A Week 4 Post: Hillocks and Me

I will say that this week's reading of Hillocks was certainly an enjoyable one: very accessible and reasonable. I got to read chapters 1-3 and they did help me see fact, judgment, and policy writing. All of these chapters were formatted with a short introduction followed by a case study-like story. Before I reflect on the chapters and their content, I want to speak on the format of the chapters first. The stories did help me contexualize the formation of "argument writing" inside of the classroom, and that is something we have been lacking in our grad school readings, in my humble opinion. Being said, I did sometimes just get lost in reading the stories. The bullet points for the lesson plans being layed out helped me stay focused, and reminded me that I wasn't just reading a story but also analyzing pedagogical practices. But, due to the pacing of the stories, I got more involved in the development of the characters, teachers, and the classroom than looking at the actual lesson plan. I don't think the story form can't work, but breaks to step out and have the author, along with the reader, process the lesson would have been nice and helpful.

Alright, now onto the more meat and potatoes of my reflection of the three chapters. Personally, I want to focus on the third chapter on "Arguments of Policy." I absolutely loved the points being made in centering the students writing on topics that are most important to them. The book elaborated by describing that allowing students to conduct their own research their own topics leads to greater engagement and focus on topics that matter to them. And which catch all term does this relate back to? Yep, good ol' Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. Internally, I had a bit of a revelation on research: it is kinda stuffy. Asking us to go find sources and use them to form arguments causes researchers and readers to buy more into what they read rather than what they synthesize from opinion and other texts. Plus, I foresee this kind of teaching as a form that can yield collaboration from other teaching domains. What kind of awesome could come from a research project that asks students to make a claim on policy using research from social sciences in an ethics class, scientific research from biology class, and centered in good writing practices from English class?! It might take a lot of collaboration, but I feel it would be well worth the effort.

One idea I will keep in mind, to prevent raising alarms, is making sure to scaffold students with the proper rhetorical etiquette. By this, I mean to speak to how students phrase their arguments so they don't off put the readers. Connecting with Atwell, I'd expect these arguments to be read to people whom the issues directly affect (i.e. principals, teachers, policy makers).When asking students to speak to issues that affect them, strong opinions will undoubtably come out, in fact I hope they do. But if the students come into the writing with the idea that "I'm going to tell 'the man' to go jump off a cliff,", then they most likely will not get very far with their argument. There is a certain rhythm and rhyme to this kind of diplomatic measure. Hillocks says that this can be done by presenting claims based in fact and research. As a teacher, I would make sure that students also present a counter opinion and refute it with a clear and concise rebuttal (another Hillocks point from the introduction), and make sure they keep their writing emotionally motivated but free of the potential biases of that emotion.

Weekly links!

http://www.amazon.com/Theatre-Oppressed-Augusto-Boal/dp/0930452496

This is an Amazon link to a really amazing book I read in my theatre undergrad called Theatre of the Oppressed. It is based in Freire but uses theatre techniques and acting practices to help give the marginalized a voice in a safe yet politically charged space. Often, this is done through the use of role play; a theme touch on in one of the readings. I highly recommend reading it, especially since it acts as a great resource for engaging students in culturally relevant activities.




So, I came across a review of the Hillocks book while looking for this week's link. Other than the very distinctive British/ robot voice, I found it to be a rather simplistic summary of the book. I would argue that whoever made this video simply scribed a summary of the book with only a small littering of actual opinion. Taking a nod from Hillocks, I would say the review used little evidence, even from the text, to support their claim. I figure my own evaluation of this review was worth using one of my links this week, because we should stay critical of some of these review voices, especially as new teachers.

http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/analyzing-famous-speeches-arguments-30526.html?tab=1#tabs

I love the spoken word. The way in which a text is spoken adds so much to a speech. All too often, I feel speech is shunted to the side. Thus, I was happy to find a lesson plan that connects argument writing with the spoken word. While I would probably create an alternative formative assessment, I thought the lesson plan was really well detailed with a daily breakdown of activities and engagements. Plus it reminded me of my intercession unit at Crosswinds, which I will always hold near and dear to my heart ("Why me?!"; inside joke).