I was in a composition pedagogy class recently when our professor asked whether the composition classroom could be conducted effectively in a virtual environment. My colleagues were all stating that moving composition to an online space sacrifices some portion of the writing classroom experience that only face-to-face interaction provides. While I do prefer working face-to-face, I have come to realize that online spaces offer many ways to mimic much of the interaction in a classroom, and that students’ performances improve when they experience less of the top-down relationship pressure of most classrooms. For a composition teacher, realizing that students may…
Author: jrmurray
A few years ago, I had one of those “aha” moments that forever changed my perception of young readers and writers. I had entered the local comic book store with my son, with the intention of joining something known as 24-Hour Comic Day. It is an event that challenges people to write a 24 frame comic in a 24 hour period. My oldest son was into making comics, and I was curious. I also came armed with some ideas of my own, telling the story of my relationship with my brother in Brothers on Ice. I was expecting a few…
My students write and read all the time. I know they do. I see it. Sitting in my class, they tuck their chins in, look down at their phones, and then their thumbs fly as they scroll through blogs and tweets and reddit posts. I usually take this as a sign that my lecture has gone on too long and maybe isn’t quite as captivating as I thought. I’m not engaging them in the subjects I’m trying to teach, writing and reading, so they entertain themselves by writing and reading. I suppose that could be a teachable moment, irony anyone,…
In the fall of 2014, I joined a Michigan Teachers as Researchers Collaborative (MiTRC) project under the direction of Dr. Jeffrey Grabill from Michigan State and Susan Golab from Oakland Intermediate School District. The focus of the project was on feedback, assessment, and evaluation. A group of teacher-researchers would be developing tools to teach argument writing at the secondary level. In reviewing a learning progression for argumentative writing that we were developing, Dr. Grabill pointed out that two moves on the instrument had to do with how the writer used values and affect appropriate to their intended audiences. The phrase ‘audience values’ stuck in my…