Final Sample of Mentee's Written Work

This sample of my mentee's writing consists of a satirical cover letter that, based on the 5+1 writing traits rubric that I developed around a series of six levels, scored a "5" in ideas, a "5" in organization, a "5" in voice, a "5" in word choice, a "5" in sentence fluency, and a "5+" in conventions.

Reflections On Writing In My Subject Area

Though this professional learning blog has explored a variety of writing tasks, from poetry to narrative, that seek to allow students to develop their literacy skills as they familiarize themselves with subject-area content, I believe that my future practice will be biased towards the incorporation of more traditional writing assignments in the area of physics. In my view, it will prove difficult to convince students in the academic stream at the senior level, who are preparing to enter university and will likely be skeptical of the value more esoteric or non-traditional tasks, that poetry or narrative assignments are worthwhile. That said, if I find myself teaching science at the intermediate level, I believe that I will be able to explore the full range of writing tasks that are available to teachers who seek to foster literacy across the curriculum and enhance student learning through the use of such activities.

Instruction in my teachable subject of physics has stressed the value of lab quizzes and worksheets over formal lab reports at the senior level, given that the former two are completed in-class rather than at home or during one or more full class periods, but my exposure to a variety of different writing tasks in the Writing Across the Curriculum course has convinced me to employ all of the above-mentioned assessment options. While there are drawbacks to the traditional lab report, including production and marking time, the opportunity to foster student literacy through written introductions to such reports is a compelling justification for the inclusion of this assessment strategy in a senior-level physics course. In the case of lab activities that are to be assessed through formal reports, I will provide students with rubrics that include criteria based on compositional elements including adherence to the conventions of the English Language, structure, and clarity in addition to the usual assessment categories associated with the collection, manipulation, and reporting of data. The former will allow me to discuss writing skills and the important components of effective written work with students prior to, during, and after the submission of the written reports. I hope that this process will encourage students to internalize the skills and approaches that we discuss and to transfer them into other subject areas.

I see the value in developing writing tasks that encourage students to make connections between disciplines, guiding them to appreciate the interconnectedness of knowledge across the curriculum. Our responsibility as teachers is not simply to a particular subject, but to students and their evolution as whole learners and complete individuals. By establishing the natural links between multiple learning processes and subjects, I hope to equip and train students with the tools, skills, and views that enable them to approach real world issues from a variety of perspectives. Hopefully, given an education that recognizes the underlying links between fields, students will be able to examine complex and multifaceted problems in light of their multitude of contributing factors.

That said, in order for writing assignments to have advantageous long-term effects on student development, such activities must also have evident short-term benefits that encourage students to accept non-traditional learning processes as worthwhile and to continue to invest themselves. The writing tasks that I develop and implement should ideally allow students who are verbal-linguistic learners, rather than mathematical-logical, to appreciate subject area content in personally meaningful ways. By providing students with multiple modes to demonstrate their acquisition of knowledge while targeting and accommodating a variety of learning profiles through the conjunction of traditional and non-traditional tasks, I hope that I can encourage students to accept and to participate in the slightly unusual learning environment that I will seek to create.

Effective Transitional Statements

The following outline was developed to guide my mentee to improve the structure of his essays while transitioning more effectively between paragraphs and maintaining paragraph unity. Though the outline does not by any means reflect all of the components of an essay, it addresses the student's need to develop effective transitional topic sentences and a conclusion. This sheet could be returned to me prior to the composition of an essay so that the student can receive constructive feedback on transitional statements in order to improve his writing process.  

Outline

Topic:

Thesis statement (in the form of a statement, rather than a question):

Subject of paragraph two:

Transitional topic sentence:

Subject of paragraph two:

Transitional topic sentence:

Subject of paragraph three:

Transitional topic sentence:

Subject of paragraph four:

Transitional topic sentence:

Subject of paragraph five:

Transitional topic sentence:

Concluding statement:

Concluding paragraph (rather than merely restating the thesis or summarizing the essay, the conclusion elaborates on your argument, (a) connecting it to a broader question or larger subject that might itself be worthy of development into another essay, (b) considering the implications of the thesis and the subjects that the essay has addressed (What does the subject of this essay mean to a reader?), or (c) addressing a point that the essay may have left unresolved by suggesting that it might be of value to explore said point in greater detail in order to conduct a complete analysis of the topic.

Suggestions

• Answer the question "So What?"
  

  Show your readers why this paper was important. Show them that your paper was meaningful and useful.

• Synthesize, don't summarize
  
  • Don't simply repeat things that were in your paper. They have read it. Show them how the points you made and the support and examples you used were not random, but fit together.
    

• Redirect your readers
  
  • Give your reader something to think about, perhaps a way to use your paper in the "real" world. If your introduction went from general to specific, make your conclusion go from specific to general. Think globally.
    

• Create a new meaning
  
  • You don't have to give new information to create a new meaning. By demonstrating how your ideas work together, you can create a new picture. Often the sum of the paper is worth more than its parts.

Mentee Checklist

The following one page checklist has been adapted from an online resource to target the specific areas in which my student writer struggles. The list could adapted to suit students at a variety of grade levels, and the list of items could be expanded or contracted in order to address the needs of a particular class or student.  

1. Introduction:

❒ The thesis statement clear.

❒ The thesis statement states the specific argument that the essay will advance/the specific subject that the essay will explore.

❒ The introduction frames the thesis, introducing the subject to be explored, and does not provide too little, or too much, information.

❒ The introduction elaborates on the way in which the essay will address its topic or develop its argument.

2. Body:

❒ The essay develops in a logical manner; the subject of one paragraph leads naturally into the subject of the next and all paragraphs address the thesis.

❒ The argument develops in an effective manner; subjects are organized so as to guide a reader to accept the argument or to easily understand the issue explored in the essay.

❒ Each paragraph has a transitional topic sentence that guides the reader through the essay from one paragraph to the next.

❒ Each paragraph is unified, addressing only one topic.

❒ Quotations are integrated properly.

❒ Quotations are integrated effectively and judiciously.

3. Conclusion:

❒ The conclusion does not simply restate the thesis; synthesis of ideas is evident.

❒ The conclusion does not introduce a new supporting argument.

4. Writing Style

❒ Homonyms (its vs. it's; course vs. coarse) are employed correctly.

❒ There is no pronoun confusion (i.e. when used, pronouns such as he, she, it, and they clearly refer back to a specific noun).

❒ The essay uses the active voice.

❒ Whenever appropriate, the essay is in the present tense.

❒ The essay is free from cliches and colloquialisms. Academic/formal language is used throughout.

❒ There are no contractions.

❒ The essay employs all words and content-area specific terms correctly.

❒ There is no repetition of sentence construction

❒ There are few instances of repeated word use in a compressed area of the essay.

❒ Repetitious ideas/restatements of the same idea have been eliminated.

Student Resources

Having conducted further reviews of my mentee's work, I located the several online resources that will help me to address the evident gaps in his pre-writing, writing, and post-writing processes.   

Conclusions:

This resource provides a concise overview of the purpose and principal components of a properly-constructed conclusion.

http://www.canberra.edu.au/studyskills/writing/conclusions

The following resource elaborates on the relatively simplistic treatment of conclusions provided above; both have merits, though the former resource may have more value for a student at the level with which we are concerned.

http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/conclusions/

The following resources are template checklists for teacher evaluation and student self-evaluation.

http://tcdsbstaff.ednet.ns.ca/hwalsh/LAW%2012/Concise%20Essay.Writing.Checklist.pdf

http://www.gallaudet.edu/tip/english_center/writing/essay_check_list.html

http://www.roanestate.edu/owl/essayrev.html

Sample of Mentee's Written Work with Mentor Comments

I have assessed this sample of my mentee's written work and obtained his permission to display it in this blog after inserting constructive feedback in an effort to address what I view as the major impediments to his effective communication of ideas. This piece could be used as an exemplar. In a guided activity, students could identify the text's strengths, weaknesses, and errors and then correct them in order to better understand the criteria by which their work is to be judged and to gain experience in the critical post-writing review process.
 

Mentoring Student Writer: Resource List

After assessing several samples of my mentee's written work, I came to the conclusion that weaknesses in his pre-writing process hindered his ability to communicate effectively. In general, I found that:

(1) The student's work was marred by errors related to grammar and use of homonyms (its vs. it's; there vs. their)

(2) Topic sentences were usually weak or unrelated to the subject of their associated paragraphs. Consequently, these paragraphs often demonstrated a lack of unity.

(3) Transitional sentences were often absent or did not lead logically into the subjects addressed in the following paragraph.

and

(4) The student's work included multiple colloquialisms and contractions that detracted from the tone that he set out to establish; radical variations in tone were common due to shifts between formal and informal discourse.

I compiled this list of resources in an effort to address the issues that I identified.

(1)

It's vs. Its and There vs. Their

http://its-not-its.info/
http://www.wikihow.com/Sample/There-Their-and-They're


(2)
Concept map to address the pre-writing process and as the student expressed some signs that he might be a primarily visual learner. potential

http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/printouts/30699_concept_map.pdf

Articles on the appropriate use of contractions in a variety of written forms:

Business writing
http://www.instructionalsolutions.com/blog/bid/82807/Contractions-in-Business-Writing

http://www.businesswritingblog.com/business_writing/2006/04/dont_use_contra.html

In general written work
http://www.plainlanguage.gov/howto/guidelines/bigdoc/writeContract.cfm


(2&3)

Discussions on paragraph length and unity:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/606/02/
http://www.dailywritingtips.com/how-long-should-a-paragraph-be/
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/exercises/grammar/grammar_tutorial/page_39.htm

(4)

Elimination of colloquialisms/formal vs. informal discourse:
http://vandenbroek.weebly.com/uploads/2/4/3/5/24359759/formalinformal.pdf
http://www.wikihow.com/Avoid-Colloquial-%28Informal%29-Writing