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Today's guest blogger is Kim Haimes-Korn, a Professor in the English Department at Kennesaw State University. Kim’s teaching philosophy encourages dynamic learning, critical digital literacies and focuses on students’ powers to create their own knowledge through language and various “acts of composition.” She likes to have fun every day, return to nature when things get too crazy and think deeply about way too many things. She loves teaching. It has helped her understand the value of amazing relationships and boundless creativity. You can reach Kim at khaimesk@kennesaw.edu or visit her website Acts of Composition.
Many of us find ourselves in larger class settings and look for new ways to encourage critical reading and writing. In one of my other Multimodal Mondays posts, Five for the Drive, I identified 5 easy ways that I have used Google Drive in my classes. I first came up with these assignments when I found myself teaching a literature class that had 35 students. The writing teacher in me wanted my students to write daily reflections on their reading selections and share those ideas with others. Although this worked for years, students often considered it a burden and it required quite a bit of reading and evaluation on my part. I decided it was time for a new model.
First, I had to figure out what I considered important when it comes to critical reading:
It is with these ideas in mind that I came up with this series of critical reading assignments.
Background Reading
The St. Martin’s Handbook: Ch. 7, “Reading Critically”
The Everyday Writer (also available with Exercises😞 Ch.9, “Critical Reading”
EasyWriter (also available with Exercises😞 Ch.7, “Analyzing and Reading Critically”
Assignment Series
Example of Question and Passage Template
Example of Student Questions and Passages: Emerson
Example of Facilitated Discussion
Example of Collaborative Passages for Full Class Discussion
Reflection on the Activities
I was originally motivated to create this series to manage larger classes and still encourage critical reading strategies. Now, I use them across my classes because they promote the kind of close reading that students often resist. Evaluation is easier because I am not reading full essays and can easily check for quality participation. Students also weigh in on the evaluation twice during the semester and report on their teammates’ participation and the significance of their responses. I also ask them to reflect, in writing, several times during the semester and read across their work from these collaborative discussions. I am not trying to say that these methods should replace exploratory, essay, or research writing. On the contrary, when students curate their ideas along with textual connections, they are more prepared to expand upon them in other writing projects. The most satisfying result is the quality of our class discussions. Every student participates and has a chance to have their ideas heard (which sometimes gets lost in full class discussion). Students always have available references to share with the class and are ready to contribute to the larger dialogic conversations.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
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