Teaching Journal #3

Monday I taught Berger and McCloud. For McCloud, I wanted them to understand the ideas of icons, universality, and the mask. The students really responded to the McCloud article, and when I questioned them as a class about the main ideas listed above, they even seemed to understand the article pretty well.

            Encouraged by my success in engaging them as a whole class with the McCloud article, I continued this method of whole class discussion with the Berger piece. This did elicit as much conversation as the McCloud piece did. In retrospect, I should have assigned them a group activity to get them trying out ideas on their neighbors before they presented them to the class. As it was, I ended up explaining most of the Berger piece to them, asking short questions along the way to keep them involved. And, although they perked up when I showed them images of the “nude” versus the “naked” today, overall they were not ready for whole-class discussion on a piece they were so uncertain about, and I should have eased them into it by using group work or individual in-class writing about the tougher ideas.

            Wednesday I gauged their willingness to talk at the beginning of class with an open-ended question about Allen’s article. When that failed, I decided to refresh their memory with the subject of the article by splitting them into pairs and having each pair write a characteristic of the “inspired writer” or the “real writer” on the board. This got them talking about the article to each other, at least. We went over the characteristics as a class, and I used this as well as their personal identifications as “real writers” as my way in to a conversation on the Allen piece.

            As I questioned them about the readings, I discovered that the students were not forthcoming about their lack of knowledge on what the articles were about, even on the basic level of vocabulary. I don’t know why this surprised me so much, as I know I have been guilty of pretending I know what someone is talking about when I really have no idea; who wants to look like a fool? I explained Allen’s phrase “alien discourse” to them when I realized they had no idea what the term meant, and made a mental note to myself to be on the lookout for tricky terminology.

            My plan for increasing their understanding through vocabulary found an immediate opportunity for experiment on Friday. While I passed back papers and took role, I had them individually write down definitions for vocabulary words I found in that day’s readings. Going over the definitions gave us a common pool of vocabulary and ideas for us to use as we collectively engaged the texts. It worked really well, I think, and I plan to use the exercise again as a way to get them thinking about the texts from the very beginning of class.

            I used Maggie’s group activity to get them to pick out the voices of Lamott, King, and Diaz in their respective essays. What I really liked about the exercise is that it forces them not only to pinpoint what they think voice is, but that it forces them to do so by finding examples within the text. I have had a hard time getting the students to look through their books for textual examples as we talk in class, so this activity was especially helpful in that regard.

           
 I am having a hard time balancing group work, individual writing, and whole class discussion. I feel like I either have too much of the first two and none of the last, or all class discussion (which usually turns out to be mediocre). I am thinking about doing a short individual writing assignment like the vocab definitions at the beginning of class, and then one group activity later on to keep them from zoning out during the whole class discussion.