I had another interesting observation with Kelsey this Friday. Somehow, this student had escaped ever learning (or at least he didn't remember learning) the 5 paragraph essay. He got away with it for two years of college, until an English professor handed back his essay and said, "rewrite. I want a 5 paragraph essay."
Alrighty. The format is simple enough, so Kelsey explained it. She scanned through his previous essay and then the beginnings of the rewrite, and quickly realized that it was all well and good to explain the 5 paragraph essay, but what this writer really needed to do was focus his thoughts. He had several different topics he wanted to talk about, but nothing nice and overarching with which to make a thesis. So Kelsey spent a half hour on a nice brainstorming session, no matter that he already had an essay written.
The writer seemed very involved in the session, very earnest. He seemed bewildered that he'd gotten an essay handed back, and couldn't quite figure out what he'd done wrong. He sort of tried to get Kelsey to agree with him that grading papers is "totally subjective," (read: It's the professor's fault that he didn't like it) and Kelsey did a good job of explaining that yes, responding to writing is always a subjective thing, but that there were ways to correctly organize a paper and ways to do it incorrectly (at least where a 5 paragraph essay is concerned).
Hi, Dory!
ReplyDeleteIt sounds that Kelsey handled that session well (and, you're right: that student definitely was looking for confirmation that he was in the right, and the professor was wrong--sheesh!). I appreciate how she managed to have a brainstorming session that helped the student focus, even though he already had a draft completed. As I said in class: ninja. That's how we do it.
Have a good week!
mk