Blog Post #5 - Feedback

      

Honestly, I feel like I’ve surprised myself as a writing coach! I thought it was gonna be way harder than I thought! I mean it still takes me a lot of time to consider every aspect of a writer’s writing and their story, but I feel like I have been able to identify parts of storytelling and elements needed to help enhance their story. My only background has been from SPARK tutoring where the focus was on K-2^nd grade on forming letters, making basic sentences, and making sure that the spelling is correct. Which is completely different from what my goal is now as a writing coach! I’ve made sure that my suggestions focus on how to enhance the story and their storytelling in their writing. My goal is not to focus on their grammar or word structure so much as it is to get the writers to engage more with their story to enhance their storytelling. From what I noticed so far as a writing coach where writers need help is with developing their story. I like to ask the writer questions about their story and their writing to help them see if they’re missing anything and/or need to add anything. 

Teachers can support writers by demonstrating and guiding writers on what is expected. This comes from a sense where a teacher is giving the student a prompt to write about. I remember a message throughout these readings that has made me think about a technique I should do as a teacher with my students, which is write with them! I think it’s important for teachers to write with their students to help model the writing process, and this can invite students to collaborate with the teacher to help understand what this process looks like and what is expected of them. There’s an idea from Estep’s text, Centering Compassion in The Age of AI, that teachers should help students understand their audience and how their language and writing impacts the story they are telling based off of the audience. Specifically with feedback, I think teachers need to make sure that students are on the right track with the prompt and writing process. I don’t think it’s necessarily important for teachers to overly grade and worry about the grammar. It’s more beneficial to focus on the story telling and writing process to make sure that the student is following the prompt and putting effort into being descriptive and really getting into the role of a writer. 

Getting support from peers will help writers with making sure their story is readable and makes sense. I feel like peers of a writer is almost in a sense their audience and having them read the writing will help with knowing how they comprehend and understand the writing. I think it’s important for peers to tell the writer how they interpreted the writing. This will clear up what the writing has accomplished and what it might need work on! 

I feel like writing coaches have very similar jobs as the teacher and peers. Writing coaches dive deep into the writers writing and thinks about many possibilities of questions and suggestions to help enhance the writing. I like the idea from Segal’s text, A Writer’s Guide to Giving and Receiving Feedback, that the editor, in this case the writing coach, should understand what the writer wants. Does the writer have a specific question and idea that the writing coach should look for? This is helpful for the writing coach to give specific feedback that the writer is looking for. I think overall, the writing coach should be helping writers by getting the writer to engage with their story and storytelling.

A resource I found that seems very beneficial for young writers is Write The World. This resource invites writers into a writing community where they can share their writing in workshops and get feedback from others and experts. There are also free competitions that they can enter with their writing. This website even provides an AI resource that asks the writer Socratic questions to help them think about their writing. 

 

Blog Post #4 - Multimodal Composition

I feel like I don’t have many experiences of really diving into multimodal composition forms. My go to forms in class is making slides and posters for assignments. As I think about my past experiences in classes right now, I am starting to remember more and more randoms assignments that explored forms of multimodal composition. I’m shocked on what I am able to remember because at first I felt that I had no experience with multimodal composition. I feel a disconnection to this type of learning because I don’t get to play and practice with it as much as I do with typical papers and presentations. Even when I am in classes that open up the door for multimodal composition, I automatically feel uneasy and stressed. Which is strange because I love being creative and getting playful with my learning! I think the problem is that school has normalized this certain way of how learning is used and shown, that in those moments I am given the freedom to explore my learning in creative ways, I freeze. 

For one of my English classes, we were tasked with creating a social media account in google docs for a character apart of a story we were reading. My group was reading R.J. Palacio’s book Wonder at the time and chose to create a social media account for Summer Dawson. For her posts we would put down things, quotes, images, and songs that we think she would post. This activity really helped us step into her shoes and understand the story from her point of view. This is really the farthest I feel I have gotten with using technology with its many components of words, images, music, and mixing it with my learning in a creative way.

Here are two posts I have pulled from my old document of Summer’s social media account.

Profile: SummerDawson

POST 2: It feels refreshing to find people who can talk about interesting things and not talk about others in a hurtful way! 

Shared a post

• REASONING: Summer left her original table to sit with August. She did this because he seemed like he could use a friend. But she also left the table because they were being unkind and didn’t want to surround herself with their negativity. She’s a character who doesn’t like to gossip or involve herself in drama. This is why she would share this post because she resonates with the idea that people should be open to communication instead of gossip. Along with finding like-minded people who share the same interests. 

 

POST 5: @Auggie You know were best friends when we both have a Summer name haha!

                                                        Auggie Comment: It sure is!!!!!!

•   REASONING: Summer would post this because she is starting to get closer with Auggie as the story goes on. It’s clear that they both really value their friendship and kindness to each other. They seem to find this relationship refreshing where they can really talk to each other, and not about drama or gossip. They joked about having summer names in the story so I can see Summer tagging him and sharing that they’re best friends for having similar names. 

 

I am really interested and curious about book trailers and digital poetry because I feel like these are wonderful ways to show images and words as one. When images and words combine, it really tells an impactful story and message that sticks with the viewer. Especially, when I was younger I really appreciated when my teachers put book trailers on for the class. This allowed me to get a feel for the book and left me either wanting more or realizing that I actually wasn’t interested. I also believe that images enhance the message for promoting a book and for reading poetry. A visual or animation will pull a viewer in to engage with the words and find meaning between the image and words. Without this enhancement, when we view a reading or poem by the words itself, we aren’t nearly as active in our understanding of the meaning. I think it would be a challenge but very exciting for me to try and create some type of visual for either a book trailer or poem. 

In the future I plan to find and use images as a writer myself, as well as incorporate this into my teaching. Images and visuals give the viewer a whole new meaning to their understanding and allows students to connect that back to the writing itself. As writers, this will get students to think about their work in different ways and to allow them to connect all their ideas. Instead of a typical and basic lesson, I think it’s important that I use multimodal compositions as a part of my lesson so that students can see and explore many forms, and can understand the process it takes to create these forms. Whether this be digital poetry, music videos, zines, etc. This opens up doors and gives students choice, freedom, creativity, and agency in their learning on how they want to represent it. 

Blog Post #3 - The Blend of AI and Writing

 

My whole life I have never thought too much about AI and how this could be implemented into the classroom. As a student myself I have rarely used AI for my schoolwork, and even in general. It is not a tool that I ever felt I needed or wanted to use to help me in my writing or thought process. I barely even thought about ChatGPT until the end of last year when my friends who go to school for business went over the whole spiel about how ChatGPT is helpful for them. I understand that this tool can be helpful, but when they were talking about it and encouraging me to use it, I already felt off about the idea of me using ChatGPT. I was already thinking, Absolutely not, nope, not for me, thanks though! Towards the end of the school year, I finally indulged into the tool to help me understand some new ideas in words that would make more sense to me. It worked really well for me in a way that I could understand the concepts and better apply them to my work. Even though the tool worked for me, I am conflicted based on my beliefs and values surrounding the mind and environment. 

 

Like I mentioned before, for my own work I don’t tend to use or rely on AI tools. However, I do recognize that these tools are here and used by many students. So, I believe it’s my responsibility to learn about AI with its pros and cons. As well as, how it can be applied effectively in a classroom. Specifically using AI for writing can get tricky with its unreliability with incorrect information and biases. It’s important that students are aware of these negative aspects, and that students know the right steps when using AI to receive more reliable assistance in their writing. I also get nervous about students actually relying on AI too much where it does most of the work for them. Although, through this class I am able to see how AI can be useful as a writing assistant when students need help in receiving feedback for advice. I do believe there is an important and strategic way to go about using AI, cause this will help us use AI more effectively. 

From chapter one of Magliozze and Peterson’s book, AI in the Writing Workshop Finding the Write Balance, I find their steps very important in how to utilize AI with the writing process. There was an emphasis to write as much as you can and to struggle in the process and editing. After all the hard work, you can then move onto AI and put as much context, information, the assignment, and what you are hoping to know to help guide the feedback. Once you have read the feedback and maybe asked a few more questions, the writer needs to think for themselves and decide whether or not they are going to utilize or discard the feedback. 

 

I think teaching this strategy for students could be very helpful in getting them to prioritize the writing before they even get to the AI step. Doing the brainstorming and rough draft is the hardest part, and some students might be at different levels with how far they go in this step, but as long as they put as much effort into this part is critical. It allows the student to try and to see what they come up with first. When students do approach AI, putting in all the information regarding the assignment, context, and what you want AI to assist with will produce better and more effective feedback. However, it is important for students to think critically about the feedback they receive and to make their own decision on whether or not they want to apply those suggestions. 

 

Overall, entering AI in writing is new territory for me and I don’t know if I will ever personally use it that much. But AI isn’t going anywhere just because I won’t be using it, I know my students will be, so learning as much as I can and learning with them, about mixing writing and AI will make me a more supportive educator.