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In Module 1, you learned about using on-line writing in chat rooms, MOOs, or blogs to foster sharing of responses to films, writing in which students are writing in a social contect (Trupe, 2003). You may also want to employ writing assignments that serve to foster critical responses to film. This includes the use of informal writing tools: |
Freewriting. In using freewriting, students write in a nonstop, spontaneous manner for five or ten minutes without premature concern for editing. Essential to freewriting is avoiding the propensity to edit, censor, block, or revise initial reactions to texts. Freewrites can be used help focus students’ thinking on a specific topic or idea in the beginning of class as well as prepare them to verbally sharing responses. For students who are reluctant to verbally share their responses, having something to read can bolster their confidence. As a discussion unfolds, students could take time-out to write their thoughts about or reflections on the discussion topic(s). By writing during the discussion, students can recharge their thinking in order to interject some new ideas into the discussion or push the discussion in new directions. Then, at the end of the discussion, students could write about what they learned from the discussion by synthesizing their perceptions of the discussion. By studying these reflective “learning entries," teachers may determine differences in how students are perceiving their classroom experience.
Note-taking/jotting. In note-taking or jotting, students are recording their reactions and interpretations to texts, presentations, or lectures. Central to effective note-taking/jotting is the ability to summarize one's perceptions of a film in one’s own words, as well as adding one’s reflective interpretations. Jim Burke (2002) identifies some of the following types of notes:
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Episodic Notes: identify distinct scenes or moments in the text
Hierarchical Notes: organizing ideas into a hierarchy.
Inference Notes: analyze a fictional character by finding and interpreting quotes by or about the character; then a space at the bottom of the page asks students to make inferences about the character
Plot Notes: graphic organizer designed to be used with fiction [see Burke link on web site]
Reporter’s Notes: [use notes to] arrive at a deeper understanding of what they read.
Sensory Notes: use their imagination to help them see what the author is writing, to hear what the language sounds like.
Summary Notes: used while reading a book or article which must then be summarized.
Synthesis Notes: directs students' attention to the crucial aspects of a fictional text.
T-Notes: compare and contrast (books, characters, past and present, etc.)
Target Notes: generate/expand as well as narrow/refine depending on the needs of the assignment or task.
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To encourage effective note-taking/jotting, you can emphasize the idea of reformulation of the text into their own words, using a prompt such as “formulate your notes in terms of your own perceptions, interpretations, and ideas.”
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Note-taking, Virginia Cano
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Journal writing. Students may also use a journal or reading log in which they react to texts (Anson & Beach, 1997). You may help students distinguish between formal essay writing and informal journal writing by sharing examples of journal entries representing more spontaneous, open-ended, exploratory, subjective responses than formal essay writing. You may also want to distinguish between the idea of a journal used in a writing class designed to foster expressive fluency — in which students write about their daily experiences or thoughts — and a “literature” or “reading-log” journal that focuses more on interpreting texts, although the distinction between the two may be somewhat arbitrary.
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To encourage effective use of journals, you are emphasizing the idea of open-ended, inquiry-based, exploration of interpretations — that they are using the writing itself to work through their ideas about a text in a highly tentative manner.
Screen Scribes [journal writing about films (includes audience journal responses)]
Different types of journals [SCORE]
Journals in the classroom [Diane Walker]
Electronic Journal Keeping for the Technical Writing Classroom [Gian S. Pagnucci, TechJournals]
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Mapping/diagramming. Students can use maps or diagrams to chart out and define the relationships between the different aspects of a text. These drawings or diagrams help students perceive their thoughts in visual form, something particularly appealing for those with a high “visual/spatial” intelligence (Gardner, 1993; 2000). Students can use circle maps to portray the different characters circles and then, with spokes emanating from each circle, describe traits, beliefs, and goals associated with each character. (The software applications, Inspiration™ or Storyspace™, can be used to create such maps on the computer). Students could also draw maps that represent how they believe characters conceptualize or define their worlds — creating a graphic version of characters’ cultural models of the world — with some practices and beliefs being on the top of the map that they value as “higher,” or more important, than other practices or beliefs.
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In formulating writing assignments, you need to consider students’ motivation to write based on specific purposes and audiences. Students can also be motivated to write through writing documents that can serve to inform actual audiences about texts. For example, in a college course on drama, Russell Hunt (2002) had students study the script, author, and production of a particular play that was being produced in a local theater. In the most recent 2003 syllabus for the course, “From the Page to Stage,” taught at St. Thomas University, he specifies the following tasks: |
A group or “task force,” responsible for that play, will read the script and write public reflections on their readings (others may do this as well).
The task force will conduct research on the script, its author, the tradition or context it was written or produced in, previous productions, etc. — anything we can learn about the play which will help us to understand it better and more fully.
The group will present the most relevant portion of what it’s learned to the rest of the class, normally through an in-class presentation of a web site, in advance of the opening of the production.
The rest of the class — particularly members of two other groups, who will be “designated responders” — will help the group select from and organize its research findings so that they can be distributed in useful form to the audiences for the production.
The task force will edit their findings and publish them in a leaflet — a “playgoer’s guide” — to be distributed to audiences at the theatre.
They, and other members of the class, will attend the production and write public reflections on the entire experience.
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Because these guides would be used in these local theaters, students were writing texts for some actual audience. |
Russell Hunt’s paper on students’ use of playbill in writing about literature
examples of prompts and students’ playbill writing
2003 course syllabus |
Having students write to and for others also enhances their sense of agency in that they may now be perceived as contributing new ideas or perspectives to the classroom community. For example, you may have different students or teams of students select particular aspects of or critical approaches applied to the same text. Each student or team would then be contributing their one part that serves to contribute to the larger, composite interpretation of a text, contributions that other students may be interested in reading. Students could then use this material to create intertextual or hypertextual links between individual essay contributions that provides a road map for understanding the class’s larger composite interpretation. |
The following sites on writing about literature can also apply to writing about films: |
Writing about Literature [University of North Carolina Writing Lab] |
Writing Reviews of Literature [University of Wisconsin Writing Center] |
Writing about Literature [University of Nevada, Las Vegas Writing Center] |
Writing Literary Analysis Papers [Seamus Cooney, Western Michigan University] |
PBS Program: Opera of Romeo and Juliet [writing “Dear Abby” letters from characters] |
For further reading: |
Bishop, E. (Ed.). (1999). Cinema-(to)-graphy: Film writing in contemporary composition courses. New York: Teachers College Press.
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