Teaching Writing as Communication and Problem Solving at All Grade Levels

California State University, Northridge

Jennifer FletcherCalifornia State University, Monterey Bay

@JenJFletcher

Session Objectives• Help students see themselves as problem solvers

• Create opportunities for rhetorical problem solving

• Build metacognitive awareness of problem-solving strategies

• Prepare students to communicate across contexts

3 Big Ideas

• Transfer of Learning

• Rhetorical problem solving

• Metacognition

Activity

• Make a quick list of the skills and knowledge your students need to communicate across contexts.

• Share your list at your table.

Teaching for Transfer

• “[Transfer of learning is] our use of past learning when learning something new and the application of that learning to both similar and new situations” (Haskell xiii).

• “All of the work we do as teachers is for naught if students fail to appropriately transfer their learning” (Fisher, Frey, and Hattie 107).

Transfer of Learning

The Things We Carry

1. What’s some of the most valuable learning you’ve carried with you into your adult life?

2. What writing knowledge and skills have you carried with you from your own years in K12 schools? To what extent does this learning help you communicate across contexts today?

The Art of Adaptation

Problem SolvingNearly all employers (91 percent) agree that for career success, “a candidate’s demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems is more important than his or her undergraduate major.”*

Source: *Hart Research Associates. 2015. Falling Short? College Learning and Career Success. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities.

A Scenario…• Imagine you are a new business owner who has

recently joined your local Chamber of Commerce. At your first meeting, the other members discuss plans for a new scholarship program. You listen to the conversation for awhile before participating yourself. How do you determine the appropriate ways to communicate in this new setting? What are you listening for? How do you know what you can contribute?

• Discuss your process for making rhetorical choices with someone at your table.

Rhetorical Problem Solving

Rhetorician Linda Flower explains that rhetorical problem solving entails a variety of cognitive strategies for “exploring the rhetorical problem, for generating ideas, for adapting to the reader, and for understanding and monitoring one’s own writing process” (1989, 13).

Now Try This…

Compare the following two sentences from the same writer, an attorney from Monterey, California. The sentences are the opening lines from two different texts, written for different audiences and purposes on different occasions. See if you can figure out the genre and context of each text based on the writer’s choices.

Same Writer/ Different Choices

• I am writing to you as a volunteer member of the Legal Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union, Monterey County Chapter, to express the concern of ACLU with the prior restraints and limitations on the freedom of speech contained in the draft Facilities Use Policy.

• Monterey County should put the brakes on further expanding its jail.

Same Writer/Different Choices: #1

Huey Long—the infamous Louisiana politician of the Thirties—once promised a certain constituency in an election campaign that he would deliver a public works project to them if elected. When he failed to deliver the project after he was elected, he was asked why. His reply: “I lied!”

Long’s admission was brutally frank. It was the kind of honesty that worked well for Long. Why is it so difficult to work for many of those in public office today?

Same Writer/Different Choices: #2

#2: A BILL

To designate the waters of the central coast of California as a national marine sanctuary.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled…

From Education for Life and Work (2012)

“If the goal of instruction is to prepare students to accomplish tasks or solve problems exactly like the ones addressed during instruction, then deeper learning is not needed” (National Research Council 70).

Rhetorical Choices

Topic Genre/Form Language

Organization Evidence/Examples

?

? ? ?

Activity

Take a look at following table (see the handout in your materials) and think about how often your students get to make their own decisions about these options. Choose the frequency rate that best describes your students’ experiences.

Genre Choices Structure Choices

genre or form text structure (e.g., cause & effect, frame, etc.)

types of sentences beginnings/introductions

use or avoidance of figurative language inductive or deductive reasoning

formatting conventions transitions

documentation style (if required) twists or shifts

types of evidence/examples use or avoidance of narrative

medium endings/conclusions

level of diction repetition

Bounded Framing• “You have to know this for the test.”

• “This is what we have to do to meet the state requirements.”

• “I don’t like this either. It’s boring. But it’s required.”

• “Every senior has to complete a senior project to graduate.”

Bounded vs. Expansive Framing

Practices that narrow students’ experience with writing (NCTE 2016):

1) writing “only to prove that they did something they were asked to do”

2) learning only “a single type of writing” that they are led to believe “will suffice in all situations”

Teaching Scenario Expansive Framing: What rationale could we provide for why this learning is valuable in multiple contexts?

A lesson on the key features of a writing rubric to be used for holistic scoring of an essay

?

A lesson on different types of thesis statements common to school writing

?

A lesson on common paragraph structures in academic writing

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Developing Expert Knowledge

• Please organize your ideas into paragraphs.

• How does your organizational structure help you communicate your ideas and achieve your purpose? How are you guiding your reader through the story of your thinking?

• Think of the choices you are making about text structure. To what extent does a single paragraph help you convey your meaning and achieve your goals?

Developing Expert Knowledge

Attribution needed

How do you want to situate this writer within the conversation? What does your reader need to know about this writer or source?

Your turn…

Use direct quotations?

?

?

Developing Expert Knowledge

Use direct quotations

What evidence informs your claims? How do you plan to engage the views of other writers? What other texts are part of this conversation?

Prescriptive Rules Rhetorical Guidelines

Never use a “dead word.” Use precise language that is appropriate for your audience.

Avoid emotional appeals; don’t include personal opinions or feelings.

Choose evidence and language that will put your audience in the “right” frame of mind to hear your argument.

Body paragraphs must have at least six sentences.

Know what you want each paragraph to say and do.

Include two direct quotations in each body paragraph. Adequately support your claims.

Avoid using the first-person “I” in academic writing.

Evaluate the effectiveness of the persona you’ve created for your audience.

Why This MattersCollectively these diverse forms of insight into how coastal sharks use space…empowers us to make much more informed decisions about how best to tailor marine management tools to meet conservation objectives.

…these results also make it equally clear that it would be prudent to develop diverse portfolios of conservation measures.

Our capacity, for the first time, to summarize publically accessible data on fishing activity along the perimeter of large MPAs… provides an exciting and sobering view of the significance of the observed movements of grey reef sharks beyond MPA boundaries.

Stanford News: NOVEMBER 9, 2017 Loss of protections for marine sanctuaries could threaten oceanic environment and fisheries, Stanford experts say

White: If marine monuments are axed we could also see oil drilling and deep-sea mining happening just a 20-minute boat ride away from our nation’s healthiest coral reefs.

A scenario…• Imagine you have just been awarded a grant to

improve students’ academic preparation. The grant requires that you collaborate with colleagues at a college or university. You now have to recruit several higher education faculty to be your partners in this effort. So you set out to draft an email introducing yourself and explaining the grant.

• How are you feeling about this writing task? Turn and talk to a partner.

What’s the rhetorical problem?

• Audience, purpose, & occasion?*

• Constraints?

• Resources or affordances?

• Opportunities?

*See handouts

Activity Directions

STEP ONE: As a table, work together to draft the opening line of this email. Write this sentence on the index card provided.

Activity Directions

• STEP TWO: On the back on your index card, explain what you had to do to write this opening line. What was your thinking and composing process?

Metacognitive Awareness

As Flower notes, “understanding and monitoring one’s own writing process” (1989, 13) is a key aspect of rhetorical problem solving.

The Value of Productive Struggle

“How do I start?” “What do you want this to be about again?” “What do I say now?”

“Should I just write one paragraph on each source?” “Do you want five paragraphs?”

“Figure it out for yourself.”

Scaffolding Rhetorical Decision Making

• Metacognitive prompts

• Strategies for dealing with difficulty

• Mentoring and modeling

How Do You Know?How well do you wash your hands? New machine will tell you

Surfacing Procedural Knowledge

• Read “How Well Do You Wash Your Hands? New Machine Will Tell You.” Then summarize the main idea of the article in a sentence or two.

• Now reflect on your thinking process: How did you know that was the main idea? Write a short paragraph describing what you had to do to write the summary.

5th Grader

• The main idea of this article is people should always take their time with walking their hands.

• After reading those paragraphs were all about hand washing. So I just looked at what the article mentioned the most. I know that the topic mentioned the most is always the main idea.

5th Grader

• The main idea was that people aren’t washing their hands and the device would help to sanitize things better.

• I knew that was the main idea because that was the main problem and solution. I thought of all of the things in the article and then what was the most important.

5th Grader

• Two engineers had this idea of making a device that shows how well you wash your hands.

• Having read this article very well two times I rehearsed the shortened version in my head and wrote it.

How Do You Know?

1st Grader

• The main idea was to make the Storm King leave and bring back all friendship.

• The story tells what it’s supposed to be like.

1st Grader

• [The main ideas is] magic.

• Because they used it to save their lives. And there was flying.

Metacognitive Prompts• What language choices did you make? What

organizational choices did you make?

• How did you make those choices? What were your other options?

• What worked? What didn’t? What might you do differently next time?

• What did you learn about your writing process?

• How did you deal with any difficulties or obstacles you encountered?

Genre Analysis

• Mentor texts

• Feature analysis

• Language study

• Descriptive outlining

Mentor'Texts

figurative*language

imagery

rhym

e*sche

me

scho

larly

*evide

nce

person

al*ane

cdotes

fictio

nal*characters

symbo

lism

plot

setting

simple*senten

ces

complex*se

nten

ces

form

al*diction

casual*diction

academ

ic*English

specialized

*vocabulary

first9person*"I"

headings

chapters

stanzas

cause*and*effect*te

xt*structure

compare*and

*contrast*te

xt*structure

narrative*text*structure

dialogue

charts*or*tables

visuals

footno

tes*o

r*end

notes

citations

inde

xstage*directions

discipline9specific

specialized

broad

time9sensitive

age9specific

oral*co

mmun

icatio

nwritten*commun

icatio

nvisual*rh

etoric

Medium

Genre*Feature*Analysis*Matrix

Directions*to*Students:* Create*a*list*of*496*titles*of*mentor*texts*that*are*examples*of*the*genre*you*are*analyzing.*Write*the*titles*of*these*texts*in*the*far*left*column.*Then,*for*each*mentor*text,*place*a*check*mark*in*the*box*for*each*genre*feature*that*is*a*characteristic*of*that*text.*Mark*all*that*apply.

Name*of*Genre:**********************************************.

Rhetorical'and'Literary'Devices Language'Choices Organization Special'Features

Context'and'Community

Making Choices about Genre

Filmed speech

PSA

Tri-fold brochure

Blog

Letter/email to an authority

Filmed Speech

I want to create a speech that provokes and educates the importance of the Kelp Forest. In my opinion doing a filmed speech seems like the most raw, most vulnerable way to communicate with a camera. My goal is to inspire individuals, and to educate the audience. I can see this type of video being posted on Facebook so my intended audience would be Facebook users that live around the area.

Letter/Email to an Authority

During these times it seems like our government won’t pay attention to climate change. I want to send a letter to Sacramento asking for our environment to be taken in consideration in California. I’ll explain the importance of the kelp forest to the Monterey area. My hope is for them to fight for our environment. I have yet to find a mentor text that satisfy the point I am trying to achieve. I’d organize the letter or email as formal as I can, making sure that there is absolutely no errors whatsoever. My language choice would be heavy, highly complex in order to persuade the reader the importance of the topic.

The Design Process

The Design Process

In Writing: Teachers and Children at Work, Graves explains, “There is a long, painstaking, patient process demanded to learn how to shape material to a level where it is satisfying to the person doing the crafting” (1983, 6).

Learning from My Teaching Fails

Student: “I don’t understand what to do.”

Teacher: “Just follow this structure, and you’ll be fine.”

3 Big Ideas

• Rhetorical problem solving

• Transfer of Learning

• Metacognition

Q & AIf you were to try this on Monday, what parts would you feel most confident about? Least confident? What fears do you have, if any?

@JenJFletcher or jfletcher@csumb.edu

#TeachingArguments #TeachLit

References• Hart Research Associates. Falling Short? College Learning and Career Success. Washington,

DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2015.

• Haskell, Robert E. Transfer of Learning: Cognition, Instruction, and Reasoning. San Diego: Academic Press, 2001.

• Fisher, Douglas, Nancy Frey, and John Hattie. Visible Learning for Literacy: Implementing Practices That Work to Accelerate Student Learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2016.

• Flower Flower, Linda. Rhetorical Problem Solving: Cognition and Professional Writing.” Writing in the Business Professions. Kogen, Myra, Ed. Urbana, Il: NCTE, 1989.

• National Council of Teachers of English. Position Statement on Professional Knowledge for the Teaching of Writing, Urbana, Il: Professional Writing.” Writing in the Business Professions. Kogen, Myra, Ed. Urbana, Il: NCTE, 2016.

• National Research Council. Education for Life and Work. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 2012.

• Perkins, David N. and Gavriel Salomon. “Knowledge to Go: A Motivational and Dispositional View of Transfer.” Educational Psychologist, 47(3), 248–258, 2012.