Rhetorical précis

The rhetorical précis is a great assignment for both content-area teachers and English-Language Arts teachers and can be used with any informational text. The template is explained in Reading Rhetorically, by John Bean, Virginia Chappell, and Alice Gillam, and is credited to Margaret K.Woodworth.

The rhetorical précis is a succinct way to summarize and analyze any informational text. Students can use it as a way to sum up their reading, and as preparation for the next step using the reading (preparations for an essay or a study guide for a test, for example). If students create a rhetorical précis after reading a text, not only will they have a summary of the text, but also a reminder of the author’s purpose, method, and intended audience. Also, each sentence from the template could be developed into an essay, making this a good outlining tool.

Here are the basics (from page 63 of Reading Rhetorically, Brief Edition by Bean, Chappell, Gillam):

Sentence One: Name of the author, genre, and title of work, date in parentheses; a rhetorically active verb (such as claims, argues, asserts, suggests); and a THAT clause containing the major assertion or thesis in the text.
Sentence Two: An explanation of how the author develops and supports the thesis.
Sentence Three: A statement of the author’s apparent purpose, followed by an “in order to” phrase.
Sentence Four: A description of the intended audience and/or the relationship the author establishes with the audience.

Preparing students to write the rhetorical précis first requires the students to read actively -- intellectually engaging with the text and reading with a pen or pencil in hand in order to annotate the text.  Students should underline/circle important passages, mark words to look up, ask questions in the margins, note the structure of the text, the writer’s use of certain conventions, etc. Students should pay attention to the title (and the subtitle) – it can tell the readerwhat the text is about, or even state the central claim explicitly; it can make reference to other writings, subjects, or events; and, it can express the writer’s attitude about the subject. Topic sentences are a helpful marker of structure and development throughout a text. They should look for major textual or visual structures (headings, whitespace, etc.), and look for signal words, especially transitional words (“next,” “finally,” “however,” “at first glance,” “for example,” etc.) that signal structure within the text.

Resources

Instructor’s Guide to Reading Rhetorically

Online guide to the Reading Rhetorically

Worksheet/template for studentswith examples from another teacher

Another handout for students by a different teacher

How to do a close reading

Close Reading (Note and Notice by Kyleen Beers andRobert Probst

Rhetorical précis

 

Two Post Scripts

So two short follow-ups to previous posts:

Digital storytelling

Overall, I had fun reading the end products and students had fun creating them. The only feedback from students was that they needed to know upfront who their audience would be -- specifically, were they writing for children, peers, the world in general? So next year I will build in time to discuss writing for an audience and together we will determine for whom they are writing. 

I gave them very little in terms of constraints -- I said their story needed to include both text and non-text elements, and the text needed to include both narrative and informative writing -- they seemed to like the complete freedom, but some had trouble starting and wanted me to give them a genre or topic. Also, next year I will spend more time in class discussing certain aspects that some seemed to struggle with (point of view/narration, audience, incorporating dialog, building tension).

I found these additional resources that I plan to look at more closely and possibly integrate next time:

Storybook Creation Tools and Playfic, a site that allows people to create interactive stories together.

Here is an example of one of the stories my students created (shared with permission by the authors)

http://spacewaterbears.tumblr.com/

Scripts in Google

I am loving using autoCrat to start students' assignments in Google Drive! Besides having the assignments in the correct folders, named the way I want them to be named, and following the assignment template that I want them to use, the other nifty aspect of using this script to generate assignments is that I can change rights after I grade so that students who want to revise have to notify me to change them back to editor. Last semester, students submitted work well after deadlines and didn't tell me so there wasn't an easy way to know who revised or submitted late work other than to open each class folder and then each student folder to see the last edited date. AutoCrat has made it much easier for me to manage student work in Drive.

My new goal is to learn how to send out feedback using a script. Alice Keeler shared another super helpful video on using valmerge to send out feedback based on a rubric. Love learning these time-saving tips!

Going paperless

I haven’t made the complete switch to the paperless classroom, but I’m trying. At the beginning of this year, I made the move to google docs for our writing bootcamp. During the first seven weeks, all writing was completed in google drive – I didn’t have any hard copies of what ended up being 15 pieces of writing from each student.  Each student set up their drive with three folders (or collections) – one for each of our classes. These folders were then shared with the corresponding teacher, so I ended up with over sixty shared folders for English work and close to forty for shared College and Career Readiness work. As folders were shared with me, I set up class folders to house each of the student folders to try to organize drive. Keep in mind that I was learning google drive with my students and in many cases, students were far more proficient than I in how google docs worked.

This worked well in terms of cutting down paper, but did not help with organization. I had to open the class folder, then open each student’s folder, then hope they named the document correctly before I could comment, grade, and enter it into the gradebook. Many documents were named incorrectly, which slowed down the process while I figured out which prompt they were answering, but the bigger problem was that often students forgot to share the document with me.

Autocrat to the rescue! I had heard of autocrat and scripts, but I really didn’t understand how it could be used or why you’d want to use it. But this weekend at the East Bay CUE conference it all became clear. I attended two sessions on forms and scripts and started to understand how this would change my life and make me love having all student work in my google drive. After several rounds of trial and error, I used autocrat to create two assignments today and it worked beautifully. The assignments went right to the folder for that particular assignment (instead of to the class folder) and all student work was there, in alphabetical order, ready for me to quickly check who had completed the assignment. No more untitled documents, no more papers without headers, no more “I thought I shared it with you.”

I can’t explain how to do it as well as these pros, so here are the links to the two sessions I attended that give the step by step how-to.

Alice Keeler has great instructions HERE . She and David Malone were super helpful.

Will Kimbley gave an overview of autocrat and fluberoo HERE (I have not yet tried fluberoo). His presentation was fast and I accidentally deleted all my notes, but he had tons of great ideas on how to use forms.

I also found these helpful blog posts (sometimes it takes me several different explanations to “get it.”)

THIS one from EdTechCoaching
THIS one from Ed Tech 4 Theater

So how am I using this? Well, yesterday I posted our weekly informational text assignment (based on Kelly Gallagher’s Article of the Week). Today I had them log on to our class ning page where they found the link to a google form. Once they completed the form, they logged into their email where they found a google doc I had started for them (with the correct header and title) with sentence frames from They Say, I Say to use as a starting point for their responses.

The second assignment was to write a rhetorical précis based on a primary source document that they are also using in U.S. History. Again, they logged into ning to get the link to the form, then to their email to get the doc I started with the template for writing the rhetorical précis.

Student response was overwhelmingly positive. They liked that they didn't have to worry about where the doc was on their drive and whether or not it was shared (though I encouraged them to move it into the correct class folder) and they liked that it was started for them (they really liked how their names were already in the header - magic!)

I think we’ll also use this next week when we have an information meeting. Instead of having parents and students sign in on paper and then later have to type up their contact info into excel (and hope we can read their handwriting), we’ll have them fill out a form, which will then automatically send the “thanks for attending our meeting” email AND create the spreadsheet with their contact information. Nice.

I’m pretty pleased with it all.

An experiment

Over the winter break I read “Snow Fall: Avalanche at Tunnel Creek.” At first, I didn’t pay attention to how long the article was, nor did I check out all of the interactive features – I just read the story, focusing on the parts that interested me and skimming the parts I found less interesting. Later, as I was thinking about how I wanted to start the semester, I came back to the article and re-read it, this time thinking about how students might react to it and how I could use it as a mentor text in class. On the second read, I clicked on every link, watched every video. Personally, I found many of the enhancements distracting – there were only a few that helped my understanding of the story and several that added interest, but some just seemed extraneous to me. I also found two additional articles describing the creation of the piece and read both of those ("How We Made Snow Fall" and "Q & A: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek".

I assigned the reading over three nights, two sections per night. As I assigned the reading, I explained that many were calling this the "future of web storytelling" and a new kind of digital journalism, and asked them to read with this in mind. On the second day we spent a significant amount of the period discussing the two sections they read. We talked about the multimedia features and how those affected our reading, and we talked about how narrative and informative text were woven together to tell a complete story. I also asked them to talk about their background knowledge – how many skied or snowboarded, how many had been “out-of-boundaries” when doing so, if they had even been caught in a wave (an analogy used in the first section to describe the feeling of being swept up in the avalanche). A handful of students had never seen snow; about a third of the class skis/snowboards regularly. The response to the first two parts was fairly positive.

We didn’t discuss the second two sections in class; instead, I had them write about what they had read. Again, feedback on the reading was mostly positive. Then, after completing the final two sections, we had another discussion, evaluating the helpfulness of each non-textual element. The students also worked in small groups to descriptively outline a section of the story, chunking the writing and indicating its purpose in the larger section (narrative vs. informative, for example). We spent time talking about how the text is structured – how narrative is interwoven with explanatory writing and graphics, and how that affected our reading.

I explained that the goal ultimately is for them to produce their own multimedia piece that combines narrative, informative, and non-text elements. I left the project pretty wide open – they can choose topic and final format, but all elements must work together to tell story and convey information.

I wanted them to have some practice before turning them loose, so we spent three periods trying to turn Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour” into something more than a story on a page. One period was devoted to reading the story and brainstorming possible enhancements. The second period was spent in the lab, hyperlinking photos, videos, and audio clips (surprising how many kids did not know how to embed links in a Word or Google doc), and inserting comments to explain what they would like to do, but didn’t have skills to do. Some of their multimedia enhancement ideas were quite interesting! The last day we were back in the lab, evaluating each other’s versions of the same story – which additions helped their understanding of the story, which were unnecessary or distracting, which were really creative ideas of how to enhance the story.

As they started planning their stories, I shared other examples I found by searching for interactive storytelling and multimedia fiction. Here are some of those stories:

Nightingale's Playground
Inanimate Alice
Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro
BlackHawk Down
For Amusement Only: The Life and Death of the American Arcade
The Long, Strange Trip of Dock Ellis
Cyborg America: Inside the strange new world of basement body hackers

We also looked at children's books to get a better idea of how pictures can be used to tell a story, as well as this photo essay which prompted a great discussion.

We will revisit "Snow Fall" this week, looking closely at how the author introduces new topics and characters, how he includes dialog, how he builds tension – getting into the nitty gritty of the writing with the hopes that they will be able to emulate that in their own stories.

I have no idea what kind of final product many will share with me, but the buzz in the lab on Friday was good. I can't wait to be amazed by their creativity!

Directions

I spent Christmas Day looking at directions. After my boys opened their presents, I helped one assemble his new Lego set.  We worked steadily for an hour or so and put together his new heavy-duty helicopter with minimal fuss, even though the set is rated for older children. Then I tried to help my husband assemble the gas BBQ he gave me. What a difference! My husband is quite handy and loves to fix, modify, and assemble everything from wooden puzzles to cars to computers. So it was with some surprise we found ourselves re-reading instructions and the assembly taking close to three hours, rather than the 45 minutes indicated on the box.

What was so different about the experiences? The Lego instructions were far superior. First, there are the pictures on the box and the front of the directions that show the completed project. Then, the parts are separated into several bags and each bag has its own detailed section in the instruction guide showing how to assemble. There is a picture of the complete section before the detailed step-by-step instructions. Each step adds just a small part to the section of the complete project and it is clear to see where each piece goes and how each section adds to the previous. Contrast that to the BBQ instructions where one exploded diagram includes many steps. We had to talk through the diagram and compare that to the pieces scattered on the ground, trying to figure out which parts to connect to each other first. Holes weren't aligned exactly (particularly infuriating to a machinist used to working within very tiny tolerances) and pieces didn't fit together easily. 

So that made me think about how I ask students to write essays, or rather, how I should help students write essays. Show them a model, point out the parts, go through the step-by-step writing moves that make the essay work. I do show a model essay at the beginning of explaining what an argument essay looks like, for example, but I could slow down on the step by step instructions and just do one small piece at a time, such as how to integrate quotes or what kind of transitions to use. Just because they are seniors, it doesn't mean they know what they are doing...

 

Back to writing boot camp

So I saw this tweet from the amazing Jim Burke:

11/17/12, 6:14 AM Thanks to all those at #NCTE12 who have talked to me about the voice feedback technique illustrated here: youtube.com/watch?v=f7fjqh…

First, I don't know how that guy has time to do all that he does -- teaches, writes, presents, thinks big thoughts all time...

Second, I am hopeful this might actually save time. I'm guessing it will take some time to set up initially (getting all the kids' emails into my contacts sounds tedious) and some practice so that I'm not recording dead air. But since I HATE writing comments that kids many times won't actually read anyway, I'd like to try this.

I like the way he has built in accountability for listening to the comments by having students create a to do list for revisions.

I'm curious about reading only the revisions using the track changes feature in Word. Will I really be able to limit myself to only reading the changes and will those make sense in isolation?

Two concerns. First, I hate the sound of my voice on recordings. And the paranoid part of me is a little worried about sending students recordings that they could potentially remix into something other than what I intended.

I will definitely give this a try, though.

Figuring out our writing boot camp

One of the things I love about teaching is that I get two “New Years” every year, and with that, a chance for new resolutions and fresh starts. As we prepare to meet students this week, I have our writing boot camp ideas swirling around in my head and wondering if we can pull it all together in time. I’m glad we have a week of orientation with the kids first – not only to buy us more planning time, but it gives us a chance to get to know them and their writing before official core class instruction begins.

As Jen B mentioned, we read two articles last week that prompted this major shift in how we wanted to start our year: Junking the Old Way of Teaching Writing and A Cure for Bad Teaching of Writing, both by Jay Matthews.

I wanted ideas on how I could give meaningful feedback on student writing, so I re-read chapter seven of Carol Jago’s Papers, Papers, Papers and that confirmed for me one more reason for us to change our practice: the majority of kids don’t read comments on essays, and if they do actually read them, they don’t actually learn from them. So why are we wasting time correcting every error, making suggestions on how to improve, re-writing awkward sentences for them? She mentions that she keeps track of errors that show up across several students and uses those notes as the basis for mini-lessons on usage, style, and organization. She also cites research that shows comments are effective when the teacher refers back to previous papers and commend the student for concrete improvements based on prior problem areas.

One of her ideas for managing the paper load is something I’d like to adapt and try. She has students (or maybe had, as this was written in 2005) give her a blank cassette tape for each rough draft. She then read the essay aloud and inserted her comments as she read. Presumably, students would listen and then revise their drafts. She suggests allotting 10-15 minutes per draft and stopping at the end of that time period, even if you aren’t finished with the paper. I’m wondering if this might be a technique for students to use together – the peer reviewer could read the draft aloud, commenting and questioning as she reads, and the writer could jot down notes to help him remember what to work on. Or, if both partners have access to technology at home, they could work independently and record their reading and comments on voicethread.

Thinking about how we could structure peer review time led us to read up on how other teachers conduct writing workshops with their high school classes. Two resources we’ve been consulting extensively are Penny Kittle’s Write Beside Them and Jen Roberts’ website. I really like the idea of peer writing groups, reading aloud each other’s papers and giving immediate feedback, but I have a hard time with each kid bringing 6 copies of their paper – I guess if we are working on short pieces initially that might work. I also like the idea of me going around the room, conferring quickly with 7-9 writers per period, but I wonder how realistic it is that I’ll be able to offer solid feedback in 5 minutes per student.

Additionally, we’ve been trying to figure out how we’re going to make this work with limited lab access. Here’s what we’ve tentatively decided on for the first two weeks:

Day 1: overview of boot camp – explain importance of writing well in their college classes, and our goals for them as writers and peer reviewers; explain how we want them to label and organize their google docs.

Day 2: provide an example of narrative writing – explain what differentiates this from inform-explain and argument, review CCSS standard, explain the rubric, and do some preliminary writing in their comp books; HW – read their initial draft aloud, jot notes for revision/improvement, type revised draft in google doc and share with teacher.

Day 3: prompt 2 given in class – preliminary writing in comp book; teacher begins conferring with students on prompt 1in google docs; students are writing, or when finished, reading; HW -- read their initial draft aloud, jot notes for revision/improvement, type revised draft in google doc and share with teacher.

Day 4: peer conferences – students bring in two copies of papers – peer reviewer reads paper aloud and comments as she is reading while writer listens and jots down feedback on draft; ideally, each student will have one-two students read her paper aloud and give feedback; HW – revise drafts of prompts 1 & 2. We will have to model how we expect the peer conferences to go.

Day 5: prompt 3 given in class– preliminary writing in comp book; teacher continues conferring with students on prompt 1& 2 in google docs; students are writing, or when finished, reading; HW -- read their initial draft aloud, jot notes for revision/improvement, type revised draft in google doc and share with teacher.

Day 6: prompt 4 – same as above.

Day 7: prompt 5 – same as above.

Day 8: peer conferences (same as day 4)

Day 9: revising & conferring – hopefully in lab all period.

Day 10: all 5 prompts have been revised; update independent reading in comp book

Our plan is to require students to meet with us twice, once during class time and once before or after class. We will probably only be able to give students 5 minutes of feedback during class if we want to meet with each student (on day 3, 5, 6, 7, 9), so requiring them to come by outside of class on any of those days, plus the two peer conferences days will give us additional time to provide feedback.

We will set up a discussion thread on our class ning to showcase examples of narrative writing for student reference. I’m thinking we could also use this area to make general comments about what we’re seeing in student drafts.

During the entire boot camp, students will have free choice in what they are reading. Our expectation is that they will read every day, respond to what they are reading in their comp books at least once a week, and give a quick book talk on something they’ve read that they want others to know about.

We’re anticipating that there will be some students who fail to bring hard copies on the peer conference days. If we are able to use the labs on those days, students can simply bring up their google doc, but if we are in the classroom, those students will have to sit out and read instead, and then at home with their parent read the paper aloud, self-assess as they read, and hopefully get some feedback from their parent as well.

We’re still working through how to record all of this in the gradebook. Right now, I’m leaning toward two grades in the gradebook: participation and mastery. The participation grade would be based strictly on the completion of the requirements for the unit – the written responses to the five prompts, participating in the two peer conferences and the two teacher conferences, and keeping the comp book up-to-date with the preliminary writing for each prompt and the reading responses. The mastery grade would be based on the teacher reviewing the drafts with the student, rubric in hand, and deciding together the student’s progress toward mastering the standard. This will then clearly identify goals for the student in the next unit.

We don’t have it all figured out yet, and we’re trying to anticipate problems, but I think we’re nervously excited to try something new and focus on an area that definitely needs more attention from us.

~Jen P

*****

Well, Jen...now that we're five days deep into our "writing boot camp" it feels like a good time to stop and reflect for a minute.

I was able to stick to the plan above for days 1-5; however, it felt like a pretty ambitious pace and I suspect some revision for next week may be in order. Organizing what went well and what was challenging may help in trying to decide where to revise, so...here goes:

What I liked/what went well:
1. Classes went by FAST
2. Kids were engaged--they like to write (at least they like to write narratives)
3. I felt our directions were clear--they were all successful in sharing/naming folders and documents (almost all on day one, definitely all by end of week)
4. I like the singular focus on one type of genre, really honing-in with mentor texts as well as written emulation/practice
5. Having College & Career Readiness class be a support for the first week was good
6. Having all students' work in the computer organized in folders is GREAT
7. I think the peer review groups are going to be really awesome...I did a model group fishbowl on day 4 and it went pretty well. Students then got into their own groups and practiced with at least one or two students reading their chosen narrative to the rest of their group for feedback.

Challenges/concerns that need to be thought-through some more:
1. Checking in with 7-8 students per class to give feedback was a challenge. I did get to that many students one day, but not the other. Also, not sure I was able in the time I had to give "valuable" feedback, though I think there's some value in simply singling out students to talk to individually when I might otherwise just be on a computer myself. Need to think about this more.
2. Becoming more comfortable with the possibilities within Google docs, and simply becoming more proficient and confident within the system logistics will be ongoing.
3. Scheduling and meeting with students to confer and rubric-assess their writing will be a next big step. I'm thinking for now of having kids sign up on paper in the classroom, then putting all kids' appointment times into my Google calendar to share with them...possibly then setting up email reminders to be sent to them. I am also thinking that before they come to their conference I'd like them to have done some work in advance: assessing their own writing (using my rubric) and citing specific examples of elements of the rubric from their writing. For example, if one element on the narrative rubric is "Uses sensory imagery" I would ask that student (on a Google form) to give themselves a rating and also to specifically pull a quote from their paper showing evidence of sensory imagery. The point being that if they having written it can't find the evidence, why should I be able to?
4. So far we've had access each day to a computer lab, allowing students to begin their work directly within Google docs. When we do not have full access to a lab will the process within the classroom--beginning with the writing process in comp books--work as well?
5. I am torn about what I'm thinking is a challenge but might not really be one. The kids are writing at such a  pace that keeping up with reading their work is a huge challenge, but I think I just need to remind myself that this is part of the point...we can't read everything. And if we could then they probably wouldn't be doing enough writing. I just don't want the kids to lose momentum, thinking that no one is reading their work. But I hope through random comments I can occasionally insert, as well as feedback from their peer groups, that this won't be a problem. We shall see.

This is my initial reflection after getting through week one. I'm encouraged by what went well and I have confidence that we can think through solutions to the challenges. Overall, liking what we've begun...hoping you're feeling the same.

:-) jen b.