Jessica's Blog

I like being a writing coach so far. Although, I've only had one opportunity to look at a student's work. I was really impressed with that student's work. I wish I had the opportunity to look at some other work, but I have high hopes that I will get to look at at least one more assignment this semester. I am really enjoying talking to my students and getting to know them. One of them is a really big Harry Potter fan, as am I, so we have really connected over that. Teachers, writing coaches, and peers all offer different types of feedback that are important in the writing process. I think teachers use a more critical approach in their feedback. They look at the writing with a grading perspective, even in a rough draft, they think about how the writing would be graded if it was a final draft. Additionally, the teacher has to take notes about where each student struggles in their writing; if there's an accumulation of students not understanding something then it will need...

 I don't have much experience in digital storytelling or other forms of multimodal composition. I have done some Flipgrid videos in previous classes, and I've used Canva and Visme. I actually made a virtual poster on Visme last semester for a creative writing course that I'm really proud of. It's a poem I wrote about a murder-suicide based off of a Vincent Van Gogh painting called "The Houses at Auvers." It also includes some true crime stories about family annihilators. Here's the link if anyone is interested: https://my.visme.co/view/6xynqjdg-m3x58k3gxonm5krp I really do like using infographics and I plan to incorporate them in my classroom. I especially like that they can be more than just a digital poster. You can add music, add moving images, and make it interactive. However, at this point I'm really interested in expanded my knowledge of multimodal composition and I'm really interested in creating a PSA. From the examples, I really like the ...

My writing process has changed dramatically over the years. In the Spandel essay, she discusses that most students writing is assessment driven. This is exactly how I started writing. Even my rough drafts, were written to be a "final draft" that only needed some grammatical or formatting corrections. I would write my thesis first and then fill in the rest of my essay. When I went back to College, this assessment style of writing was so ingrained in my head that that is how I continued to write. It was my fool proof sure way of being successful in my writing. It wasn't until one of my professors introduced me to Anne Lamott's "Shitty First Drafts" that my writing style really changed. Similar to what Ballenger suggests, that we teach students to write badly first, Lamott believes in writing a bad first draft, just writing everything down, every thought that comes to mind, not caring about grammar or sentence structure. It's a draft that no one will ever ...