3.+Writing+Workshops

__**Section Outline **__ The section Writing Workshops contains chapters 17-24, with the main goal of each chapter being how to approach different writing styles. The chapters break down as follows:

Chapter 17- Reflective Essay Chapter 18- Eyewitness Report Chapter 19- Literary Interpretation Chapter 20- Comparison-and-Contrast Essay Chapter 21- Business Writing Chapter 22- Persuasive Argument Chapter 23- Short Story Chapter 24- Research Report


 * "The amazing thing about writing is that there's no limit to what you can produce" (Language Network 381). **

This quote is used to introduce the Writing Workshop unit by emphasizing all the different types of writing that can be produced. Therefore, this unit is used to teach students how to write in the modes. Each chapter is constructed in a similar layout, containing elements pertaining to that style of writing. Early on in the chapter, teachers and students can find resources such as basic layouts, rubrics, and sample essays. For example, chapter 22 deals with writing a persuasive argument. The text provides a graphic visual of how a student should organize his or her opinions, arguments, and evidence. The next page displays an example of a student written persuasive argument and how it satisfies each part of the rubric. The text then provides a detailed step-by-step writing process relating to the writing style in the form of (1) Pre-writing (2) Drafting (3) Revising (4) Editing and Proofreading (5) Sharing and Reflecting. After the writing process is a page dedicated to applying the mode to a real world scenario. Referring back to chapter 22, the text provides examples of persuasive writing in the form of essays, advertisements, campaigns, and web banners. Concluding each chapter is a section called Student Help Desk. Here are multiple tools that the students can use to enhance their writing, such as idea banks and publishing options.


 * Pre-write --> Draft --> Revise --> Edit and Proofread --> Share and Reflect **

At a glance, the layout of the section gave us an immediate indication of current-traditional pedagogy. The writing process is an especially strong piece of evidence for this because of the pre-write, write, revise method that is suggested. The text's strategy for guiding the students' writing correlates with Sommers' idea of inexperienced writers. While the book is isolating the stages of writing, isolating certain thought process to specific stages, Sommers emphasizes the need for recursive writing. However, we were then surprised by the pre-writing stage and its lack of current-traditional pedagogy. This stage encourages students to jot down their thoughts on the topic, creating a focus on the encoder. For example, Chapter 23's Pre-writing section encourages students to brainstorm the types of short stories, characters, and elements they like reading about to begin the thought process. The free writing without focusing on organization, but rather content and audience helped us discover the existence of process pedagogy in the section. The drafting stage also supports process pedagogy because it helps students develop on their content, while ignoring organization or grammar. The revising stage then focuses the students' attention on vernacular. The Edit and Proofread stage emphasizes grammar and punctuation. Both of these stages return the pedagogy to current traditional, especially since they are so regimented. In the sharing and reflecting stage students are encouraged to share the essay with a friend, family member, or peer for feedback. While the actions of this stage can be considered process pedagogy, the role of it is still current-traditional.

Our initial assumption of this section was that it is definitely current-tradition, especially because of the pre-write, write, revise structure. Although we were right in this assumption, we were also surprised that intertwined are elements of process pedagogy. Overall, this section of the book relies on current traditional pedagogy because of its uniform structure Throughout the writing process and chapters, while still providing the students with a few insights to process pedagogy.

__**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Strengths and Weaknesses **__

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">One early strength we saw in this section is the rubric provided on the first page of each chapter. Even though we initially thought the rubric would clutter the chapter with unbeneficial information, the rubric is actually very helpful if used correctly. It is in no way overbearing to the student or teacher because the bullets are very general. This allows the teacher freedom in building their own rubric, and also encourages the student to be creative and unique in their writing. Another strength of the rubric is its application to an example essay, for teachers and students to see how each element in the rubric can be satisfied. For example, Chapter 24's rubric advises students to include a strong introduction. When applied to the essay, it shows how a quotation can assist in that. Another strength we saw in the unit was the Real World application page. Many students challenge the material learned in classrooms because they believe it won't be useful outside of the school setting. The textbook resists this common belief by providing these students with the proof that the writing workshops will be very useful in a real world scenario.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Many of the elements in this section act as both a strength and a weakness. An example of this is the uniform layout of each chapter. This makes the unit very easy to guide through for both students and teachers. When there is a question on a specific element of the writing, the answer is easy to locate within the text. However, the uniform layout lacks the ability to emphasize the differences in the writing structures. To tie into this, a second example is the consistency of the current traditional structure of pre-write, write, revise. While this can act as a beneficial building block to student writers, we also believe it builds a comfort zone for them. The comfort zone can be challenged by restructuring the model from linear to recursive. The different modes greatly depend on different thought processes, but the pre-write, write, revise strategy discourages this belief. To keep this element from being a negative influence on a classroom, the teacher should continuously be challenging the writers to break past their comfort zone in order to build new writing experiences. A third element that we believe has both strong and weak characteristics is the Student Help Desk. The resource contains tools that are both beneficial and restricting to the students' writing. For example Chapter 20's Student Help Desk, the students are provided with an Idea Bank which helps the students brainstorm based on their own experiences. However, the same section provides a table displaying only two organizational patterns for a compare and contrast essay.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">A major weakness in this unit is the lack of process pedagogy. While the text does seem to sprinkle the pedagogy throughout the material, we believe its presence is not nearly emphasized enough. In our opinion, process pedagogy should be the major structure of the unit and current traditional should act as the assisting approach. By reversing these roles, we believe text would create a much stronger foundation for the classroom.

__**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Activities/Exercises **__

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">After each chapter there is a section called "Student Help Desk" where the book gives the students ideas and activities to do if they are having trouble with any of the type of writing involved in this section of the book. For example in chapter 17 in the student help desk section they gave the student the assignment of a checklist that they could fill out for their reflective essay. It told the students to check for such things as using the first person, if they described their important experience, if they explained the significance of the event, etc. This checklist is a good and easy way students can check to make sure they have everything they need to be successful in writing a reflective essay.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Another activity used in this section of the book that we found very interesting was in chapter 19 when they talk about how to go about writing an essay for Literary Interpretation. In the pre-writing stage the book tells the students to free write about the characters, the central conflict, and the theme of the book before they start writing their paper. We thought this activity was really interesting because it got away from the current traditional model of pre-write, write, revise they had been using in most of the chapters in this section of the book.