Week 4 – Canceled Lab.
If I've learned anything from this experience, it's that while the classroom is the only place to put new teaching ideas to the test, it is far more successful in demonstrating Murphy's Law. I was approached shortly before class by an English Department supervisor who explained to me that he needed to use my writing lab period for the student to complete an online survey and evaluation of the class. While he explained that this procedure would only take approximately 10-15 minutes of a 45-minute lab, his decision to do so in the middle of the period (to accommodate students arriving late) meant that I was not going to get any lab work from the students that week. This was going to put a dent in my quantitative data, which is, sadly, already sketchy due to students whose work was late or missing, but as it was unavoidable, I decided that it was easy enough to overcome, and resigned myself to the inconvenience.
I left the lab and proceeded to the classroom so that I could prepare for the week's activities. Almost immediately, students began filing in. The Department Supervisor appeared, and explained that the web site for the online survey was down, and that he was going to have to reschedule the survey for next week. This meant that I was losing not one, but two weeks of in-class work (three, counting the week off from spring break), which means it is no longer usable as quantitative data – without a steady stream of work, it is impossible to spot patterns of improvement or decline.
It is fortunate that I had previously realized that reliable quantitative data was going to be difficult to secure, and had already shown more of an interest in the students' in-class activities and participation, meaning that a qualitative study of the effects of Jacobs' cubing strategies was still salvageable.
I began the lesson with a review from two weeks ago, classification and division strategies, using mythology as an example. I picked up by leading the class in an exercise in the third classification of myth, the oldest kind, known as “Divine Myths.” Using the recent Japanese earthquake as an example, I asked them if they knew what caused earthquakes to happen. One of the native English students was able to explain it well enough: “It's like the Earth is made of these big plates of rock under the ground, and sometimes they bump into each other, and that makes an earthquake.” I mentioned that while that may be the answer we all know today, people living in ancient times would have no way of knowing any of that – so how would people living hundreds, even thousands of years ago, explain it when the ground they stood on suddenly started to shake?
I explained that ancient peoples often made up stories, usually involving gods or monsters, to explain natural phenomena that they didn't understand. I gave an example of the Greek myth of Hades and Demeter to show how the Greeks explained the changing seasons. Persephone, daughter of Demeter, Goddess of nature, was kidnapped by Hades and forced to be his bride. Zeus, leader of the gods, eventually decided that Persephone would spend six months of the year with Hades (during which time Demeter would express her anger by refusing to allow plants to grow, thus explaining fall and winter), and the other six months, Persephone would be home with her mother (during which time, the world was green and happy, ergo, spring and summer).
I then divided the students into small groups, and asked them to imagine themselves as members of their own ancient civilization. Their first task as a group was to decide on a name for themselves. I have done this exercise in the past, and I've found that naming the group not only encourages them to participate with each other, but also gets them to put more effort into the assignment – it becomes more fun when a teacher is referring to you as “the Rama-Lamas” instead of “Group Number 3” – and, as I jokingly told then, “If you don't have a name, then how can the history books write about you?”
I then explained that each “civilization” has just experienced a natural disaster and that the people were turning to them (as the oldest and wisest among them) for answers: there were five groups, so I chose five disasters off the top of my head for them to explain: Earthquake, Flood, Blizzard, Tornado, and Tsunami.
Once again, this exercise has been an old favorite of mine for years. I had begun to realize that so long as the students were enthusiastically involved in an activity – any activity – it would be easy for an equally enthusiastic instructor to guide the class towards teachable moments.
Sarah and Paula were part of the “earthquake” group, who called themselves “The Ancients.” They had come up with an amusing story about how a giant lived under the ground, and how the Earth shook because it was hungry, and it's stomach was growling. I noticed that it was one of the other members of the group who actually related this story to the class, but Sarah and Paula were nodding their heads in agreement and smiling. I had observed that they had participated in the invention of the story, even if they had both declined to share it with the class.
Carlos was in the “blizzard” group, and he, speaking on behalf of “The Summits,” told a story about a summer city and a winter city at war with each other – The Summits were presumably the summer city, and the winter city was attacking them with snow.
Even though not all the study participants had performed in front of the class, I did notice they were all actively involved within their own groups. It was towards the end of the class that one of the students had a question about FE6, which was due in two weeks – would I be changing the topic for that one as I had for the previous two, or would we be returning to the syllabus? Even though I had originally intended to end the study after next week's PT2, I was curious to see how much of the cubing technique would stay with the students, both in and out of my group of study participants. Therefore, I answered that the final Formal Essay of the class would be from the book, but (without specifically listing the steps on the board) I encouraged the students to use the cubing technique if at all possible.
Week 5 – Practice Test #2 (PT2) Administered
The lab work for this week consisted only of completely the evaluation that had not been done the previous week. The practice test was administered afterward.
Week 6 – Argumentation and a few more games.
The syllabus' theme for this week was argumentation, and I decided that the best way to make the lesson relevant for the students was to open by making a game out of it. I gave them a starting definition for two terms – argument, which is the use of reasoning in order to persuade, and reasoning, which is our ability to think, solve problems, and form conclusions.
I told the students that since reasoning was an important part of this week's lesson, we'd warm up our reasoning skills with a few brainteasers. I began with an old one: there were two sisters, both born on the same day from the same parents, who both looked exactly alike, and yet, they were not twins. How was this possible?
I encouraged the class to call out answers and possible solutions, noticing that the English learners were tentatively joining in, although perhaps not as enthusiastically as the native speakers. With every wrong answer, I made sure to compliment the student on their creativity, and point out how they were demonstrating their own reasoning abilities. As I reminded the students why their answers were incorrect, I explained to them another important term for argumentation – refutation. I would remind them of one of the facts I had previously mentioned, and explained how that fact refuted their explanation. For example, when one student suggested two different mothers, I reminded her that I had specifically said that they had the same parents.
The key to an exercise such as this is timing – knowing when to stop the exercise and give the answer before the students stop having fun and get frustrated. When the answers started to trickle off, I explained that the only way all of my statements could be true is if the girls were not twins, but, in fact, triplets; there was a third sister which I hadn't mentioned.
I moved on to a second brainteaser, a “locked room” mystery which I had heard when I was young In an empty room, a man was able to reach up and grab a bag of money hanging from a ceiling, despite the fact that the bag was far too high for him to reach or jump for. I informed the students that the only remarkable thing about the room was that there was about 3 inches of water on the floor, and that nothing had been brought into or taken out of the room. So how was the man able to reach the bag?
It took about five minutes, again with creative responses such as throwing his shoe at the bag, or weakening the bag by throwing water on it, but one student, Sarah, one of my long term learners, hit on the correct answer – the water in the room was originally a block of ice, which the man stood on top of to reach for the money. It became clear during this exercise that students were willing to participate in exercises even when they were unsure of the correct answer, and no longer concerned about the social consequences of giving a wrong answer, as they freely giggled at each other's wrong guesses.
These exercises were personal favorites of mine, although this marks the first time I had ever used either of them as part of a lesson. I had made the connection a few days before the class began and decided that these riddles would be an ideal introduction to the subject matter of reasoning skills. Once again, I was able to keep the students engaged by keeping myself on familiar and relevant ground.
After these warm-up exercises, I proceeded with an exercise to explain the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning, summarizing both by pointing out that reasoning is nothing more than taking what you already know and applying it to what you don't know yet. I was tempted to make a reference to Sherlock Holmes at this point, bringing the class back to those discussions, but decided against it – too much time had passed.
The textbook contained in it a series of argumentative essays divided by topic. Rather than choose a particular topic and divide the class, I assigned one particular essay for the class to read, either individually or in groups, and observe how the author had used a variation of the “cubing” process to establish his thesis. That is to say, the author used, in a single essay, almost all of the writing patterns discussed in the textbook, dividing them neatly among paragraphs.
The essay itself was “Why Americans Hate This 'Immigration' Debate,” by Herbert Meyer. While I had only chosen the essay because of the author's use of a cubing-like style, I had expected the topic (the author speaks out against immigration reform, particularly Hispanic immigration) to be of interest in a class composed mostly of Hispanic students. I was not disappointed, but I was, to a certain extent, surprised at the main participants.
Vicky related a personal story about some friend she knew who had been put out of business because of illegal labor, and Carlos immediately jumped in and added his own story of a friend of his who had been out of work for some time with a similar predicament. The two of them began a back-and forth dialogue, discussing the author's ideas about dealing with illegal immigrants, the author's distinction between immigrants and “guest workers,” and even going beyond the article itself to discuss ideas for what the government should do, and the consequences.
It was interesting to observe, although I did notice that while they were speaking, none of the other students were participating, although they were listening as intently as I was. As much as I didn't want these two students to monopolize the class time, I couldn't help but notice the change in Carlos' demeanor from previous classes. No longer trying to be the “class clown,” he was clear and serious about his point of view, listened to Vicky's ideas, conceded some of her points, and still was able to explain himself, not completely fluently but still understandably, and his position. It is at this point that I am truly starting to see the real value of Jacobs' work – the cubing itself is incidental; what she had really hit on was the importance of making the classroom work, both oral and written work, interesting and relevant to the students.
I had originally thought that her suggestion of having the students write about their own lives was just a novel idea, but I now see it as a vital component of this or any other educational endeavor. We take for granted that students should be interested in subject matter, but nothing compares to seeing students speaking openly and earnestly about topics close to their own experiences.
On a less encouraging note, only a handful of essays for FE6 were handed in on time. I was greatly disappointed in the sharp class-wide drop in participation, and realized that this would make it impossible to include FE6 in the study as originally planned.
Week 7 – Bringing Things to a Close.
As this was to be the final lab session of the school year, I decided to throw the students an easy question, and asked them to simply write a short in-class essay asking them what advice they would give students taking the course next year. I consider this assignment a sort of self-evaluation, and figured that it would give me some insight into what the students got out of the class, and how better to structure it in the future.
One thing that this week's session has clearly shown me is that the cubing process Is best maintained throughout the school year. This week's class was scheduled as a review session, as it is the final class before the required WPT Exit Test. The subject for this week was to be “Combining the Patterns,” where the students discuss how to use the various writing patterns together in single essays, and observe how they work together. As I had already decided that I had gathered as many data and observations during the study as I was going to, I had, at this point, chosen to discontinue it, and spent this session engaged in more traditional (pre-study) techniques. The effect was immediately obvious.
The sample essay studied was an article by Lars Eighner entitled “On Dumpster Diving,” and chronicled his experiences living as a homeless man for three years, depending on dumpsters for food and other necessities. This article was chosen by the text as it contained examples of every writing pattern discussed in the text, and was annotated for the students' ease. Nevertheless, I quickly noticed that the students, possibly because this article was outside their own experience, showed far less interest or participation than in previous articles. There was no special attempt to connect the literature to students' own experience, presumably because none of them had ever been homeless. However, I did notice that Vicky did share some of her opinions about drug use and addiction, prompted by a mention in the essay of the value of discarded pill bottles. Expecting a repeat of last week, I expected Carlos to add in, but he remained silent.
Another thing I noticed was that the final formal essays (which I had not specifically instructed to be written with the cubing technique) were mostly missing. I had received only two essays on time the week before, another four this week, and several promises form students, including Carlos, that the essays would be either handed in next week or emailed in the interim. This, however, cannot be shown to correlate to the stoppage of the cubing technique, as students are notoriously lax in their study habits towards the end of the year. Still, it was a disappointing blow to an already emaciated quantitative study – even if the students do eventually hand in the final papers, they will not be received in time to be included in this study.
In all, this final class was uneventful. After briefly reviewing the roles of the various writing styles, and reminding the students of the procedure and protocol of the WPT Exit Test, I returned old essays to them (previously unreturned due to absences), fielded any questions the students may have had (they had none), and, as a kind gesture, dismissed the class about 45 minutes ahead of schedule.
Carlos approached me after class, wishing to talk to me about his missing work. After a brief discussion, of what he was missing (nearly everything assigned over the semester), he expressed concern over his grade and promised to deliver the missing work for the next class (the absolute deadline I had set to accept late papers). While I am skeptical that he will succeed in this herculean task, or that any work he does manage to hand in will be of sufficient quality to offset his lagging grade, I must admit that I am somewhat impressed by his change in attitude. This is the first time that he expressed any interest in his grades, and the first time he has approached me on his own to discuss his work. While I suspect it may simply be (justified) end-of-semester anxiety, I am hopeful that this may also be a sign of growing confidence in himself and the beginnings of a serious academic mindset.
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