Pb3A

The article I chose to use was Charles Bazerman’s A Relationship between Reading and Writing: The Conversation Model published by the National Council of Teachers of English in February 1980. The main point of the article stressed this idea that reading is just a conversation with the writer and that it goes both ways. According to Bazerman, when a reader or student responds to a text, he or she is participating and building off that conversation. As the text goes on, new material will shift the discussion. Bazerman goes on to say it’s best to prepare students and help them develop their writing by incorporating techniques to help them. One way to talk back in a text would be responding and writing on the margins. Other exercises he included were reading journals and informal reaction essays (sound familiar?). Each of these would create places for students to make connections, to argue with the writer, to relate to an idea, to react, to disagree, and to think about the meaning of the text. All three techniques and exercises can serve as tools for heightening student understanding.

              For an older audience, I was thinking of creating a lesson plan that involved these ideas. Im not sure if that counts for an older audience but I think it does, since you know teachers are from an older audience. A lesson plan comes to mind because I took a linguistics/education course last year where we had to write our own lesson plan with a group. We even took it the next step and presented to our section class. So I can use that as guide and take that ‘expert’ role. Some topics that I can include in the lesson plan are ‘Paraphrasing’, ‘Summary’ or I can go more technical and use something like ‘Ways to Enter the Conversation’ and ‘Analysis of Technique’. If the lesson plan doesn’t work out I can try making blog specifically for Bazerman’s idea with the intended audience being an up and coming teachers.

              For the younger audience, I was thinking of making a SparkNotes page that incorporated these ideas from the reading. Throughout middle school and even high school, I relied on SparkNotes so I'm confident that the younger audience still uses this resource. For me, I used it for other things not just novels and books so I feel like the Bazerman reading can still be applied here. I can include a breakdown of Bazerman’s reading and really condense the information or go another route. If the SparkNotes page turns out short, I can even include a sample students notes on the page/reading. This would take Bazerman’s ideas of paraphrasing and summarizing and actually apply them.

              Overall, I think that both of these ideas need a little tweaking before I can start on them. I decided to use the genres of lesson plans and SparkNote postings because the Bazerman reading revolved around teaching and students. At first, I was really intimidated by this working project but I think it’s not as bad as it seems.