was an automatic response to a prompt to talk out writing before actually writing. These behaviors and the suggestion to “talk it out on the page” indicate that Ms. P’s pedagogy promotes writing as a social process. As such, several other instances incorporated collaborative learning and group processing into learning. This strategy surely kept the students engaged, since it was a talkative class that enjoyed discussion.
One interesting example of writing as a group process also occurred on February 28th. Then students used markers to write questions on a large sheet of paper in order to get anonymous feedback. The large sheet of paper (wall sized) was used as a sort of forum for two of her classes in order for them to interact with each other. One paper was blank, and there they wrote their possible inquiry project questions. The other paper had another class’s individual inquiry questions written all over it, and students in this class critiqued the other class's questions by asking follow up questions or suggesting answers to their questions. The anonymity of this activity reminded me of an online chat-room, because it functioned in a similar way. Indeed, this was a form of collaborative learning, using informal writing as a tool for brainstorming, feedback, and written discussion between peers of two different 1102 classes. On March 1st, during a transition point in class, she told her students to go check out what the other class said about their inquiry comments (questions and responses), which were laid out on a large piece of paper on the table. One sheet had their questions and responses from the other class. Again, they were asked to respond to the other class’s inquiries (anonymously) in order to continue the dialogue.
On March 13th, Ms. P used music to complement the learning process. Its function was the content and context of writing and genre. She prompted them, “Okay I am going to give you a question and start the music; you need to start writing right when I start the music. Then, when the music stops, you stop writing. You cannot stop writing while the music is still going.” The prompt was “Music is __________” and she played Dancing in the Streets while students wrote. After about a minute, the music stopped and the whole class discussed what they had written. She repeated this with different prompts and different songs three more times. As I noted above, T had been stumped on the spelling of a word during the daybook process on February 28th. Although in this previous daybook assignment, he had only written one word in the time that it took most students to write half a page, this time I looked over and his pen was moving rapidly over the page during each music cycle. Perhaps both the sound of music and the topic of music had unblocked him and it helped him become more engaged and fluent in his journaling. Based on the enthusiastic discussion and the student involvement, I concluded that her incorporation of audio and later visual (video) media helped promote student engagement and keep the class moving. The music helped the class flow from one prompt to another.
After the writing prompts about music, she asked them to discuss the best musicians now and the best musicians of all time. They were in small groups and shared their conclusions by writing on the chalkboard. This process of group processing, and then writing the responses on the board, also helped students stay engaged. Providing students with the opportunity to get up and write on the board (one group member per team) gave students a form of agency that does not often exist in the classroom: the opportunity to write on the board. Ms. P then had a class discussion and reviewed all of the names of musicians and bands on the board, using the students’ collective writing as a visual for her lesson. Her range of musical knowledge went from Lil Wayne back to the Temptations, and the students were highly involved in the content of this lesson. She used this activity to spring board (back) into genre and to remind students of the multi-genre project that was coming up later in the semester.
Lastly, I discovered in the post-observation interview that students had recently started to complain about group work. Also, a few people wrote complaints about it on their midterm class evaluation. Ms. P speculated that the group work was not functioning as well as usual because the students knew each other too well. 16 out of 22 of her students had had her as a teacher in the prior semester, and they came from four different classes. Therefore, the class was broken into four to five cliques or sub-groups. It is important to note that teams of friends do not often function well. Also, when cliques have already been established, students may resent a teacher breaking them up and forming different groups for classroom activities. However, this may be the only option to keep the team work functioning smoothly. This being said, the team work I mentioned appeared to be highly productive and collaborative. Ms. P also thought that some students were just complaining because they were getting tired of working towards the end of the semester.
What I learned and I how I will apply it in my classroom:
Ms. P’s students are highly engaged and like to shout out answers and responses. Some students raise their hands, while others call out, and sometimes there are multiple voices going at once. In our pre-interview, Ms. P said that the class was a little bit talkative and outgoing, almost hyperactive. I related to her interaction style with the students which showed them respect, but clearly indicated her high expectations. However, when the IRE pattern is broken and when the floor is more open, interruptions are more likely to take place. This instructor is effective at managing a class when it gets too noisy, and I believe that this particular group of students is probably more challenging than a typical class. I learned that teaching College English in 1101 and 1102 could be similar to my experiences teaching in some high school classrooms. A “hyperactive” classroom is just as difficult at a higher level, and Ms. P used some verbal and non-verbal cues that were effective communication tools for management.[TS1]
I was very interested in the content that Ms. P used for her class. First of all, she had the theme “The American Dream.” The theme made the class more cohesive. Students watched the Truman Show and also listened to songs from Elvis, and other singers. It was a theme that all students could relate to and talk about easily. Using “The American Dream” as a theme made it easy to discuss genre as action and how genres change over time. Clearly, the contextual factors of genres are the focus, if the theme is based on a self-reflective cultural analysis. This theme challenged students to think critically and question reality (because of the Truman Show), helping them develop critical thinking skills for their inquiry projects. Additionally, critical thinking was stressed when they read the articles and critiqued the authors for bias. Finding bias in a published author’s work (hopefully) helps them become more self aware and critical of their own writing. Although the pre-established theme for 1101 is literacy, I would like to use the theme of communities and individuals to complement this topic. Ms. P demonstrated how a theme can be effectively incorporated into the curriculum.
When we discussed the syllabus and activities in the class, I really appreciated the Conflict Project. Ms. P told me about some of the pitfalls and strengths of the project. First of all, students were supposed to chose a conflict (in their lives) and investigate that conflict from an ethnographic or historical perspective. There are multiple stages of the project, one of which requires a personal narrative that describes the conflict in action. Some students chose to write about choosing which college to go to, a parents divorce, or dealing with a parent who had cancer. I believe that I may use a conflict project instead of a personal narrative assignment, but I have to figure out if I can somehow relate it to my class theme. Additionally, I would like to use the midterm assessments to gather the students’ suggestions and ideas about the class. Students do not always have a chance to provide feedback, and I think Ms. P demonstrated this as a useful tool to help the class reflect on the learning process. Also, these forms can prompt the teacher to address issues and make small adjustments based on students’ critiques.[TS2]
Additionally, as I discussed above, Ms. P’s students were not well prepared for class on March 1st, and approximately 25 percent of them brought their books which they had been required to read for homework. During this group work time, I asked one group of four that worked in the hallway if anyone of them had read and they said no, but begged me not to "give the teacher a bad grade." I assured them that I was not there to evaluate the teacher, but to learn from the teacher. T, a student with whom I interacted several times, told me, “She is a great teacher-give her a 100!”
I agree with the student that Ms. P is an exemplary teacher in many ways. I suspected that her students truly loved and appreciated her teaching style, and this comment helped confirm my thoughts. What I learned from this experience is that students are not always going to read or do their homework, but a teacher should not take it personally. Each student should be respected as an individual, no matter how well he or she writes, and no matter what their classroom behaviors are. An atmosphere respect for learning and enthusiasm for oral class participation was apparent, even though, at times, students were a overly talkative with each other. The best word to describe this atmosphere is to call it a classroom community.
An Interactive and Dialogic Class:
When students are highly engaged and the classroom is based on discussions conducted mostly in groups, the room can get really loud. It is essential for a teacher to consistently circulate in order to interact with students and groups individually, as well as to keep them on task. Class transitions from group discussions to whole class discussions can be difficult to manage, but Ms. P transitions smoothly and often. Still, there are sometimes interruptions and overlaps in conversations. How does a teacher manage such a participatory classroom without letting some dominant voices drown out the silent ones? How can a teacher promote free discussion while promoting an environment in which one speaker has the floor at a time? She is always able to get the student’s attention while she is talking, but not always able to get the students to quiet down, while other students are contributing to a class discussion[TS3] .
However, I have sat in the audience, and I know that the sidebar conversations are not actually off task. The reason why the students are talking is because they are so engaged, and most of the time their discussions are about what the teacher asked. [TS4] Ms. P has a philosophy that students should “talk out” their writing on the page in their daybooks and in group and class discussions. She has promoted talking to the point where the classroom is bursting with discussion and activity. I think in this class particularly, the overlapping conversations may actually be conducive to learning, although they do not follow typical classroom norms where one person talks at a time. There is almost a blend between group and class discussions, because sometimes group discussions occur in front of the class and sometimes they co-occur while the teacher is engaged in discussion with a different person.
Hence, Ms. P promotes talking in the classroom, and talking is what she gets. I think she is satisfied with the student enthusiasm and engagement, and her dialogue among students shows an interactive and personable teaching style that promotes solidarity and good rapport. Since she said in her pre-interview and post-interview that she takes a more social constructivist approach to writing, her pedagogy and practice appear to match. Her students are quite social and benefit from talking out their writing. Talking is definitely part of the writing process.
[1] Pseudonyms were used for the teacher and the students.
[2] Tanya Stivers at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics studied the use of multiple sayings, and her conclusions about them have been demonstrated in many other languages besides English.
Feedback
Laura,
You provide a very detailed account of what you saw. The “play-by-play” is mostly summative, but you do also characterize some of what you saw as “teacher-centered” and “constructivist.” I am happy that you got to see someone using a theme in a way that you would like to emulate. I thought conflict was her theme, rather than The American Dream. I am wondering how those connect at any rate.
In terms of IRE. It is certainly not necessarily a bad thing, but it is important to understand that it can truncate possibilities for class discussion, as potential avenues are cut off, and it typically prevents students from addressing each other—asking questions, building on someone’s statement, disagreeing.
In terms of the group work: it sounds as though she could have fallen into a pattern and over-used it.
I very much agree that talking is a part of the writing process.
A good job here. You do what the assignment was intended to enable you to do. You focus on the nuts and bolts of a class, try to establish some relationship between classroom practices and the theory that seems to drive them, and you situate yourself and your plans as a teacher in relation to what you saw.
Tony
[TS1]Most of these students were high school seniors a year ago.
[TS2]Remember that 1101 is writing about writing. 1102 can have a variety of themes.
[TS3]With some fyw classes, only two or three people will dominate the discussions, with others completely silent. Having a number of people talking at once is a challenge I would rather have.
[TS4]This is important to note.