Designing Writing Assignments by Traci Gardner
I really struggled to come up with a response to this book. I knew I wanted to design a writing assignment, but I just wasn't sure how to go about it. I decided to go along with Gardner's approach in Chapter 3. She provides three vignettes to demonstrate her thought process in developing a writing assignment. It took awhile to get it rolling, but eventually, by talking through what I wanted my students to think about in their writing assignment, I came up with an idea. I followed her model in thinking through the idea, and used her Three Goals for a Writing Assignment: Defining the writing task, Exploring the expectations, and Providing supporting materials and activities to decide whether or not I had thoroughly thought the writing assignment through.
In the end, I am incredibly please with what I came up with. I still need to develop the actual handouts, rubrics, checklists, and support materials, but I feel like following this approach has encouraged me to thoroughly consider what my students will need in order to accomplish the kind of thinking about these pieces of literature that I want them to do.
In the end, I am incredibly please with what I came up with. I still need to develop the actual handouts, rubrics, checklists, and support materials, but I feel like following this approach has encouraged me to thoroughly consider what my students will need in order to accomplish the kind of thinking about these pieces of literature that I want them to do.