Move away from the warmth. MEMO 5

With all of my research so far, if you were to ask me about the five paragraph essay I would ramble on and on about Montaigne, standardization, formulas, life, and risk. Now I bet you are wondering, what do all of these things have in common and how do they relate to the five paragraph essay? But I promise you, they are all important to teach students writing, and more specifically, the writing of an argument.

From reading my blog so far, you already know about Montaigne who is the father of what we know as the essay, and you also know that standardization of education moved away from free flowing ideas to more structured ideas of the education practice. The structuring of anything will obviously always lead to formulaic thought and processes, which are valuable for navigating anything in life. Cause and Effect is something that can be applied to everything, but what about things that may not always fit perfectly into our formulas? You cannot shove everything into a formula and discover new things, sometimes you have to work out of that formula.

So no there are Montaigne, standardizations, formulas, and life. But where is risk? Well, in education we say that learning cannot be done unless students take risks and not only try new things, but to fail and have to rethink. We say they need to move out of the realm where they are safe, but need to be in a risk friendly environment. But now that I study education deeply, I see this idea of risk that teachers tell their students to involve themselves in, is often forgotten or not practiced by educators.

To zoom in on the five paragraph essay, many educators will agree that the five paragraph essay is not a sample of great writing. Yet, in my education and many others, the education on writing seems to stop at the five paragraph and students are expected to develop these into more extensive and expressive pieces of writing. Why don’t teachers work on teaching away from it. I personally think they are scared. Yes I said it. Teachers are scared to teach away from the five structural paragraphs and they hide behind the veil that standardized tests expect the five paragraph essay. Teach to the test, an idea that drives me crazy, but that is for another day.

I have come to see the five paragraph essay as just a step to scaffolding the teaching of good writing. A step, not the finale. One of the articles I read this past week said something that I know I will never forget, and that was “Embrace discomfort if you want to get better”. I think that we teach by using formulas because it is easy to assess, and that is a place where comfort thrives for teachers, plus formulas are procedural and easy to teach. But we tell students to take risks, so why will teachers not take the risk on having to look at something that may be hard to grade, or worse not even grade, just appreciate. Where would Montaigne be if he didn’t take risks on writing different than others? So why does it seem like most teachers are playing it safe and not working on developing learning to benefit students outside of their standard box that is school?

Memo 4: continuing my path

As I have already explained, I have learned that the five paragraph essay is not necessarily a bad thing, but has become to be used in a way that is detrimental to writing and creating a passion for writing. It has become a tool of assessment and no longer a tool for practice and organization. This takes away the creativity and experience of developing thoughts through writing. My I search has basically become how to use the five paragraph essay appropriately to boost writing confidence and passion.

Remembering an article we had read earlier this semester, I went digging through my papers and came upon and article written by Donald M. Murray titled “Teach Writing as a Process Not a Product”. BOOM. That is it. When I read this article originally I thought to myself that it was common sense that writing should be a process and not a product, but now that I have been researching the essay, I see how educators have fallen into the cycle of student writing being a product.

Now I’m brainstorming approaches to writing that can undo the damage that educators have done to make the word write make students shake, and the first thing is low stakes writing. While this is something, I hear being suggested to beginning teachers of writing, I have never had it connected to essay writing, but rather seen it as a separate entity. Now I’m looking at it as a part of essay writing. Crazy right? Combining free writes and essays, I hope this makes English teachers nervous. I can see myself starting a lesson on argument writing with students journaling about something they feel strong about, writing any way they want, poetry, lists, paragraph. Then having them take this stuff and create a position. Spending a whole week working on a single point a day. Then putting it together in a five paragraph essay. A week to create five paragraphs. I can see this relieving some of the pressure when it comes to writing, and students can be involved in something they are actually interested in.

The more I look into writing the more I see that it is most beneficial as a tool for exploration, and after writing is taught this way and learned this way, then it can be used as a tool of assessment. The biggest thing that I am saying here is that writing should be learned and practiced before it is graded, it is not something that can happen in tandem. Word choice is the smallest element of writing, and this is something that needs to be experimented with when writing, and if we are grading student writing immediately, they will have no room to take risks, and we all know that learning cannot take place without risk taking and failure among our earliest attempts. This is why multiple low stakes drafts seem to be a necessity. And in my own writing education, I do not think I ever handed in drafts. Maybe this is why I always play it safe with writing assignments, and why most students find comfort in the boring five paragraph essay.

Blitz

START

 Converging Lines

 Color Domination

 Openess

 Abstract

 Someone Else's Hands

 Finish

For this Photoblitz I chose my bedroom because it is filled with everything that is me and there were a million things that I could choose. It is probably the only place I am ever at where I can relax a little and don't have to have attention other places. The experience was a lot of fun. I was trying to think of many different cool things to take pictures of where I was interpreting the photo types as different from what other people may and it made it extra fun. I would say the most interpretive photos worked best for me, and I'm curious if some people will get some of the things that I took pictures of. I look forward to seeing others photos.

Memo 3B: connecting the essay back to its origin

            I know that Montaigne developed what is now known as the essay with writings on his personal views of society in 16^th century France. And that he would often connect elements of ancient history to current events. I also know that essays are now written to demonstrate student writing, and are used to asses student writing. But how did the essay go from demonstrating opinion to a tool of skill assessment, such as seen with the writing section of the SAT? So far the answer I have come to find is the regulation and standardization of teaching methods and assessment that occurred in the late 19^th and early 20^th century.

            This is the period that the five paragraph essay became a popular tool for students to demonstrate their understanding of certain concepts. This type of writing evolved from theme writing which had an introduction, body, and conclusion. Later when standardized testing became the leading way to document student skill level, the essay became a tool to grade writing. Now what I want to look at is how to appropriately teach the five paragraph essay for what it is, and not as a tool to develop good writing.

            Through my research thus far it seems that writing and writing a formulaic essay should be separate, but the formulaic essay seems to be needed, so I am curious as how to teach good writing to students, then transport it to the formulaic essay, then expand on the essay, breaking away from the formula but using the structure as a foundation.

            Looking through the book Teaching with Hacker Handbooks, a lot of the focus is on teaching the essay through each step starting with the thesis. And also touches a lot on designing writing assignments, but not as much as teaching just plain good writing as the Gallagher book does. To take something like the five paragraph essay that has become an assessment tool on writing and not displaying knowledge or thought, the purpose of the five paragraph essay needs to be demonstrated. This is something that can be easily done with Montaigne’s work where he argues his opinions on society.

            Now the new key word is argument. Now that good writing is separate from formula essays, and the formula essay has been developed, a teacher can show what kind of purpose writing can serve. And one of those purposes is to argue something. The book Everything’s An Argument illustrates this. I have only read the introduction to this book, but it’s shown me that most things in life are opinions, and can be argued from the other side.

            Arguments can be developed with a five paragraph essay, but when a solid essay is created students need to learn how to manipulate the essay away from the five paragraph formula. I am thinking that using an argument that is incredibly interesting to a student will make it easy for them to move away from the safe structure of the five paragraph essay. It seems that I myself am forming a formula on how to instruct away from the formula essay that is sometimes necessary. Structure clearly is comforting for everything.

Memo 3A: Connecting it to the class

            Since my I-search is on the use of the five paragraph essay to develop student writing, with a focus in the argument realm. Before a successful argument essay is written, thoughts need to be organized. Chapter 7 of Kelly Gallagher’s book Write Like This has many different techniques used to organize thoughts before writing a solid argument essay. One of these techniques is the four square argument chart.

            The way that I look at it is that before I can figure out a way to develop students writing away from the 5 paragraph essay, first they need to understand the essay, then learn how to form an argument, and finally write a solid 5 paragraph essay. Then movement away from the formula can start to develop. As I mentioned Gallagher’s book is full of techniques to develop and organize an argument before the actual “writing” takes place.

            A formula like the five paragraph essay cannot just be taught, because each part needs to be taught separately and the introduction or thesis statement is not what should come first, but rather the argument itself. To develop the argument, I had mentioned the four square argument chart which lists the writer’s argument, the opposing argument and the responses to each. This allows writers to organize point and counter point and lets the writer see if the point is worth arguing in the first place.

            Another piece of information that is very useful in Gallagher’s book is his chart on the dos and don’ts of a conclusion. Often times is papers I have read, the conclusion is the weakest most boring part of the essay, just simply restating everything that had been said. This chart says that the conclusion should end with a strong “so what” and paint a vibrant image of the side of the argument being discussed. One of the ways it says this could be effective is to end with a warning.

            To connect my I-search with this course, it is pretty obvious. While the standard 5 paragraph essay should only be a stepping stone to better argument writing, the SAT and other standard tests require the five paragraph argument essay. This makes it important for teachers to teach the five paragraph essay. So, while many people will argue that the five paragraph essay is a terrible murderer or creativity, it is a necessary thing to teach, and if taught appropriately, can be an excellent tool to help develop student writing.

            I’m pretty excited to continue this journey to figure out how I would like to teach the standard five paragraph essay, then how I would like to teach away from it utilizing the steps and uses of each part. This would be really cool to show off to the rest of the class too and they can see the use of the un-creative five paragraph essay that both students and teachers seem to moan about. Especially how cool Montaigne was with his use of the essay to criticize his society and analyze people’s behaviors.

Memo #2: using the origin of the essay

With my topic for the I-search being on the use of the 5 paragraph essay and how to use the formula as a starting point to develop more creative writing, I was prompter to look up some of the work of Michel de Montaigne. To give a little background, Montaigne is considered to be an influential writer of the French Renaissance and is credited with popularizing the essay as a genre. His essays mainly featured him analyzing aspects of the world through the lens of his own experiences, something uncommon at this time.

Montaigne’s essays did something that no other writer at the time was doing, and wrote about how he felt and not about other people’s ideas. He would often reference Greek educators such as Plato, and many great writers such as Shakespeare have referenced Montaigne’s writing. I have skimmed through a large amount of Montaigne’s essays and some of the things he wrote about were age, drunkenness, education, there are no essays about the use of theme in a novel, so why is this the main purpose of essays in the classroom now.

I think that using Montaigne could be a starting point when teaching essays to students. Before a formal essay is introduced to a class, Montaigne’s personal essays could be introduced. I would probably read one in class, stopping frequently to explain what is being said because it is very dense. The importance of showing students these essays would be for them to see that essays don’t have to be these boring analyses of text but can be connected to their own experience and views of the world. This is an excellent starting point in essay education.

As I continue to do more research on the 5 paragraph formula, I myself have come to the conclusion that it is an extremely valuable tool. The problem that I see with the 5 paragraph essay is that it is over used. At some point the students will understand and be able to produce the 5 paragraph essay, but that is when it’s time to scaffold on this knowledge and practice. The purpose of the 5 paragraph essay should be for students to learn to organize their thoughts and form an argument.

I think my next step after teaching about the 5 paragraph essay would be to refer back to my lessons on Montaigne and work on personal arguments with my students, such as arguing which rapper or actor is better. This way it will be a solid argument developed by students about their own personal beliefs. This will benefit students because they will see that essays don’t have to be structured to create a point and don’t have to be about abstract themes.

I do not think that the 5 paragraph essay is a perfect form of writing, I believe it serves its purpose as a tool, and that is how teachers should use it in this classroom. How to develop this tool to create organized and intelligent writers is what I plan to figure out throughout this I-search process.