Not really happy with the taste of this country's food, I believe.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Pictures of Bolivia
Monday, November 9, 2009
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Essay, Book Report, and Research Paper How-To Information from InfoPleaes
For David's Homeschool Requirements
http://www.infoplease.com/homework/writingskills1.html
How to Write a Five Paragraph Essay
While the classic five paragraph essay is a form seldom if ever used by professional writers, it is commonly assigned to students to help them organize and develop their ideas in writing. It can also be a very useful way to write a complete and clear response to an essay question on an exam. It has, not surprisingly, five paragraphs:
* an introduction
* three main body paragraphs
* a conclusion
We'll look at each type of paragraph, and at transitions, the glue that holds them together.
Introduction
The introduction should start with a general discussion of your subject and lead to a very specific statement of your main point, or thesis. Sometimes an essay begins with a "grabber," such as a challenging claim, or surprising story to catch a reader's attention. The thesis should tell in one (or at most two) sentence(s), what your overall point or argument is, and briefly, what your main body paragraphs will be about.
For example, in an essay about the importance of airbags in cars, the introduction might start with some information about car accidents and survival rates. It might also have a grabber about someone who survived a terrible accident because of an airbag. The thesis would briefly state the main reasons for recommending airbags, and each reason would be discussed in the main body of the essay.
Main Body Paragraphs (3)
Each main body paragraph will focus on a single idea, reason, or example that supports your thesis. Each paragraph will have a clear topic sentence (a mini thesis that states the main idea of the paragraph) and as much discussion or explanation as is necessary to explain the point. You should try to use details and specific examples to make your ideas clear and convincing.
Conclusion
Your conclusion begins with a restatement of your main point; but be sure to paraphrase, not just repeat your thesis sentence. Then you want to add some sentences that emphasize the importance of the topic and the significance of your view. Think about what idea or feeling you want to leave your reader with. The conclusion is the reverse of the introduction in that it starts out very specific and becomes a bit more general as you finish.
Transitions
Transitions connect your paragraphs to one another, especially the main body ones. It's not effective to simply jump from one idea to the next; you need to use the end of one paragraph and/or the beginning of the next to show the relationship between the two ideas.
Between each paragraph and the one that follows, you need a transition. It can be built in to the topic sentence of the next paragraph, or it can be the concluding sentence of the first. It can even be a little of both. To express the relationship between the two paragraphs, think about words and phrases that compare and contrast.
* Does the first paragraph tell us a pro and the second a con? ("on the other hand . . .")
* Does the second paragraph tell us something of greater significance? ("more importantly . . .")
* An earlier historical example? ("even before [topic of paragraph 1], [topic of paragraph 2]")
* A different kind of consideration? (money versus time).
Think about your paragraph topics and brainstorm until you find the most relevant links between them. Click here to see more suggestions for transition words.
You'll also want some kind of transition from the last paragraph to your conclusion. One way is to sum up your third body paragraph with some reminders of your other paragraphs. You don't need to restate the topics fully (that comes in the conclusion) but you can refer to a detail, or example, or character as a way of pulling your ideas together and signaling that you are getting ready to conclude.
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How to Write a Book Report (Middle and High School level)
Book reports and book reviews are similar. Book reports tend to be a little more descriptive (What is this book about?) and book reviews are usually more persuasive (Why a reader should or shouldn't read this book). Both offer a combination of summary and commentary.
They are a way to think more deeply about a book you've read and to demonstrate your understanding.
Most teachers have their own requirements, and sometimes a specific format they expect you to follow, so be sure to check, but the following general elements of a book report or book review should be helpful.
Introduction
Here you want to provide basic information about the book, and a sense of what your report will be about. You should include:
1. Title (underlined)/Author
2. Publication Information: Publisher, year, number of pages
3. Genre
4. A brief (1-2 sentences) introduction to the book and the report/review.
Body
There are two main sections for this part. The first is an explanation of what the book is about. The second is your opinions about the book and how successful it is. There are some differences between reports on fiction or other imaginative writing and reports on non-fiction books.
But for both, a good place to start is to explain the author's purpose and/or the main themes of the book. Then you can summarize.
For fiction or other creative writing:
Provide brief descriptions of the setting, the point of view (who tells the story), the protagonist , and other major characters. If there is a distinct mood or tone, discuss that as well.
Give a concise plot summary. Along with the sequence of major events, you may want to discuss the book's climax and resolution, and/or literary devices such as foreshadowing. But, if you are writing a review, be careful not to give away important plot details or the ending.
For non-fiction:
Provide a general overview of the author's topic, main points, and argument. What is the thesis? What are the important conclusions?
Don't try to summarize each chapter or every angle. Choose the ones that are most significant and interesting to you.
Analysis and Evaluation
In this section you analyze or critique the book. You can write about your own opinions; just be sure that you explain and support them with examples. Some questions you might want to consider:
* Did the author achieve his or her purpose?
* Is the writing effective, powerful, difficult, beautiful?
* What are the strengths and weaknesss of the book?
* For non-fiction, what are the author's qualifications to write about the subject? Do you agree with the author's arguments and conclusions?
* What is your overall response to the book? Did you find it interesting, moving, dull?
* Would you recommend it to others? Why or why not?
Conclusion
Briefly conclude by pulling your thoughts together. You may want to say what impression the book left you with, or emphasize what you want your reader to know about it.
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Research paper information is on the link at the top of this post.
Most Recent Posts
These last few posts have been for Josh, MrBaby's older brother. These are suggestive of the curriculum requirements, not explicitly what is actually required. Requiring Josh to turn in three essays, a book report, and a how-to explanatory paper is not overly heavy for a course load. I was reading about some different types of assignments, and perhaps including letter writing would have been a good idea. Teaching him to write an opinion letter, and also a complaint letter might help him later on.
See: SENIOR ENGLISH – SELF DIRECTED 178
From http://mths.schoolfusion.us/modules/cms/pages.phtml?pageid=49506&sessionid=5fe83c70df9a951743291f349c8
SENIOR ENGLISH – SELF DIRECTED 178
Year - 1.0 credit; Senior requirement for graduation;
This course is a study of significant types of writing which teach advanced composition structure and style in the following major units: definition, argument, persuasion, comparison/contrast, critical analysis, and creative writing. Required assignments include short essays, research papers, a literary critical analysis, researched biography paper, and creative projects. The final project is an occupational study requiring research, interview, and observation of a chosen career. The course requires independent reading, research and note-taking outside of class for the writing of essays in class. This is a computer lab-based course with all work to be done on the MTHS computer system. All essays must be turned in also to TurnItIn.com to check for plagiarism and proper documentation. Sufficient time is allowed for each assignment and students have access to the lab during study halls and before/after school. This self-directed course allows the student to choose research topics, careers, author for analysis, and career for the final project. Once an assignment is made, the student is responsible for meeting the deadline, managing his/her own use of class/lab time.
NOTE: For the junior year, students must choose a literature-based course (British Literature, American Literature, or World Literature), or the honors versions thereof. Students may also elect to take these courses as electives their junior/senior years.
For Josh's Homeschool - English Class, Essay Experiment
From http://www.jacweb.org/Archived_volumes/Text_articles/V8_Fuller.htm.
A nice social sciences experiment, I think, regarding disparity in grading amongst teachers of the same essay..
A Curious Case of Our Responding Habits:
What Do We Respond to and Why?
David Fuller
For a two-week summer seminar on the teaching of writing, I conducted a class exercise that yielded surprising results and made me reconsider how I respond to student writing. When planning the exercise, I remembered Gary Sloan's "The Wacky World of Theme-Marking" and his claims that writing teachers' marking habits are contradictory, biased, and often useless and incorrect, as well as "wacky." I prepared the exercise to see how the teachers enrolled in the seminar would respond to a given text and to prove that they were not as wacky as Sloan and others suggest.
I divided the class into two groups of seven, separated the groups so that they could not hear each other, and gave one group a typed and the other a handwritten version of the same paragraph. Both versions were dear and legible, but the handwritten version was deliberately uneven, the penmanship resembling that of a young writer: circles for the dots above i's, slightly exaggerated curls on the tails of y's, and two minor cross-outs. I instructed both groups to respond to the writing as if it had been submitted in response to an assignment asking for a paragraph describing a relationship between two people. I didn't tell either group anything about the writer, and they didn't ask about the student's age or grade level, or whether the draft was finished or in progress. Each person was allowed approximately ten minutes to read and respond in writing to the paragraph. I instructed them not to discuss the paragraph until they were finished and I had collected the responses. Before collecting the responses, I asked them to put a grade below their written comments. I instructed them to grade the piece after they had written comments in order to ensure that they would not write comments to justify a grade. I then collected their responses and we discussed the paragraph.
Teacher Responses
The behavior of the teachers as they responded and later as they discussed the paragraph was interesting. Those given the handwritten version were at first disturbed, noticeably perplexed by the task of responding, and hesitant to begin. After they turned in the papers, their behavior indicated that responding to the paragraph was especially difficult; they seemed pleased to find consensus about its quality, and they talked mostly about lines and words they thought were poorly written and unclear. In contrast, those reading the typed version were at first noticeably interested and dedicated to reading the text and writing comments. Later, they remained intent and serious, noting details they liked in the paragraph. I was naturally curious about the reasons for the difference in the behavior of the groups and began to anticipate that the grades and written responses might differ, but not significantly.
Everyone then returned to the main group to discuss the exercise. A spokesperson from the group responding to the handwritten version explained that the student had not addressed the assignment well. This group suggested that the paragraph, while 'somewhat" interesting, needed work, especially on style. The spokesperson for the other group explained that the group found the paragraph mature and "intense," and believed the writer had accomplished the task exceptionally well, except for some minor punctuation problems. As soon as a teacher mentioned that one of those minor problems was vague pronoun reference, a participant from the other group recognized the scam and asked if both groups had read the same paragraph. I admitted that they had and explained the difference between the two versions: one had been typed and the other handwritten. I read to them the grades assigned by each group as well as selected responses to the paragraph. The differences were startling and obviously surprised the members of both groups.
The differences in the comments on the paragraphs dearly reflected differences in the attitudes of the two groups. While the participants in both groups attempted to praise the student, the praise in response to the typed version was much more sincere and confidently phrased:
•Excellent mood created here; soft words—emotion. I feel frightened for her—the fright comes after the calm I sensed at the beginning.
•Effective mood is created. This has some tender emotion. I like this softness [arrows are drawn to the first two lines].
•Very good thoughts. You seem to be in touch with them. This paragraph is excellent. I feel I can see those eyes!
•Emotional intensity good! Mystical quality heightened by not naming the person in question.
•I like the way you allow me to "feel" her fright. Your thoughts are very good, but we could do some work together on word choice (you use "look" six times).
•The feeling and visual images are fantastic. I can picture this! I have been through the same emotion.
•Great technique—showing me in a unique way much more about this person than meets the eye.
In contrast, the comments on the handwritten version, particularly attempts at praise, were much more reserve
• I think you really have some insight into this other person. I do not see your side of the relationship. I like the idea about seeing her through her own eyes.
• A good subject. You surely feel something for this subject. Good effort—description is good.
• The third sentence intrigues me with the character. But most of the sentences are run together. Too gushy.
• Interesting piece of writing—very distinct style—a lot of thought.
• You appear to really care about this person and want to know her better. You must be very observant about human behaviors.
• I can tell you've given a lot of thought to the way she looks at things. Your idea is a good one.
• Your idea comes through.
Members of both groups wrote recommendations for revision. Recommendations for the typed version were polite, suggesting that the writer, if he or she wished, make the changes:
• Perhaps more physical environment would help. "Eyes" description is almost too abstract.
• Some problems with punctuation that cause some reader difficulty.
• First line, after her—second sentence could be made easier to envision.
• Describing your surroundings is a possibility.
• Maybe write more like this [an arrow is drawn to a line].
Note the qualifiers "perhaps," "some," "is a possibility," "could," and "maybe" and the general courteous and respectful tone. Participants responding to the handwritten version, however, were more resolute, identifying definite problems and stating their observations firmly. Note the definite evaluative tone and imperative constructions in the following:
• "They would look on" (use comma to avoid confusion).
• No sense for punctuation in correct places. Too many thoughts within one sentence.
• Try to find substitutes for Look. Revise the second sentence. Try using subordinate phrases or clauses.
• Shorter, more concise sentence.
• All of your sentences are basically the same.
• You need to work on sentence structure.
The marks and responses given by both groups to individual sentences in the sample were surprisingly different and idiosyncratic. Of the fourteen samples, very few marks or notations directed to individual sentences addressed similar concerns. Most of the notations occurred only once, indicating general inconsistency among teachers in their observations about stylistic features. The teachers inserted commas, crossed out or changed conjunctions, and noted problems with clarity and pronoun reference. But very few of these notations were consistent. In fact, at times the notations were noticeably contradictory.
While the tone was dearly different in the responses given the two versions, the responses from both groups were similar in that they addressed the text from the perspective of an "authority," and they followed the traditional response formula—identifying strengths and weaknesses and making recommendations for changes ("This.., is good, but. . . , so I'd recommend that you.. ."). The responses were essentially product centered and expressed different audience roles: friend, advisor, teacher, authority, and judge (see Cowan for a discussion of the effects of mixing these roles). The inconsistencies, the "praise . . . but" format, and the unusual reader expectations revealed a mode of response that these teachers were accustomed to. Admittedly, some of the inconsistencies and idiosyncrasies resulted from the exercise itself, which presented unusual time limitations and instructions as well as an artificial context. The teachers had to play a hypothetical game—they didn't know the student, they hadn't created the assignment, and they didn't know that the paragraph had been excerpted from a large prose selection. Thus, the idiosyncrasies expressed in the commentary may have partially resulted from the exercise itself.
Judging from the differences in the remarks, one might anticipate differences in the grades assigned by the two groups. The typed version received these grades: A-IB+, A, B, B-i-, B+, A, A (averaging an A-); the handwritten version received these: C+, C, C-, C-, C, C-, D (averaging C-). Clearly, the differences in attitude between the two groups' written remarks are emphasized by the significant difference in grades.
I asked the seminar participants what these differences in grades and responses suggest about the way we handle a student text. A few teachers remarked, and the others seemed to agree, that we need to look beyond the surface to acknowledge a student's intent. Many of them were astonished y the differences in the grades and the obvious conclusion that a typed paper will receive a much higher mark than a handwritten one. One teacher remarked that what could happen to a student with poor penman-hip is sad; the student may be interested and concerned about writing nothing of importance but receive responses and grades that fail to acknowledge his or her message.
This exercise reveals idiosyncrasies and inconsistencies in how we ad and respond to student papers; it also suggests that writing teachers made compositions, as Paul Schumann observes, "on a host of unconscious and/or superficial factors which often have little to do with what students actually write" (1164). The only consistency I was able to observe that the various reactions often expressed an authoritarian stance. It is safe to assume that during students' years of education they receive many authoritarian responses and directives. It is no wonder that they come to class asking, "Now what does this guy want?" Certainly, the mixed and disparate messages we send students do irreparable damage to their attitudes and, most strikingly, to their ability. But how can we solve this problem when most of us are faced with piles of papers and feel obligated to respond to content, style, tone, and format? My experiment seems to suggest that we need to develop the ability to read and respond as real readers to student writing and not to poke and pick and draw arrows to surface problems divorced from what the writer is doing—that is, unless the aim is editing later drafts. What I would like to recommend is that we change our traditional "marking" habits—a change which requires that we also change the way we perceive ourselves, our roles, our students, our expectations of their writing, and the ways we read their writing.
Teacher Role
Many of the responses to this sample writing, I suggest, are partially a result of the "teacherly" role-a role that can distort the reading process and make responses peculiarly condescending and critical. Most of the people in my class, all of whom had studied and discussed essays on contemporary writing theory, resorted to the safety of an authoritarian role when they responded to the writing. But that traditional role is not a very satisfying or effective role to assume. As Carol Berkenkotter insists, it promotes an "unreal" sense of writing, in that it does not permit students to experience the variety of rhetorical situations but instead requires them to "write for a single authority, the teacher" (396). Peter Elbow recommends that we "think about what it means to 'be an audience' rather than just be a teacher, critic, assessor, or editor" (65), and Robert Brooke suggests that we think carefully about our "identities" because neither "writing teacher nor student is content to rely on the expected roles of teacher and student" (151). Brooke believes that we should accept our "underlife," an identity that lies under our many public roles. Doing this requires not that we dramatize "the presence of the reader," which Nancy Sommers argues is the aim of response; it requires, instead, that we become real readers, thus allowing students to "internalize" gradually the concept of a reader (Knoblauch and Brannon 285). To accomplish this aim, a responder needs to offer consistent and actual "reader" responses.
Insisting that we drop the masks that inhibit learning, Thomas Newkirk argues that we must "act as the fallible, sometimes confused, sometimes puzzled readers that we are" (765). Elbow recommends that we "respond by 'replying' (as in a letter) rather than always 'giving feedback"' (65). Inso doing, we would show students that we are readers, not critics of classroom performances or observers disguised as readers. We can dispel the destructive notion that they need to decipher our commentary to determine how to play the game for us. "If our response is to tell students what's strong, what's weak, and how to improve it (diagnosis, assessment, and advice)," Elbow maintains, "we actually 'undermine' their sense of writing as a social act" (65). Instead, we might emphasize that we are actual readers and prove it to them in our responses. What we need for response-to replace the pedagogy of exhortation, which Arm Berthoff claims is no "substitute for instruction" (754)—is a pedagogy of collaborative learning, which as Kenneth Bruffee argues, "naturally challenges the traditional basis of the authority of those who teach" (649).
Several responses to the sample paragraph show that some teachers do engage in a pedagogy of collaborative learning; their responses show their engagementinreading the paragraph: "I feel frightened for her—the fright comes after the calm I sensed at the beginning" and "I feel I can see those eyes!" But comments such as "This paragraph is excellent" or "You should develop either the introduction or the last three sentences" reveal a critic, an authority who hunts for strengths and weaknesses in the text. These responses do not come from a participant in a writer-reader dialogue; they come from an observer peculiarly detached from the rhetorical situation. Such responses are similar to that of a person who has just finished listening to someone describe fear experienced in a car accident and who then responds that the speaker has good ideas but should improve the introduction.
Teacher Reading Processes
The "traditional" teacher role and the habit of dealing with large numbers of papers at once distort our reading of student texts. And we expect to read well and even write effective comments on batches of the papers we assign. But in these situations, we are not participating readers; instead, we are good lookers and examiners, doing the kind of work accomplished on an assembly line.
I understand why many writing instructors look at the reading of student texts as a service and not as a particularly interesting task—many do not look at student texts as writing worth reading. We expect student writing to be "student" writing and not writing we read for pleasure, reading which Wolfgang Iser says is "only a pleasure when it is active and creative" (51). Louise Wetherbee Phelps makes a distinction between an "ordinary" reading and an "unnatural" reading. The "ordinary" reading to which she refers is dearly different from the reading of the writing instructor who assumes a "teacherly" role when responding to a student text. Joseph M. Williams also notes a difference between an "ordinary" reading and one that is "consciously directed" at specified features of the text. He explains it this way: "When we read for typos, letters constitute the field of attention; content becomes virtually inaccessible. When we read for content, semantic structures constitute the field of attention; letters—for the most part—recede from our consciousness" (154). A reason for this difference in reading habits, according to Phelps, is that we are not capable of observing critically all the elements of discourse with "equal attention and emphasis" (23). Perhaps we look for what we want to see and when we read in the traditional role, what we want to see is determined by the standard response formula (strength + weakness + advice) and its emphasis on predetermined product features. As a result, we often do not see other rich features of students' language.
To help myself see those rich features of language, I schedule collection of papers so that I do not burden myself with an excessive number to read at any one time. And, realizing that the value of written teacher commentary is easily overestimated, I conduct regular individual conferences and frequent peer-group readings. Further, I try to make my reading of student writing "active and creative," as Charles Schuster suggests, so that I can "more fully participate in the rich discourse of others" (607). Schuster argues that "once we realize the extent to which all language is saturated with other styles, idioms, and modes of speaking and writing, we become better readers and, by extension, better teachers of reading and writing" (607). If we confront student writing eagerly and engage ourselves in the "textual" conversation, "bringing to bear on the text broader experiences and expectations" (Warnock 74), then we will not be guided by unusual "teacherly" expectations for the student text. We could become better readers and, consequently, better responders.
Teacher Expectations
"Unnatural" reading is caused in part by the preconception that a piece of writing is inferior—inferior, that is, to sophisticated "real" writing that one reads as an ordinary reader. The handwritten paragraph in my workshop caused the participants to assume that the text was inferior. But even the typed version, which was greeted more favorably, received commentary that revealed teachers' preconceptions that the text was a student's in need of revision. If I had announced at the beginning of the session that the paragraph was Hemingway's (it was, in fact), I suspect that the responses would have been much different, that the teachers would have actively read the paragraph, participating as readers engaged in "ordinary" reading. Sommers says that this teacher-response phenomenon is created because teachers are trained to read and analyze literature but not to do the same with student writing. She explains that "we read student texts with biases about what the writer should have said or about what he or she should have written, and our biases determine how we will comprehend the text. We read with our preconceptions and preoccupations, expecting to find errors, and the result is that we find errors and misread our students' texts" (154).
To avoid such misreadings of texts, we need to try to approach a student text with no preconceptions about quality. We need to attempt what Stanley Fish recommends: to make no distinction between ordinary language and literary language and to recognize that both are a "product of reading" (97). As a product of reading, a student text has the potential, if read with sensitivity by a real reader, to do to us what we assume literary texts do: engage us in "textual conversation" and rich discourse. Our reader responses can help engage students in that conversation as well.
I am convinced that we should look at student texts from a new perspective: reading each text with the same engagement that we experience when we read "literary" texts. From such a perspective we can, I believe, enjoy the job of reading and responding much more, and, subsequently, our responses can be more meaningful and motivating to students. 11 we keep in mind Fish's observation that "ordinary language is extraordinary because at its heart is precisely that realm of values, intentions, and purposes which is often assumed to be the exclusive property of literature" (108), we will not be tempted to hold pen in hand and pick at language, as if we were bone cleaners. We will be more likely to read, appreciate, and become involved in a writer's language, recognizing the person and the expression within and behind the words. Responding from such an orientation, we may indeed discover the "extraordinariness" of ordinary writing; in fact, we may even be able to recognize the extraordinariness of anonymous literary language, such as a handwritten copy of a Hemingway paragraph.
As teachers of writing, we hold considerable power when we respond to student writings. We can damage a student's willingness and interest in writing, or we can encourage and motivate the student to do a lot of writing, and, perhaps, to become a professional writer or even a novelist like Hemingway. I wonder what Hemingway would have thought about receiving a C- on that paragraph had he turned it in to a teacher handwritten because he did not have a typewriter. Maybe he would have become discouraged, or perhaps he would have laughed at some of the corrections and recommendations. Perhaps he would have gone back to the paragraph and attempted to revise it as instructed. Or, perhaps, he would have deleted it from The Sun Also Rises. If he had been a student writer submitting the paragraph in response to an assignment, he conceivably would have confronted all of these options. Hemingway could probably have negotiated such a situation, but I wonder how a young, inexperienced writer, experimenting with language and expressing something of much concern to him or her, would have handled it.
Northern State College
Aberdeen, South Dakota
Works Cited
Berkenkotter, CaroL "Understanding a Writer's Awareness of Audience." College Composition and Communication 32 (1981): 388-99.
Berthoff, Ann E. "Is Teaching Still Possible? Writing, Meaning, and Higher Order Reasoning." College English 46(1984): 743-55.
Brooke, Robert. "Underlife and Writing Instruction." College Composition and Communication 38 (1987): 141-53.
Bruffee, Kenneth A. "Collaborative Learning and the 'Conversation of Mankind."' College English 46 (1984): 635-52.
Cowan, Greg. 'The Rhetorician's Personae." College Composition and Communication 28 (19Th: 259-62.
Elbow, Peter. "Closing My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for Ignoring Audience." College English 49 (1987): 50-69.
Fish, Stanley E. Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1980.
Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. New York: Scribner's, 1970.
Iser, Wolfgang. 'The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach." Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism." Ed. Jane P. Tompkins. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980. 50-69.
Knoblauch, C. H., and Lil Brannon. 'Teacher Commentary on Student Writing: The State of the Art." Freshman English News 10.2 (1981): 1-4.
Phelps, Louise Wetherbee. "Dialectics of Coherence: Toward an Integrative Theory." College English 47(1985): 12-29.
Schumann, Paul F. 'What Criteria Do You Use in Grading Compositions?" English Journal 57(1968): 1163-165.
Schuster, Charles I. "Mikhail Bakhtin as Rhetorical Theorist." College English 47(1985): 594-607.
Sloan, Gary. "The Wacky World of Theme-Marking." College Composition and Communication 28 (19Th: 370-73.
Sommers, Nancy. "Responding to Student Writing." College Composition and Communication 33 (1982): 142-56.
Warnock, Tily. "Reading Kenneth Burke: Ways In, Ways Out, Ways Roundabout." College English 48 (1986): 62-75.
Williams, Joseph M. 'The Phenomenology of Error." College Composition and Communication 32 (1981): 152-68.
A nice social sciences experiment, I think, regarding disparity in grading amongst teachers of the same essay..
A Curious Case of Our Responding Habits:
What Do We Respond to and Why?
David Fuller
For a two-week summer seminar on the teaching of writing, I conducted a class exercise that yielded surprising results and made me reconsider how I respond to student writing. When planning the exercise, I remembered Gary Sloan's "The Wacky World of Theme-Marking" and his claims that writing teachers' marking habits are contradictory, biased, and often useless and incorrect, as well as "wacky." I prepared the exercise to see how the teachers enrolled in the seminar would respond to a given text and to prove that they were not as wacky as Sloan and others suggest.
I divided the class into two groups of seven, separated the groups so that they could not hear each other, and gave one group a typed and the other a handwritten version of the same paragraph. Both versions were dear and legible, but the handwritten version was deliberately uneven, the penmanship resembling that of a young writer: circles for the dots above i's, slightly exaggerated curls on the tails of y's, and two minor cross-outs. I instructed both groups to respond to the writing as if it had been submitted in response to an assignment asking for a paragraph describing a relationship between two people. I didn't tell either group anything about the writer, and they didn't ask about the student's age or grade level, or whether the draft was finished or in progress. Each person was allowed approximately ten minutes to read and respond in writing to the paragraph. I instructed them not to discuss the paragraph until they were finished and I had collected the responses. Before collecting the responses, I asked them to put a grade below their written comments. I instructed them to grade the piece after they had written comments in order to ensure that they would not write comments to justify a grade. I then collected their responses and we discussed the paragraph.
Teacher Responses
The behavior of the teachers as they responded and later as they discussed the paragraph was interesting. Those given the handwritten version were at first disturbed, noticeably perplexed by the task of responding, and hesitant to begin. After they turned in the papers, their behavior indicated that responding to the paragraph was especially difficult; they seemed pleased to find consensus about its quality, and they talked mostly about lines and words they thought were poorly written and unclear. In contrast, those reading the typed version were at first noticeably interested and dedicated to reading the text and writing comments. Later, they remained intent and serious, noting details they liked in the paragraph. I was naturally curious about the reasons for the difference in the behavior of the groups and began to anticipate that the grades and written responses might differ, but not significantly.
Everyone then returned to the main group to discuss the exercise. A spokesperson from the group responding to the handwritten version explained that the student had not addressed the assignment well. This group suggested that the paragraph, while 'somewhat" interesting, needed work, especially on style. The spokesperson for the other group explained that the group found the paragraph mature and "intense," and believed the writer had accomplished the task exceptionally well, except for some minor punctuation problems. As soon as a teacher mentioned that one of those minor problems was vague pronoun reference, a participant from the other group recognized the scam and asked if both groups had read the same paragraph. I admitted that they had and explained the difference between the two versions: one had been typed and the other handwritten. I read to them the grades assigned by each group as well as selected responses to the paragraph. The differences were startling and obviously surprised the members of both groups.
The differences in the comments on the paragraphs dearly reflected differences in the attitudes of the two groups. While the participants in both groups attempted to praise the student, the praise in response to the typed version was much more sincere and confidently phrased:
•Excellent mood created here; soft words—emotion. I feel frightened for her—the fright comes after the calm I sensed at the beginning.
•Effective mood is created. This has some tender emotion. I like this softness [arrows are drawn to the first two lines].
•Very good thoughts. You seem to be in touch with them. This paragraph is excellent. I feel I can see those eyes!
•Emotional intensity good! Mystical quality heightened by not naming the person in question.
•I like the way you allow me to "feel" her fright. Your thoughts are very good, but we could do some work together on word choice (you use "look" six times).
•The feeling and visual images are fantastic. I can picture this! I have been through the same emotion.
•Great technique—showing me in a unique way much more about this person than meets the eye.
In contrast, the comments on the handwritten version, particularly attempts at praise, were much more reserve
• I think you really have some insight into this other person. I do not see your side of the relationship. I like the idea about seeing her through her own eyes.
• A good subject. You surely feel something for this subject. Good effort—description is good.
• The third sentence intrigues me with the character. But most of the sentences are run together. Too gushy.
• Interesting piece of writing—very distinct style—a lot of thought.
• You appear to really care about this person and want to know her better. You must be very observant about human behaviors.
• I can tell you've given a lot of thought to the way she looks at things. Your idea is a good one.
• Your idea comes through.
Members of both groups wrote recommendations for revision. Recommendations for the typed version were polite, suggesting that the writer, if he or she wished, make the changes:
• Perhaps more physical environment would help. "Eyes" description is almost too abstract.
• Some problems with punctuation that cause some reader difficulty.
• First line, after her—second sentence could be made easier to envision.
• Describing your surroundings is a possibility.
• Maybe write more like this [an arrow is drawn to a line].
Note the qualifiers "perhaps," "some," "is a possibility," "could," and "maybe" and the general courteous and respectful tone. Participants responding to the handwritten version, however, were more resolute, identifying definite problems and stating their observations firmly. Note the definite evaluative tone and imperative constructions in the following:
• "They would look on" (use comma to avoid confusion).
• No sense for punctuation in correct places. Too many thoughts within one sentence.
• Try to find substitutes for Look. Revise the second sentence. Try using subordinate phrases or clauses.
• Shorter, more concise sentence.
• All of your sentences are basically the same.
• You need to work on sentence structure.
The marks and responses given by both groups to individual sentences in the sample were surprisingly different and idiosyncratic. Of the fourteen samples, very few marks or notations directed to individual sentences addressed similar concerns. Most of the notations occurred only once, indicating general inconsistency among teachers in their observations about stylistic features. The teachers inserted commas, crossed out or changed conjunctions, and noted problems with clarity and pronoun reference. But very few of these notations were consistent. In fact, at times the notations were noticeably contradictory.
While the tone was dearly different in the responses given the two versions, the responses from both groups were similar in that they addressed the text from the perspective of an "authority," and they followed the traditional response formula—identifying strengths and weaknesses and making recommendations for changes ("This.., is good, but. . . , so I'd recommend that you.. ."). The responses were essentially product centered and expressed different audience roles: friend, advisor, teacher, authority, and judge (see Cowan for a discussion of the effects of mixing these roles). The inconsistencies, the "praise . . . but" format, and the unusual reader expectations revealed a mode of response that these teachers were accustomed to. Admittedly, some of the inconsistencies and idiosyncrasies resulted from the exercise itself, which presented unusual time limitations and instructions as well as an artificial context. The teachers had to play a hypothetical game—they didn't know the student, they hadn't created the assignment, and they didn't know that the paragraph had been excerpted from a large prose selection. Thus, the idiosyncrasies expressed in the commentary may have partially resulted from the exercise itself.
Judging from the differences in the remarks, one might anticipate differences in the grades assigned by the two groups. The typed version received these grades: A-IB+, A, B, B-i-, B+, A, A (averaging an A-); the handwritten version received these: C+, C, C-, C-, C, C-, D (averaging C-). Clearly, the differences in attitude between the two groups' written remarks are emphasized by the significant difference in grades.
I asked the seminar participants what these differences in grades and responses suggest about the way we handle a student text. A few teachers remarked, and the others seemed to agree, that we need to look beyond the surface to acknowledge a student's intent. Many of them were astonished y the differences in the grades and the obvious conclusion that a typed paper will receive a much higher mark than a handwritten one. One teacher remarked that what could happen to a student with poor penman-hip is sad; the student may be interested and concerned about writing nothing of importance but receive responses and grades that fail to acknowledge his or her message.
This exercise reveals idiosyncrasies and inconsistencies in how we ad and respond to student papers; it also suggests that writing teachers made compositions, as Paul Schumann observes, "on a host of unconscious and/or superficial factors which often have little to do with what students actually write" (1164). The only consistency I was able to observe that the various reactions often expressed an authoritarian stance. It is safe to assume that during students' years of education they receive many authoritarian responses and directives. It is no wonder that they come to class asking, "Now what does this guy want?" Certainly, the mixed and disparate messages we send students do irreparable damage to their attitudes and, most strikingly, to their ability. But how can we solve this problem when most of us are faced with piles of papers and feel obligated to respond to content, style, tone, and format? My experiment seems to suggest that we need to develop the ability to read and respond as real readers to student writing and not to poke and pick and draw arrows to surface problems divorced from what the writer is doing—that is, unless the aim is editing later drafts. What I would like to recommend is that we change our traditional "marking" habits—a change which requires that we also change the way we perceive ourselves, our roles, our students, our expectations of their writing, and the ways we read their writing.
Teacher Role
Many of the responses to this sample writing, I suggest, are partially a result of the "teacherly" role-a role that can distort the reading process and make responses peculiarly condescending and critical. Most of the people in my class, all of whom had studied and discussed essays on contemporary writing theory, resorted to the safety of an authoritarian role when they responded to the writing. But that traditional role is not a very satisfying or effective role to assume. As Carol Berkenkotter insists, it promotes an "unreal" sense of writing, in that it does not permit students to experience the variety of rhetorical situations but instead requires them to "write for a single authority, the teacher" (396). Peter Elbow recommends that we "think about what it means to 'be an audience' rather than just be a teacher, critic, assessor, or editor" (65), and Robert Brooke suggests that we think carefully about our "identities" because neither "writing teacher nor student is content to rely on the expected roles of teacher and student" (151). Brooke believes that we should accept our "underlife," an identity that lies under our many public roles. Doing this requires not that we dramatize "the presence of the reader," which Nancy Sommers argues is the aim of response; it requires, instead, that we become real readers, thus allowing students to "internalize" gradually the concept of a reader (Knoblauch and Brannon 285). To accomplish this aim, a responder needs to offer consistent and actual "reader" responses.
Insisting that we drop the masks that inhibit learning, Thomas Newkirk argues that we must "act as the fallible, sometimes confused, sometimes puzzled readers that we are" (765). Elbow recommends that we "respond by 'replying' (as in a letter) rather than always 'giving feedback"' (65). Inso doing, we would show students that we are readers, not critics of classroom performances or observers disguised as readers. We can dispel the destructive notion that they need to decipher our commentary to determine how to play the game for us. "If our response is to tell students what's strong, what's weak, and how to improve it (diagnosis, assessment, and advice)," Elbow maintains, "we actually 'undermine' their sense of writing as a social act" (65). Instead, we might emphasize that we are actual readers and prove it to them in our responses. What we need for response-to replace the pedagogy of exhortation, which Arm Berthoff claims is no "substitute for instruction" (754)—is a pedagogy of collaborative learning, which as Kenneth Bruffee argues, "naturally challenges the traditional basis of the authority of those who teach" (649).
Several responses to the sample paragraph show that some teachers do engage in a pedagogy of collaborative learning; their responses show their engagementinreading the paragraph: "I feel frightened for her—the fright comes after the calm I sensed at the beginning" and "I feel I can see those eyes!" But comments such as "This paragraph is excellent" or "You should develop either the introduction or the last three sentences" reveal a critic, an authority who hunts for strengths and weaknesses in the text. These responses do not come from a participant in a writer-reader dialogue; they come from an observer peculiarly detached from the rhetorical situation. Such responses are similar to that of a person who has just finished listening to someone describe fear experienced in a car accident and who then responds that the speaker has good ideas but should improve the introduction.
Teacher Reading Processes
The "traditional" teacher role and the habit of dealing with large numbers of papers at once distort our reading of student texts. And we expect to read well and even write effective comments on batches of the papers we assign. But in these situations, we are not participating readers; instead, we are good lookers and examiners, doing the kind of work accomplished on an assembly line.
I understand why many writing instructors look at the reading of student texts as a service and not as a particularly interesting task—many do not look at student texts as writing worth reading. We expect student writing to be "student" writing and not writing we read for pleasure, reading which Wolfgang Iser says is "only a pleasure when it is active and creative" (51). Louise Wetherbee Phelps makes a distinction between an "ordinary" reading and an "unnatural" reading. The "ordinary" reading to which she refers is dearly different from the reading of the writing instructor who assumes a "teacherly" role when responding to a student text. Joseph M. Williams also notes a difference between an "ordinary" reading and one that is "consciously directed" at specified features of the text. He explains it this way: "When we read for typos, letters constitute the field of attention; content becomes virtually inaccessible. When we read for content, semantic structures constitute the field of attention; letters—for the most part—recede from our consciousness" (154). A reason for this difference in reading habits, according to Phelps, is that we are not capable of observing critically all the elements of discourse with "equal attention and emphasis" (23). Perhaps we look for what we want to see and when we read in the traditional role, what we want to see is determined by the standard response formula (strength + weakness + advice) and its emphasis on predetermined product features. As a result, we often do not see other rich features of students' language.
To help myself see those rich features of language, I schedule collection of papers so that I do not burden myself with an excessive number to read at any one time. And, realizing that the value of written teacher commentary is easily overestimated, I conduct regular individual conferences and frequent peer-group readings. Further, I try to make my reading of student writing "active and creative," as Charles Schuster suggests, so that I can "more fully participate in the rich discourse of others" (607). Schuster argues that "once we realize the extent to which all language is saturated with other styles, idioms, and modes of speaking and writing, we become better readers and, by extension, better teachers of reading and writing" (607). If we confront student writing eagerly and engage ourselves in the "textual" conversation, "bringing to bear on the text broader experiences and expectations" (Warnock 74), then we will not be guided by unusual "teacherly" expectations for the student text. We could become better readers and, consequently, better responders.
Teacher Expectations
"Unnatural" reading is caused in part by the preconception that a piece of writing is inferior—inferior, that is, to sophisticated "real" writing that one reads as an ordinary reader. The handwritten paragraph in my workshop caused the participants to assume that the text was inferior. But even the typed version, which was greeted more favorably, received commentary that revealed teachers' preconceptions that the text was a student's in need of revision. If I had announced at the beginning of the session that the paragraph was Hemingway's (it was, in fact), I suspect that the responses would have been much different, that the teachers would have actively read the paragraph, participating as readers engaged in "ordinary" reading. Sommers says that this teacher-response phenomenon is created because teachers are trained to read and analyze literature but not to do the same with student writing. She explains that "we read student texts with biases about what the writer should have said or about what he or she should have written, and our biases determine how we will comprehend the text. We read with our preconceptions and preoccupations, expecting to find errors, and the result is that we find errors and misread our students' texts" (154).
To avoid such misreadings of texts, we need to try to approach a student text with no preconceptions about quality. We need to attempt what Stanley Fish recommends: to make no distinction between ordinary language and literary language and to recognize that both are a "product of reading" (97). As a product of reading, a student text has the potential, if read with sensitivity by a real reader, to do to us what we assume literary texts do: engage us in "textual conversation" and rich discourse. Our reader responses can help engage students in that conversation as well.
I am convinced that we should look at student texts from a new perspective: reading each text with the same engagement that we experience when we read "literary" texts. From such a perspective we can, I believe, enjoy the job of reading and responding much more, and, subsequently, our responses can be more meaningful and motivating to students. 11 we keep in mind Fish's observation that "ordinary language is extraordinary because at its heart is precisely that realm of values, intentions, and purposes which is often assumed to be the exclusive property of literature" (108), we will not be tempted to hold pen in hand and pick at language, as if we were bone cleaners. We will be more likely to read, appreciate, and become involved in a writer's language, recognizing the person and the expression within and behind the words. Responding from such an orientation, we may indeed discover the "extraordinariness" of ordinary writing; in fact, we may even be able to recognize the extraordinariness of anonymous literary language, such as a handwritten copy of a Hemingway paragraph.
As teachers of writing, we hold considerable power when we respond to student writings. We can damage a student's willingness and interest in writing, or we can encourage and motivate the student to do a lot of writing, and, perhaps, to become a professional writer or even a novelist like Hemingway. I wonder what Hemingway would have thought about receiving a C- on that paragraph had he turned it in to a teacher handwritten because he did not have a typewriter. Maybe he would have become discouraged, or perhaps he would have laughed at some of the corrections and recommendations. Perhaps he would have gone back to the paragraph and attempted to revise it as instructed. Or, perhaps, he would have deleted it from The Sun Also Rises. If he had been a student writer submitting the paragraph in response to an assignment, he conceivably would have confronted all of these options. Hemingway could probably have negotiated such a situation, but I wonder how a young, inexperienced writer, experimenting with language and expressing something of much concern to him or her, would have handled it.
Northern State College
Aberdeen, South Dakota
Works Cited
Berkenkotter, CaroL "Understanding a Writer's Awareness of Audience." College Composition and Communication 32 (1981): 388-99.
Berthoff, Ann E. "Is Teaching Still Possible? Writing, Meaning, and Higher Order Reasoning." College English 46(1984): 743-55.
Brooke, Robert. "Underlife and Writing Instruction." College Composition and Communication 38 (1987): 141-53.
Bruffee, Kenneth A. "Collaborative Learning and the 'Conversation of Mankind."' College English 46 (1984): 635-52.
Cowan, Greg. 'The Rhetorician's Personae." College Composition and Communication 28 (19Th: 259-62.
Elbow, Peter. "Closing My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for Ignoring Audience." College English 49 (1987): 50-69.
Fish, Stanley E. Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1980.
Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. New York: Scribner's, 1970.
Iser, Wolfgang. 'The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach." Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism." Ed. Jane P. Tompkins. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980. 50-69.
Knoblauch, C. H., and Lil Brannon. 'Teacher Commentary on Student Writing: The State of the Art." Freshman English News 10.2 (1981): 1-4.
Phelps, Louise Wetherbee. "Dialectics of Coherence: Toward an Integrative Theory." College English 47(1985): 12-29.
Schumann, Paul F. 'What Criteria Do You Use in Grading Compositions?" English Journal 57(1968): 1163-165.
Schuster, Charles I. "Mikhail Bakhtin as Rhetorical Theorist." College English 47(1985): 594-607.
Sloan, Gary. "The Wacky World of Theme-Marking." College Composition and Communication 28 (19Th: 370-73.
Sommers, Nancy. "Responding to Student Writing." College Composition and Communication 33 (1982): 142-56.
Warnock, Tily. "Reading Kenneth Burke: Ways In, Ways Out, Ways Roundabout." College English 48 (1986): 62-75.
Williams, Joseph M. 'The Phenomenology of Error." College Composition and Communication 32 (1981): 152-68.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Science with Water
We worked with a tub half filled with water tonight. He placed the whistle tube in it and found that it makes music when the ends of the 'U' shape are alternately pulled up and down. Then we learned about buoyancy by using a clear plastic case (it was originally for a pair of his water sandals) that has unequal sides (the opening, from top to bottom), and then the buoyancy of different balls. Cute video of it except he decided that he was going to have to go potty in the middle and he kept holding himself during the video we were shooting.
Botany Discussion
I found a maple tree that had just sprouted, and the seed pod was still attached. He thought the roots felt funny. Here are some pictures of our discussion.
We found a maple leaf, much larger, though, that had had an insect egg laid on it, that had later hatched. Here are a couple of pictures of that.
We found a maple leaf, much larger, though, that had had an insect egg laid on it, that had later hatched. Here are a couple of pictures of that.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
MrBaby is Still SIck
But he did ask to take his meds and slept some today, up til about 1 PM. Poor lil guy.
Monday, June 15, 2009
MrBaby is Sick Today
Very runny nose, major icky stuff, bleh. Refuses to take any medicine, and yes, it's the same medicine he begs to take when he's not sick.
We still did some different activities. He's discovered his ankle bone, so we looked at xray pictures of that. This lead us to xrays of feet, and then hands. I also showed him an xray of a skull, which, at first, he thought was a dinosaur. I showed him how the ankle bone moves and helps us walk. We saw one photograph that showed where someone had sprained it very badly, almost looking like it was broken.
We also looked at photographs of the planet Venus after seeing it in the northeast sky. I'm assuming it's Venus, last year it was straight across the street, so it's something I need to look up and check on before too long.
We set up the tents, with the new tent, traded from Donny, having one of the longer poles snap on me. Glad it was on the very end, and not in the middle. I ended up asking Josh for some help on getting it set up. He did finally tell me that he was late getting home yesterday because the guy driving (not Danny) ended up driving them within a mile of Chicago. He ate most of his supper in the larger tent. This was around the same time that James showed up, during the day. I got to talk to his mom, and she gave me the number to her cell. She seems like a very nice lady, and told me she is 30. I told her Crystal is also 30, and the age difference has never been a problem to either of us, and if she ever wanted to hang out, to just come over. I told her about the 'lunch in the park' program, and she said she will most likely come to that with James. I didn't bring up her homeschooling him, I'll save that for later if we do meet. She said they aren't from around here and none of them know too many people. She said they live over on Warsaw at Rudisill.
We still did some different activities. He's discovered his ankle bone, so we looked at xray pictures of that. This lead us to xrays of feet, and then hands. I also showed him an xray of a skull, which, at first, he thought was a dinosaur. I showed him how the ankle bone moves and helps us walk. We saw one photograph that showed where someone had sprained it very badly, almost looking like it was broken.
We also looked at photographs of the planet Venus after seeing it in the northeast sky. I'm assuming it's Venus, last year it was straight across the street, so it's something I need to look up and check on before too long.
We set up the tents, with the new tent, traded from Donny, having one of the longer poles snap on me. Glad it was on the very end, and not in the middle. I ended up asking Josh for some help on getting it set up. He did finally tell me that he was late getting home yesterday because the guy driving (not Danny) ended up driving them within a mile of Chicago. He ate most of his supper in the larger tent. This was around the same time that James showed up, during the day. I got to talk to his mom, and she gave me the number to her cell. She seems like a very nice lady, and told me she is 30. I told her Crystal is also 30, and the age difference has never been a problem to either of us, and if she ever wanted to hang out, to just come over. I told her about the 'lunch in the park' program, and she said she will most likely come to that with James. I didn't bring up her homeschooling him, I'll save that for later if we do meet. She said they aren't from around here and none of them know too many people. She said they live over on Warsaw at Rudisill.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Friday, June 5, 2009
Back from Camping
MrBaby started his leaf collection using the old photo album. We got back late Thursday and Rakkie actually helped us get unpacked. Waiting on the pics from Kathy to come in now. Need to get the thumb to her soon.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Dental Hygienist Appointment
We took the bus all the way around the south part of the route, and Karl looked at the routes for the 6 (which we were on), and the 8. Mommy explained that the routes were like maps.Today, we went to the dental hygienist at M25. Karl had hands-on experience with one of the teeth models and its accompanying toothbrush. He also was able to play with a fruit basket and its contents. Each time Suzy would offer him a toy, he'd refuse and say he already had that item at home, including the egg timer she showed him. He said 'me already have sand.' Suzy says he's adorable, and Mommy agrees.
Then we went to Burger King, took photos at the fountains at Freimann Square, ran into Dave, got back on the 6, and went home.
Then we went to Burger King, took photos at the fountains at Freimann Square, ran into Dave, got back on the 6, and went home.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Summer Preschool Starts Tomorrow!!!
I will be keeping a record of our summer preschool activities here instead of in a new blog. We are expecting to do swimming, zoo trips, backyard science, counting objects wee see, such as cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles, bees, ants, spiders, and also with money at various stores and at yard sale transactions, plus you can't forget the ice cream man, when we can catch him, that is. There will be social studies at the park, science studies on plants and seeds, animals we see, day time and night time, sun and moon movements, more activities with mirrors, magnifying glasses, binoculars, the telescope, and the NASA website. He will be keeping a notebook of what he learns. It looks like an exciting summer! We already have one trip, to Rose-Hulman to see big brother Corey graduate, scheduled for this coming Friday, with a camping adventure worked in. Josh is also going with us. My friend Kathy is driving us down, and she will be visiting nearby friends, in Shelburn, while we are down there. Packing is going to be quite fun for this. We are taking the sheepskins with us. I can finally get that firewood off the porch, which reminds me to get marshmallows.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
MrBaby is Learning to Share!
He wanted to go to Leo's today and see if Nigel and Marquis could play. They weren't there, but while we were talking to Leo, Charlene arrived. MrBaby asked her if they were with her, and she said 'no, honey, tomorrow'. He told her that 'borrow means return it', meaning if he borrows toys, he knows he has to return them. He wanted to show Nigel his new slinky, just like Nigel's, and share it with him, too. We'll see if he really does it, and if so, sporadically, or consistently. I think he'll make a good effort, but that the newness of sharing will fade quickly. His heart's in the right place, though.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
New Use for Shape Sorters
Trace the shapes onto paper, and have your child match the shapes up with the outlines on the paper. We have more than one set, but the second set is only partial. Here are some pics.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Gears!
We learned about gears yesterday and today. There are lots of things to know about gears, and they are used all over the house. Even the popcorn maker has gears! They are used to turn the mixing arms that keep the popcorn kernels from sitting in one place too long.
We watched videos of gears on YouTube. They are very short, but most are very interesting. We watched how windmills work. They have lots of gears, and they have right angles, too.
I am thinking that we will try to make some gears out of clay, and see if we can learn even more. He likes to play with the popcorn maker, but it is used mainly too cook Bear. Poor Bear......
We watched videos of gears on YouTube. They are very short, but most are very interesting. We watched how windmills work. They have lots of gears, and they have right angles, too.
I am thinking that we will try to make some gears out of clay, and see if we can learn even more. He likes to play with the popcorn maker, but it is used mainly too cook Bear. Poor Bear......
Friday, March 13, 2009
Reflection or Ghost?
MrBaby told me that the 'ghosts' I was 'scared' of were really reflections from the car lights at the gas station shinning in through our windows. Good job figuring it out! I explained about the skewing of the window to make the shape, and that it was caused by the angle of the car lights. I tried to get it on video, but I couldn't pick up the 'ghosts' flying across the ceiling.
This is what it looks like after being stretched in Paint, and looks very similar to what was 'flying' across the ceiling.
The second picture is the actual window.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Update on Aquarium
Been dosing it with hydrogen peroxide and it worked wonders. It kinda hurt the plants, but I'm sure they'll recover ok. However, we are back down to only three fish. Maybe that is the healthy max for this tank.
We had the three parent fish, then four babies, then another baby, which died shortly after I placed him in the snail tank. Just before he was born, I placed a bunch of pennies in the tank, to get rid of the hydra. That killed the hydra, but also killed our favorite snail, plus all the other ones. It killed off all the aquatic life we had in there except the planaria. After that, we had a bite on the nice mommy fish, and she died. I lowered the temp a bit. Then we ended up with black mold all over everything in the tank, and the mean mommy fish died, and about two weeks later, we lost daddy fish. One of the baby fish also died. That is when I looked it up about the h2o2. Down to three again. Still waiting to see what their sexes are.
We had the three parent fish, then four babies, then another baby, which died shortly after I placed him in the snail tank. Just before he was born, I placed a bunch of pennies in the tank, to get rid of the hydra. That killed the hydra, but also killed our favorite snail, plus all the other ones. It killed off all the aquatic life we had in there except the planaria. After that, we had a bite on the nice mommy fish, and she died. I lowered the temp a bit. Then we ended up with black mold all over everything in the tank, and the mean mommy fish died, and about two weeks later, we lost daddy fish. One of the baby fish also died. That is when I looked it up about the h2o2. Down to three again. Still waiting to see what their sexes are.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Power Ranger Costume
I made him a Red Power Ranger costume today. Here's a pic of him sleeping in it.
Tomatoes
| These are the tomatoes that I found already growing inside of a tomato when I went to slice it up to put on sandwiches. We put them on a paper plate for a few days, and then cut them open and planted them. Very unusual, we are hoping they grow good tomatoes this summer. |
Here's another one, taken later on, after having turned them.
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