Michael Buckhoff Teaching Assistantship
Excerpts from teaching journals that I use while teaching English 101.
January 8, 1996
Course Plan
To begin the class, use clarity and be simple. Tell students your name,
course number and meeting times. Show them a copy of the St. Martin’s Guide
to Writing as well as A Writer’s Reference. Before handing out the
syllabus, spend some time going over the course objectives and descriptions.
Show examples of computer disks, notebooks, folders, loose leaf paper etc that
the students might need for the course. Ask if there are any questions. Use a
lot of repetition so as to avoid any misunderstandings
Then hand out the syllabus and carefully go over it line by line. Emphasize
attendance and late work policies. Only documented excuses will result in a
student making up a missed day or assignment. Assign an in-class writing
assignment at the end of class. My assignment was "Introduce yourself to me
and share with me what your attitudes are toward writing". Make first
homework assignment as noted in the syllabus. Instruct students to be prepared
to talk about the reading next class. End of class.
Look Back
The beginning of class was fairly smooth. The class was packed as there was
standing room only. Three students wanted to add the class so I instructed them
that they could only add the class through tracs and that was contingent on
someone else dropping the class. I covered the entire syllabus.
After reading the students first in-class writing assignment, I have more of
a feel for the class. Some of the concerns that the students have about writing
came out in the assignment. They are as follows:
C
One student loves to write but says she has trouble organizing
the conclusions of her essays.
C
A second language learner says she loves writing but has the
tendency to have recurring grammatical problems that she wants help dealing
with.
C
One student was only able to write a few lines of this
assignment and he said that he suffers from writer’s block.
C
Many of the students claimed that they had problems analyzing
and delving into the more concrete type of writing. In other words, they are
good writing in generalities but when it comes to using specific details
they are stumped as how to go about doing it.
C
Other students have had great experiences with writing {so they
say in their paper}.
I spent about 45 minutes writing comments on each of their papers in an
attempt to assure them that this class would help address and hopefully find
solutions to many of the problems that they encounter when dealing with the
writing process.
January 10, 1996
Course Plan
Role count. Circulate the roll sheet around and have students mark their
attendance. While this is being done, hand back the first writing assignment
with instructor’s comments. Verbally address some of the main concerns
expressed by the students in their essays. After that, finish going over the
syllabus; specifically go over the response journal section and hand out a
sample journal response entry. Inform them that the first journal entry over the
instructions/readings is due January 17,1996. Ask for questions on the response
journal. Have group activity. Students practice telling each other event stories
and then ask each other audience based awareness questions.
Go assigned reading "Hand my Own Life." Ask students was the
significance of the story is. Introduce the heuristic strategy of narrative
pace. Ask them if they can identify the one time incidents of the story that
were written with particular detail as well as identifying the other parts of
the story that were summarized or paraphrased. Why do they do this?
Look Back
Everything went smoothly until the response/journal part of the class. I
re-explained the response journal but I anticipate that there will be even more
questions next class. It seems that I have a pretty good group of students. They
are appear to be alert, and they always come to class on time!! I hope that they
keep it up. It seemed that they understand the fact that writers make choices
based on their purpose and audience and they present themselves according to
those choices. They recognized that it is important to organize and to pace the
action so as to create dramatic tension in the story. One student commented that
it was important to describe scenes and people in such a way as to make the
story vivid and specific.
The problem was, though they recognized that strategy in their oral
interactions with their partners, they had a lot of difficulty identifying the
same strategy in the assigned essay "Handed My Own Life." They had
problems identifying where in the story used specificities and where in the
story used more general type language. I helped them recognize the verb forms
and nouns in areas of the story that was using more detail as well as finding
other verbs and nouns that were reflecting back at the story in an attempt to
generalize or summarize a particular feeling or experience.
January 12, 1996
Course Plan
C
Make oral presentation assignments. Use the numbers 1-24 and
have students pick a number. Next class session have conferences with the
first six students who will be speaking next week so that they have focus
and direction.
C
Address some of the concerns that the students have with the
response journals. Mention that for Friday journals they will need to write
summaries and responses about the following items: syllabus, chapter 1,
group activity that we participated in on January 10, Handed My Own Life
and On Being a Real Westerner essays. Tell the students that
on the assigned readings that they should include in the journals the
answers to the discussion and analysis questions that directly come after
the reading. Hopefully this will give the students more guidance and
instruction as to what my expectations are in regards to the journal.
C
Explain the features of essays about remembered events. They
are: a well told story, a vivid presentation of significant scenes and
people, and autobiographical indication of the significance. Expound on each
of these by using examples from the readings to help the students recognize
how these features work. When they start on the writing assignment,
and peer review, review these features again as they look to see how well
they as well as their peers have used and developed these features in
writing. The students will not be able to critically examine a peer’s
essay if they do not know these features.
C
Have a common assessment having the students grade essay samples
using the scoring guide in their syllabus. The purpose of this activity is
to minimize the task representation among students as well as between the
instructor and the student. The exercise is preparatory to the students’
doing the middle draft peer review which is scheduled January 24. It will
also help prepare them for the common midterm assessment.
January 12, 1996
Look Back
Oral presentation assignments have been made. Some of the students as to be
expected are apprehensive about this assignment. But they took their numbers and
their place.
I re-explained the journals again in class. I was very explicit and specific.
In short, I instructed them to include in their journals responses and summaries
from the syllabus, Chapter 1, the group activity that we did in class, the two
essays "Handed my Own" and "On Being a real Westerner."
The added structure to the assignment seemed to help the students get a grip
of what they should do. It seems that the students don’t like a lot of
flexibility. This probably results from the fact that the students are mostly
freshmen and consequently have not had a lot of college experience. Structure
gives them a sense of stability. They felt more in control. And least that is
the impression I am getting from my group of students.
After that, we discussed the features of essays about remembered events. I
tried to give them specific examples from the reading so that they would have
something tangible to see and examine. Most students seem to be understanding
the material. I cautioned the students to avoid making too many generalizations
in their essays. The reader needs to have specific examples to back up the
generalizations used. The discussion went fine but I think many students are
wondering how do I know if my story will be interesting to the audience. The
invention activity next class should help the students find the answer to this
question.
After we explained basic features of essays about remembered events, I had
the students comment on how they would grade five sample essays from former
English 101 students. I was wanting to see how close each of the students would
be in comparison to my assessment of the essays. Note how I scored the following
essays:
Essay A = 6 Superior
Essay B = 3+ Marginal
Essay C = 5 Strong
Essay D = 6 Superior
Essay E = 4 Adequate
In order to give the students some direction as to how we should grade these
essays, I told them that the range was from 3+ to 6.
Below is how the students scored the essays.
After the students scored each essay, we discussed the basic features in each
of the essays and why or why not it deserved the grade that they attached to it.
It is at this point that I disclosed my grade for the essays. I was pleased with
this exercise because most of the students were able to successfully assess the
essays. Only two students had a discrepancy of two points. I took some time to
explain to them why I had given the grade I had using the essays as models. I
had thought about doing this exercise last quarter but I didn’t. I got the
idea from Ed White.
Note: This exercise seemed to boost the students’ confidence. I hope they
will be able to use this confidence when writing their own essays.
January 26, 1996
Course Plan
The class that you will observe will consist of the peer editing of the final
draft of the event essay, a group inquiry , and lastly group discussions on the
assigned reading Love: The Right Chemistry.
I. Peer Editing
A. In this activity the students trade essays and edit drafts for minor
grammatical errors such as typos.
B. Do not write on the student’s essays. Make a note on another sheet of
paper and then show the student when your are done reading.
II. Introduce explaining concepts to class
A. What it is?
A concept refers to a major idea or principle.
B. Physics-atom
C. Psychiatry- schizophrenia
D. Literature-irony
E. American Government-liberalism vs. conservatism ideologies
F. Linguistics-descriptive grammar
G. Physical Education-biomechanics
Concepts are central to the understanding of almost every subject. Human
knowledge is made possible by concepts. When you think about it, our brains
evolved to do conceptual work-to create concepts, communicate them and to use
them to think.
III. Why we should do it?
A. It will help you to read textbooks, which exist to explain concepts.
B. It will prepare you to write a common type of exam an assignment.
C. It will acquaint you with the basic strategies of definition,
classification, comparison, process narration- which are all types of
explanatory writing.
IV. What are some of the essays basic features?
A. Serves the limited but important purpose of informing readers.
B. Deals almost exclusively with established information. It does not argue
for its points.
C. Simply put, it is a way for a reader to find out about a particular
subject.
D. It should be interesting. Readers often read out of curiosity or out of
necessity. Bad writing can turn us off.
E. When the information is too slow or too fast, or when the info is over our
heads or too far below, we as readers will lose interest. I think you will find
that the essay that we are going to talk about today was able to meet the
challenge successfully. That is Toufexis was able to present new and interesting
information on a concept that we have been talking about for a very long time.
We have all experienced the concept of love but how can we as writers explain it
in a way that will engage the audience.
F. Promising and unpromising topics
1. The least problematic are those concepts that are established.
2. Problematic topics are:
a. Concepts undergoing change. Acknowledge of recent developments and rapidly
evolving trends are vital to concepts such as mental illness and democracy. Even
with nutrition for example, recent developments in fat reduction (i.e. illustre)
are fast occurring.
b. Concepts about controversial issues. It is important to know the
distinction between the two genres of explanatory and persuasive writing. Your
opinion should not be obviously stated or fore grounded in the essay. Topics
such as racism, recycling, lobby reform should be presented in a balanced,
informative way rather than a partisan, argumentative way.
c. Concepts about personal life. It is OK to have this focus as long as you
move beyond personal experience to published sources.
V. Group Inquiry (See page 164-165) Fifteen minutes
A. Explain a concept to a small group of their peers. Following the student’s
mini- presentation, the listeners will share something that they learned about
the concept. B. Discuss as a group what you have learned from the experience.
*What surprised you most about this activity?
*What was most/least satisfying about explaining your concept?
*What strategies did you find yourselves using to present your concepts?
VI. Group Discussions Love: The Right Chemistry
A. Group discussions (See page 168)
1. Students divide into groups of five-six students
2. Group spends 10 minutes doing a quick write answering their assigned
discussion/analysis question. After the ten minutes, the group discusses their
responses to the question.
3. Time permitting, the group reports their discussion of question to the
rest of the class.
B. Assigned questions
1. Group 1-Nature meant love to sputter out in four years
2. Group 2-Monogamy with clandestine adultery; love map ideal partner
3. Group 3-Analysis question #1
4. Group 4-Analysis question #2 and #3
5. Group 5-Analysis question # 4
January 26, 1996
Look Back
The activities went smooth for the most part. I had to prompt the different
groups when they began to analyze the heuristics used in the essay Love the
Right Way. For example, one group was looking at how the essay used
transitional sentences as cohesive devices linking the given and the new
information in the essay. Because they were having trouble getting started, I
showed the group leader an example of a cohesive device used in the third
paragraph. Once everyone in the group saw the first example, they then got
started doing the analysis. I guess they just need the first push. I was pleased
with how they class went.
February 9, 1996
Course Plan
Collect the journals today. Give the English common midterm essay. Let them
have 60 minutes in which to take the test.
Look Back
I gave them the midterm and then I brought the midterms to the English
Department and put them in Dian’s box in the English Department. We are going
to grade them next Friday February 19. All in all, the students seemed like they
were confident in taking the test. I’ll see how they do.
February 12, 1996
Course Plan
I. Group inquiry: Student contemplates an issue for five minutes and then
discusses the single best reason in support of his/her opinion to other
student. Student attempts to persuade other student. The other student
refutes the claim of the first while the first student uses strategies to
refute that claim. After about 10-15 minutes of debate, each pair should
discuss on what basis did you choose the reason you put forth? Knowing now
how your reason can be refuted, would you still choose the same reason? If
not how would you argue it differently?
II. Explain basic features of position essays as outlined on pages 231-234 of
St. Martin’s Guide for Writing
III. Have students score the five essays that were assigned as homework.
Ask students how these essays do or do not meet the criteria for position
essays previously explained. See if students can recognize the difference
between a strong and a weak argument
Look Back
Group inquiry went good. Students were on task debating with one another.
They seem to enjoy this activity. And to my knowledge no one was offended by
anyone. After they were ready to talk about the basic features of good essays.
As I pointed the out basic features of position essays, I divided the features
into the issue, the position, the argument, and the tone. I commented on each
area and how it can make or break this assignment.
After that, we took about 10 minutes scoring the five essays that were
assigned as homework. There were two discrepancies with one of the essays but
for the most part everyone was able to agree on what essay was in the 6, 5, 4,
3, and 1 range. The students were able to justify why the essays deserved the
score it was assigned by using what we had just talked about in class.
February 14, 1996
Course Plan
Students are to work on the invention stage of writing. Objectives for the
invention exercises are to help students find a
topic, discover what they know about it, consider the purpose, and audience, and
further develop their ideas about the selected topic.
Look Back
The students had a lot of questions in regards to Taking a Position essay so
I answered those questions before they started on the invention activities. Some
things that I used to get them going on this topic were as follows:
C
List as many issues as you can. As they were listing them, they
used the book which provided many issues from academic to other subjects. So
in effect, they were brainstorming to get ideas.
C
After this, the students chose an issue of interest.
C
The next activity was a free-writing activity. They were to
write as much about the issue as they could remember. They wrote for five
minutes explaining how they understood the topic.
Most of the students seemed to be doing OK on this exercise. I think the hard
part for the students for this essay will be considering the purpose and
audience.
February 16, 1996
Course Plan
Make sure that the students consider the following questions as they consider
the purpose and audience for this essay. 1). What do I expect my readers to
think and feel about the issue? 2). What basic values or assumptions about the
issue do we share? 3). What fundamental differences in world view or experience
keeps us from agreeing? 4). What kinds of evidence about this issue-facts,
expert opinion, firsthand experience, and so on-are all likely to find
convincing? 5). Given the answers to the previous questions, what argumentative
strategy should I adopt?
Begin the planning and drafting for the essay. Have students read their
notes, set some goals for the essay, and most importantly prepare an outline for
the essay. Then after the outline is prepared, the students can begin drafting
the essay.
Remind students that the middle draft is due on January 19, 1996
Look Back
Students seem to be a lot more comfortable now working on the essays as well
as using the invention and planning and drafting stages of writing as outlined
in the text. Most of the students commented that the outlining has really helped
them organize this essay. Also many of the students have admitted difficulties
acknowledging the opposing argument in their essay. But they were able to solve
this problem by researching the opposition in the library. I hope that the
students, despite whichever side they want to take on the chosen issue, realize
that they must anticipate the readers’ opposing arguments. The other big
problem with this paper is mistaking assertion for argumentation. I have tried
to show in the readings how the writers avoid using sweeping generalizations
unsupported by reasons and evidence. Students must give reasons for their
position or offer evidence to support it. We’ll see how they do.
November 1, 1995
Course Plan
Students to do middle draft peer review. Do not forget to collected the
journals for today. There has been complaints in the journals that the students
are not giving enough constructive criticism when reading other students’
drafts. Make sure that the students understand how to comment on another student’s
paper. Go over basic features of position papers and then introduce the
checklist questions. The students were assigned to go over the checklist for
homework so they should be familiar with it. Try to do at least two readings of
the essay for each student. The question that I used for this essay are as
follows: 1). Is the issue well defined? 2). Is the thesis clear? 3). Is the
argument supported by convincing reasons and evidence? 4). How are objections
and opposing arguments handled? 5). Is the tone appropriate? 6). Is the
organization effective? 7). What final thoughts do you have?
Michael Buckhoff TA English 101
November 1, 1995
Look Back
I have read most of the comments from the middle draft peer review. I feel
better about this one. The students gave more "positive" and
"constructive" feed back on this essay. It seems that my admonitions
to the students to try to find better and clearer ways to write their essay
worked. Maybe I should say that the students are learning how to critically
respond to other student’s essays by pointing out what is or is not working in
the draft (e.g. "The thesis is clear but the writer needs to add more of
her opinions in it...Her organization is effective because it goes from general
to more specific, although I think she could get even more specific when it
comes to different types of capital punishment"). These are examples of
comments from some of the peer reviews. I think that it is good to
"customize" each peer review and the students like it as well.
They learn to recognize that each writing genre has certain features.
November 3, 1995
Course Plan
Tough day today...Hand back the midterms and collect the final drafts of the
position essays.. In my class, seventeen of my students got Cs on this
assignment. Only one student got an A an that was an A-. Hand the midterms back
at the end of class. To begin the class, introduce the next essay assignment and
explain the scoring criteria for this assignment. Explain what an Evaluation is
and what its purpose as a writing genre is. If time permits, conduct the group
activity on page 302 with the objectives of helping students see the criteria by
which we evaluate entertainment as well as where the criteria comes from.
Hopefully, the students can understand that self-reflectiveness and critical
analysis are important considerations when we make evaluations. And that these
considerations are important because we need to think seriously about the values
that underlies our judgments, are things the students should think about.
Look Back
At the beginning of class, I let the students spend 10 minutes or so editing
each others essays. This exercise to designed to help the students catch any
last minute typos, so that they can turn in an "error" free draft. I
started doing this activity because the students are having spelling errors
problems. I explained that there are certain levels of polish to writing but
that the final draft requires you to turn in a draft with a high level of
polish. And that means minimally error free essays. Their journals are not
edited for grammar errors and they know that their final drafts need to be error
free. But most of them still have problems with typos, misspellings, etc. in
their final drafts? Why? I think that they know better but maybe just aren’t
taking the time required to really edit as well as revise the drafts.
Look Back continued
We began talking about evaluation essays but I wasn’t able to get to the
group inquiry and I will do that activity on Monday.
Luckily, I had prepared the students for the worst long before they were to
take the common midterm. I told them that the midterm would be hard so it wasn’t
a shock to them when they got their grades back. I think that I am going to plan
a follow up lesson to further discuss strategies of taking an essay exam since
it seems to be a weakness with most of the students in the class.. Professor
White gave me an idea that I might try in my comp class. He gave me some
examples of essays that were taken in the past and they were scored from one to
six. I will have a workshop in which students (not knowing the scores) will
score the essays themselves. Then we will compare their scores with the official
scores and see how close they are. Then, we can have an open class discussion on
why each essay deserves of does not deserve the score that it has received.
Hopefully, the students get can a better understanding of how an essay exam is
scored.
November 6, 1995
Course Plan
Conduct the group activity page 302. After that introduce the basic features
of an evaluation essay. Explain how the Evaluation of Spike Lee’s "Do the
Right Thing." The reasoning behind these activities is to:
1). Help students choose appropriate standards for the type of entertainment
that they have chosen and also to agree on the three most important standards of
evaluation that should be used.
2). To understand that movie reviewers primary purpose is to influence the
readers’ decision to see or not see a certain movie. As a result the reviewer’s
credibility comes from the fact that he/she assumes that the readers’ share
the same basis for judging films.
3). Making a judgment in an evaluation is crucial to the success of the
essay. Basic features help the writer recognize that they need to have a well
balanced subject, a clear, well- balanced argument, and pointed comparisons.
The discussion of the basic features hopefully will form a bridge from the
readings to the students’ own writing.
Look Back
The group activity went well. I divided the class into groups of three
students. Each group picked a familiar form of entertainment and they discussed
what standards should be used in reviewing this type of entertainment. Some of
the standards that they used were entertainment value, the quality of its ideas,
and its technical qualities, etc. Each group picked the three most important
standards that they used. They then talked about why and how they came to agree
or disagree on those standards. They then attempted to analyze where those
standards came from.
After about 15 minutes of discussion, I then made the transition to talking
about the basic features of evaluation essays. As I started talking about them,
I used our first reading for this essay assignment as a model to illustrate how
the essay makes a judgment about how the writer liked the movie and then tried
to convince the reader that this judgment was reasonable. The writer based its judgment
on standards appropriate to its subject by comparing it to other
racially motivated movies and argued that "Do the Right Thing" was a
more realistic movie. As the writer did this, he gave enough description and
detail to show the reader that he knew what he was talking about. And last, the
writer supported his argument with specific reasons, evidence, and examples.
The last 10-15 minutes of class, the students wrote in their journals making
comments today’s class activities.
Michael Buckhoff
TA English 101
November 8, 1995
