Chapter II for Education 705

The question I asked for this project: Does collaboration improve student engagement? Every year, my students read poetry, choose two similarly themed poems, and write an analysis paper where they compare or contrast the tone or use of figurative language in their chosen poems. But they never talk to each other during this process. I wanted to know if students collaborated with each other in the selection, discussion, and focus of their papers in the prewriting stage as well as in the drafting and publishing would their personal engagement improve? Thus, also improving the quality of their finished pieces.

Pre-assessment

At the outset of our poetry study, students responded to a writing prompt reacting to the poem “Barbie Doll.” The prompt: Are you a real woman living in a Barbie Doll world? While the final papers that the students will turn in will be formal academic papers, the sample was an informal journal response. The pre-assessment response to the poem “Barbie Doll” was to see how students think about a poem, and what they know about poetry. Students’ final formal papers will be the culmination of our poetry study. It is my hope that it will be a reflection of their increased knowledge and understanding of the genre of poetry gained through our study as well as their collaboration efforts with their peers.

The Unit

Below in an outline of the writing component:

Day 1: Introduce assignment; show models

Day2: Library Day; find poems; students read and jot down notes

Day 3: Poem annotation mini-lesson

Day 4: Poem share day; students share poems and paper ideas

Day 5: Pre-writing

Day 6-7: Drafting

Day 8: Peer-conferencing; students share drafts.

Day 9: Revision/Edit drafts

Day 10: Publish. Students share drafts in groups.

Overall, my students are good writers; they write with sustained focus and have a good sense of mechanics. Where I would like to see improvement is with regard to specificity; my sophomores, many of them, are generalists; that is, as a group, they tend to reference examples, details, and words in more general rather than specific manner.

Preparation

To prepare for the writing of the poetry project paper, students spent two weeks reading and discussing poetry, they viewed models of previous student papers, spent a class in the library to select poems, and given guidelines on how to annotate a poem and discussion points to bring to their writing group discussions. Throughout our unit of study, students worked as a whole class, individually, and in small groups.

Some Final Thoughts

I used this opportunity to mini-pilot a new approach to writing in my classroom. Essentially, I feel my writing approach in the classroom needs a complete overhaul; I feel that I assign writing, rather than discuss and teach writing. While I do provide my students with models and scaffold instruction, I feel that I—not my students—talk about writing. I envision a writing approach where students are learning about writing from each other and their own process as well as writing.