Farris and Anson's Chapter 9 and Pritchard & Honeycutt

     I'm going to assume others had problems with Hypothesis this week. At first, I thought my school's wifi was prohibiting me from posting comments, but then it didn't work from home either. A few comments snuck through for Neff, and then I could make comments for Pritchard and Honeycutt, but I couldn't highlight the selection. I tried to submit comments multiple times, so they either never went through, or they were submitted many times and I look foolish.

     Like Martha, I had a lot of trouble with Neff's chapter. Perhaps spring break has turned my brain into a lump, but I couldn't get into it. Grounded Theory, as I understand it, is conducting a bunch of research, indexing it, and looking for patterns to write about.

     This seems like a great way to arrive at something since you write about whatever information you uncover. I hesitate to use the word conclude since the chapter states that this method is ongoing and leads to more research. In a sense, the researcher is crowdsourcing. If there is something of interest to the reader and he/she wishes to pursue it further, he/she can now contribute.

     I enjoyed Pritchard and Honeycutt's look at the process approach. Much like Debbie, it reminded me of how I learned to write in school. It also provided data (finally) the showed how effective a specific writing strategy can be for students.

     I always think of my students when we read an article and see new techniques. It's now the third marking period and I've used the phrase "the training wheels have come off" more times than I would have liked. My students rely heavily on teacher direction and can't move on to the next paragraph without asking me to check the first.

     What drives me nuts is that I have gone through a systematic approach to what they should be doing. In early assignments, I've detailed what should go in each sentence and still had issues. It seems as though the confidence in their abilities is missing. The only thing I can deduce from this is that writing wasn't being done before they came to me. As ridiculous as this sounds, word around the district is that such is the case.

     Because of this, my students have a hard time seeing writing as a process. All attempts at pre-writing and revision have failed because of this. I've had to make the rough draft of an essay a quiz grade that must be present in order for the final draft to count as a test grade. This is artificial because it forces the student to write a rough draft, but it's done grudgingly and the student doesn't benefit from any academic growth.

How I feel right now.

     My school is in the process of adopting textbooks. Believe it or not, the last time they purchased new textbooks was 2007. The last year anything from one of the textbooks was actually in the curriculum was 2010. Needless to say, I'm excited. The new book is completely interactive. The students not only get a physical book, but a digital version as well. Each digital version comes with interactive lessons, and lo and behold, one of them is entitled "Writing as a Process".

I think I'm going to like this book.