Hi.
I am a writer, musician, dog-mom, hiker, MFA recipient, and current faculty member of Vermont State University
I am a writer, musician, dog-mom, hiker, MFA recipient, and current faculty member of Vermont State University
was designed using Wiggins & McTigue’s Understanding by Design backwards design model. Thus, the course planning began not with lessons, but with what are known as Essential Questions. These EQs are big-picture inquiries that are meant to guide the teacher in unit planning, and orient students to a “zoomed out” significance of their specific course work and assignments. To continue with the backwards design method, this section will begin with the big questions and then move to student learning objectives.
Essential questions for this course were listed on the syllabus as well as the assignment sheet for the multimodal essay unit:
What is literature? What is writing? What is [a]story? What does it mean to be a storytelling citizen? How does writing address issues and illuminate relevant topics through story? Do you believe you have a story to tell? What is your story? What do stories DO (to you, and in the world)?
An essential question for this unit in particular is: how can you use research to support something that you want to say? In other words, how can you craft a research-based narrative to make a statement, to tell a story? Students began this class with a narrative unit focusing on story: narrative tools and strategies used by short story writers, and essayists. Now is the time for students to use those narrative skills, in addition to research skills taught in previous units on analytical writing and knowledge of genre function in the multigenre essay unit, to create a story that creates impact.
These questions are important because I believe that all writing is rhetorical: all writing is trying to convince, persuade, or enlighten a reader to something–that ‘something’ may be an argument of proposal to remove all plastic grocery bags from New Hampshire grocery stores, or it might be to show through fantasy fiction how forced removal of indigenous people from their land is harmful, and deadly, or it might be that a piece of flash nonfiction is trying to tell the reader what it’s like to grow up as a black Antiguan girl who is chastised by her mother. Readings in an ELA classroom run the risk of existing in a vacuum: students do not see who these stories, essays and books are part of a dialogue that extends beyond the classroom and into political, cultural, racial and religious issues. Asking questions about what stories do in the world, and in our lives, is a way to breathe life into text printed on the material of felled and processed plant matter.
The multimodal essay unit is important because it brings writing to digital spaces where audiences can engage with them–whether it is the audience in the classroom, or millions, perhaps billions, connected by social media–and they can ‘live’ in a more interactive and engaging space (viewed in this way, books are limiting and limited).
As a result of this course of study students will understand that what they write is an extension of themselves, and an active engagement with the world. The project choices for this unit are purposeful in this way (choose a topic of interest and creatively explore it through a connection to an EQ and a text from this class; make an argument of proposal; revise your personal essay and transform it into a researched personal essay): each choice is focused on a thesis statement, and uses research to back up that statement.
students will refine their thesis statement writing skills developed since the first assignment, the personal essay
students will hone their research skills by digging deep into academic databases and higher quality source expectations
students will learn something more about a topic of interest
see how their thoughts and ideas fit into a larger dialogue
students will understand layers of meaning communicated through various media and modes by both analyzing those layers, and then creating them intentionally for a final product: the multimodal essay.