Author Mentors: Kate Veitch and Discursive Writing

This is the fourth and final part in a series on 'Author Mentors'. Each of these lessons utilise a short extract as a model to encourage student engagement in the same vein as the writing-focused modules of the NSW senior courses (Reading to Write in Year 11 and Craft of Writing in Year 12). In order, these have been:

• Context - Kurt Vonnegut
• Structure - Yuri Herrara
• Theme - Ellen Van Neerven

and now, as a means of promoting a more extended response:

• Discursive Writing - Kate Veitch

1. Using Authors to Create. The first thing to do here is to walk students through some broad steps for creating their own piece of writing. I will note here that I'm not too hung up on ensuring that the writing is 'discursive' per se, this part of the lesson is just about prompting some thinking and eliciting a response. In using a model text to create their own piece of writing, students should consider each of the following:

• Inspiration: An essential step with using any text as a model for one's writing is to read the text and examine the way that the author writes.
• Construction: The next step is for the student to craft their own writing in a similar fashion to the author (our mileage may vary here as it depends on what aspect of the author's work we choose to focus on).
• Imitation: The student looks at connecting their own writing to an author's and developing an awareness of similarity or areas of inspiration.
• Reflection: The final stage of this process is to reflect and use correct terminology while explaining how one's own writing works, and integrating an awareness of the previous steps.

Now that students have an idea of what they can do, practise with a short stimulus as a mini-lesson. I like this quote from The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.

Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same colour as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.

Students use the stimulus to do a miniature version of the Inspiration, Construction, Imitation, Reflection schema from above. Instructions follow:

Read the sentence above, craft your own line of description in the same way, describe which parts are similar, and reflect on how the sentence works. 

We're not looking for a long or especially creative piece here. A student who is adept at creative writing does not necessarily need this level of scaffolding. We're looking, however, at ways in which we can work with all Year 10 students - which includes students who may not be confident with composition and reflection. By reducing the task to a single sentence and scaffolding it, we allow such students the opportunity to walk through the process with guidance and to learn exactly what they'll need to do when they eventually get to Year 12. 

2. Extract - First Impressions. Now we'll look at an extract from a great non-fiction essay by Kate Veitch called 'Small Eye'. In NSW English parlance, this could be called 'discursive' writing. 

• 'Small Eye' extract.

We'll then contextualise the piece by starting with some general questions that ensure students have a grounded understanding of what they're looking at. Here are four such questions:

1. What is the text about?
2. What motif appears throughout the text?
3. How does this connect to the theme of the text?
4. Find one phrase/word choice with positive connotations and one phrase/word choice with negative connotations.

3. Explanation - Non-Fiction or 'Discursive' Writing. This is as good as any opportunity to introduce students to discursive writing. In giving an introductory overview of this genre of writing, we'll outline just a few key features rather than going too in-depth. I would start with:

• Written from the writer's personal perspective (first person point-of-view)
• Focuses on a subject or topic that the writer wants to discuss.
• Use of anecdotes, facts, history, humour to entertain and educate the reader.

Students then use the above as a guide to brainstorm the ways in which 'Small Eye' fits the description of discursive writing. 

4. Examining the Text. In continuing what is essentially the 'inspiration' stage, it's useful to now get students to look more closely at the text to consider how each element is used by Veitch with specific purpose. A worksheet is included here:

• Examining 'Small Eye'. 

Students work through the examples to identify and explain each of the techniques/non-fiction devices used. This includes:

• Adverbs, Ellipsis, Humour, Word Choice: How does the author control the way the reader feels about the text?
• Anecdotes: How do the little stories told by the author add detail to their ideas?
• Epigraph: How does the introductory quote make the theme clearer to the reader?
• Logos: In what way are facts figures, and/or logic used to make the writing more convincing?
• Repetition: In what way does the repeating of ideas or words help to tie the text together?

5. Construct and Imitate. Students should now have some preparatory knowledge that allows them to embark upon their own piece of writing with a similar theme. Provide some images along with the instructions below (two stimulus images are included in the PowerPoint at the end of this blog). I will mention here that, at this point, the 'lesson' may stretch into multiple lessons. 

Create your own piece of personal non-fiction writing. You must:

• Write 300-500 words
• Use at least one of the images as a thematic prompt - what can you say about one (or both) of these things? [Note: One image prompts discussion of travel, the other photography]
• Use 2-3 of the techniques featured in the Examining 'Small Eye' worksheet from the previous part of the lesson. 

6. Reflection. With the growing emphasis on 'reflecting' on one's own composition that has arisen over the last two decades in the Australian curriculum and NSW syllabuses, it becomes necessary to explicitly teach this as part of the compositional process. In effect, it's basically just an integrated way of getting students to engage in analysis - albeit focused on their own writing. 

Step 1. Examine Your Writing. Highlight and annotate parts of your text that might show:

• Where you have taken inspiration from Kate Veitch's 'Small Eye'.
• Where you have used techniques such as: similes, metaphors, motifs, anecdotes, allusion, alliteration, imagery, effective verbs, carefully-chosen adverbs, etc. 
• Where you have described things.
• Where you spoke really clearly about the main idea.

Step 2. Explain Your Writing. Write a paragraph 'reflecting' on one aspect of your writing. You can do this by following this formula:

1. Introduce the example you are talking about.
2. Quote the example.
3. Identify the reason why it was highlighted during your annotation.
4. Explain why or how you used this example. 

And there you have it. Some or all of the above might seem too explicit but I really do think there are a lot of students in Year 9 or 10 who need to be shown exactly what it is we're looking for, especially as we live in a society that increasingly swims in a stream of online data that can leave the younger generation feeling a bit adrift when it comes to more traditional forms of writing. 

The Author Mentors sequence is designed to walk students back through the steps of analysis and composition. This is hopefully done in a way that leaves no stone unturned when it comes to a student's own comprehension of what it is that Year 12 requires from them in terms of composing their own imaginative or discursive writing. There's no harm in repeating things that students have already been taught, it's this sort of repetition that's so effective in Maths pedagogy and helps to build student automaticity. Creative writing is a hard ask for students who feel uncreative or (dare I say it) just aren't interested in creative writing and probably never will be. By breaking it down into constituent parts and using discrete extracts that reduce the cognitive demand of reading, we can hone in on explicitly teaching some key skills.

It all works as scaffolding. If we start in junior grades then it becomes easier to lift this scaffolding away for Years 11 and 12. 

The above lesson(s) can be found as a PowerPoint here.

Acknowledgement: The following material has been adapted and modified specifically for this blog. I would like to acknowledge some of my colleagues - Ashleigh Galea, Lauren Hage, Amra Winter - who helped develop some additional material not included here.   

Author Mentors: Ellen Van Neerven and Theme

This is Part 3 in a series on 'Author Mentors'. In a nutshell, these lessons are about using short extracts to scaffold student engagement; a way of backward mapping from the NSW Year 12 Craft of Writing module and the Year 11 Reading to Write module before that. 

After looking at context and structure, today's sample lesson moves into more conceptual territory - what an English teacher might traditionally call 'theme'. You will need a copy of Ellen Van Neerven's Young Adult anthology Heat and Light for the extract that forms the crux of these activities.

1. Extract. Start by reading a selected extract from Heat and Light as a class. The extract in question is from the first page of the short story 'Hot Stones'. It starts with 'Thirteen is the age that makes you,' and ends with 'Go easy. I have to see if we're related, first.'

Students then do a think-pair-share activity, discussing each of the following questions before responding in their books:

1. Tell me what you liked best about this extract.
2. Tell me about the main character in the extract.
3. Tell me how you would feel if you had been kicked out of English.
4. Tell me about the Grandmother.
5. Tell me why the main character is so interested in Mia. 

These are fairly straightforward questions designed to gauge comprehension and provoke a personal response. Comprehension is a key part of thematic engagement because the skill of summarising is the very core of what a 'theme' or 'concept' is. If a student is able to summarise something, then they are identifying the most significant aspects of the text. There is some degree of subjectivity in this, which is what we (the teachers) want because identifying or responding to a theme in a text is a highly subjective process. The more that a student is able to take a firm and individual position, the more they will find success in crafting a thesis for an extended response. 

In some Gifted and Talented/High Potential and Gifted Education circles, summarising leads to the higher order skill of abstraction; the ability to think of things in terms of concepts rather than plot points. 

2. Connecting. Once students have begun grappling with the text at a surface comprehension level (and perhaps deeper), move on to looking at the connections that can be made with the text. Again, this should be a subjective experience for each student. It doesn't matter how an outsider may judge the 'quality' of the student's answers, what's important is said student's ability to create their own connections when reading. The process of generating ideas of how to connect the text to other things is an entire step on its own before we look at guiding students in calling upon more judicious examples. Some students may struggle to make what the teacher sees as an effective connection, but this is why we look at doing this in Stage 5 or earlier... it's part of that backward mapping process that fosters skills needed for Year 11 and 12.

Anyway, ask students to connect: 

1. To Self - What is something you have in common with or something that makes you different from Colin?
2. To Text - What is a similarity that this extract shares with another text?
3. To World - What is something from the wider world or history that you can relate to this extract?

3. Considering Theme. Now we're ready for the final part of the activity. After thinking about the text in a few different ways, students are then asked to reflect and develop on their ideas. This starts with a prompt to concentrate the extract into a single-word abstraction. Students are then asked to develop this into a statement of theme, which is essentially a scaffolded way of getting students to develop a mini-thesis, or a conceptual understanding of the extract. Concept, idea, abstraction, or theme - it doesn't matter what you call it, it all supports the process of writing an essay.

1. If you had to summarise this extract as being about something in a single word, what would it be?
2. What opinion do you think the author might have about the single word you just wrote?
3. What do you think the extract is saying about this word?
4. You've now developed a thematic understanding of the extract. Find three quotes that support this theme.
5. Explain exactly how each quote supports your thematic understanding.

It is entirely possible to take this further by delving into structural territory and looking at techniques used, etc., but I would personally keep the focus tightly on theme. This reinforces the cognitive purity of the lesson in teaching one key thing. 

The above lesson can be found as a PowerPoint here. 

Acknowledgment: The following material has been adapted and modified specifically for this blog. I would like to acknowledge some of my colleagues - Ashleigh Galea, Lauren Hage, Amra Winter - who helped develop some additional material not included here.

Author Mentors: Yuri Herrara and Structure

English in the 21st century is a strange beast. For older generations, there will be an awareness that the current subject of English taught in Australia is not the English that was taught 50 (or even 25) years ago. The rise of the new version of English in 1960s and '70s academia, with its focus on culture, contextual elements, and new media, would really only truly be felt in the NSW syllabus circa 2000. 

As someone who finished school in 1997 and then didn't come to teaching until 2010, this shift in the English discipline was a bit of a shock. The English essays I had written in Years 11 and 12 were decidedly formalist - focused on the structural purposes of the text, with the idea that the text was 'closed' and that everything you needed to know could be found within the text alone. Come 2010, The History teacher and Postmodernist in me loved that English had developed into something much more wild - that we can trace contextual elements and examine their impact on the text and audience, and that we can also look at the endless ways in which the same text can be read, or the ways in which the reader brings themselves to the text and reads it differently to their peers. 

But, that said, the English of the 20th century hasn't been replaced by this newer English. The two Englishes live alongside one another in our syllabus; you can see elements of both within the outcomes. You can also see them both within the diverse teaching methods of a powerful workforce of English teachers with their own myriad experience and wisdom. Some English teachers thrive on the idea of alternative readings and context, others prefer examining how a text is constructed and what this means. If you're teaching the bulk of the secondary English syllabus you'd be hard-pressed to completely avoid one side in favour of the other. 

Anyway, my point is that, while Part 1 of this series focused on the author and the role of context in shaping a text, today's entry (Part 2) focuses on the structure of the text. I think it's important that we teach students (without necessarily using fancy words like postmodernism and formalism) that reading and writing is a complex process with different 'ways in'. It works as a form of differentiated practice because some students will react better to a contextual study, whereas others will prefer looking at structural elements.

Structure

The author used for this structure lesson is Yuri Herrera, a really interesting Mexican writer who gained some attention in the 2010s for his novellas. Before looking at an extract from his Romeo & Juliet-inspired text The Transmigration of Bodies, it's useful to prime students by giving them an overview of some of the structures we use when writing. This can be done by checking for understanding with the following activities:

Mechanics. Write a bad example of each of the following:

• Punctuation
• Grammar
• Spelling
• Sentence Structure
• Paragraphs

Techniques. Also called 'literary devices', these are figurative, persuasive, and sound-based techniques used to make an impact on the treader.

• List some examples.

Conventions. The motifs or recurring elements that help the reader identify the type or genre of text.

• Give an example.

Writing Choices. Pick one below and discuss why it's important.

• Word Choice
• Point of View
• Tense
• Themes
• Being conscious of controlling how the reader sees your text

Editing. Pick one of your previous answers and re-write it using one of the methods below.

• Re-reading
• Drafting
• Sharing for feedback
• Using criteria
• Polishing

After these opening activities, have students read an extract from The Transmigration of Bodies and then consider some of the elements that have been used. In particular, ask students to look at its 'mechanics' and techniques by answering the following:

1. Find and highlight the following punctuation: comma, dash, colon, capitalisation of a proper noun. 
2. What reason is each one used for?
3. Explain the impact of the following techniques used by the writer:
1. Repetition of the word 'everyday' three times in one sentence.
2. The irony/dark humour of the line "Occasionally, his teeth fell out."
3. The metaphor "Eyeing (...) with venom."

Authors also used various conventions when writing in their chosen genre. A reader's familiarity with these conventions (also called motifs) allows them to better understand the ideas or style of the story. Have students make notes on three of the motifs featured in the extract (a depressing setting, blood, and a less-than-heroic lead character) and then ask them to identify which of the following genres the text fits into:

• Comedy
• Crime
• Romance
• Science Fiction

The lesson then focuses on writing choices. Herrera has a talent for using verbs in fascinating and memorable ways - ask students to locate the following verbs in the extract:

• Trickled, scamper, cricked, dreaming, managed, fell, buzzing, tethering, attempting, rammed, leaned, sucking, blew. 

Students can then answer the following questions. Some of these break away from a strictly formalist approach but we'll keep that to ourselves.

1. What is the impact of using particular verbs?
2. Whose point of view is the text written from?
3. How does the writer want the reader to think of the main character?
4. How does the writer want the reader to think of the setting?
5. What would you change if you wanted to introduce some more drama in the first paragraph?

The above lesson can be found here in these resources:

• PowerPoint on Structure (this walks students through the lesson step by step).
• Suggested extract.

Acknowledgement: The following material has been adapted and modified specifically for this blog. I would like to acknowledge some of my colleagues - Ashleigh Galea, Lauren Hage, Amra Winter - who also developed some additional material not included here

Author Mentors: Kurt Vonnegut and Context

One of the more interesting developments that occurred in Stage 6 NSW English these last few years was an increased and specialised focus on writing craft. This is encapsulated within the Year 12 Craft of Writing and Year 11 Reading to Write modules, which encourage students to use quality texts as models for their own writing. When we look at these modules closely we can see the way in which they build upon previous wisdom about student writing whilst adding some new parameters. In particular, the idea of providing a focus on creative writing has re-arranged itself around a need to include the disciplines of persuasive and discursive writing, which prompts further reflection when it comes to backward mapping some core skills and ideas into earlier years of high school.

Like many others, I've had to think about the idea of using Stage 5 as a formative ground for considering authors in this same way. I've summarised this as the somewhat dorky term 'Author Mentors', which can be extended into a short unit of work. This approach takes students through four different authors, with each one used to explore and model writing in relation to one of four stages of approaching texts:

1. Context
2. Structure
3. Discussion
4. Create

Context

The author used for the context lesson is Kurt Vonnegut (from whose work I took the title of this website, funnily enough!). The purpose of this lesson is to explore what context is, how it works, and how students can use their understanding of this concept to approach a text (the text in question being an extract from Vonnegut's famed science-fiction/war novel Slaughterhouse-Five).

Context is a tricky beast because it can sometimes feel like it pulls time away from studying the actual text. With this in mind, it's useful to frame context in general terms and to also approach it (in this case) in a way that Year 9 and 10 students will understand. This means communicating to students the way in which the 'background' of a text can help the reader understand what a text is about. The reader can draw useful conclusions about a novel by connecting the text to the life and times of the author. Examining context will typically involve the following four elements:

• When: When was the text written and/or published?
• Where: What society was the author living in when they wrote the text?
• Who: What sort of person was the author and what were the key events that shaped who they were?
• Why: What reasons or events prompted the author to write the text?

After considering the above, students should then be asked to read an extract from Slaughterhouse-Five. I like to use a small part of the text that comes about 15-20 pages before the end of the novel. This is accompanied by some straightforward comprehension questions to help orientate the reader and ensure they have a general understanding of the extract, as well as priming them for more in-depth discussion of context afterwards. Questions are as follows:

1. What is happening in this text?
2. What is the setting?
3. What is the backstory for the protagonist (main character)?
4. What elements of the story let you know these things?

The next step is to look at some contextual information about Kurt Vonnegut. Students read a brief overview of the context of Vonnegut and Slaughterhouse-Five and then rewrite/summarise some information using a basic schema. This means they read the overview and then gather together information that corresponds to the following:

• When?
• Where?
• Who?
• Why?

The final part of the lesson asks students to reflect upon and consider Vonnegut's context more specifically in relation to the novel. It also requires them to make some connections from text to self and text to the wider world. Ask students to respond to these questions:

Reflect: Look back to your answers to the questions of 'When, Where, Who, Why'. How do they stack up in comparison to what you learned from the novel's context?

Considering Context:

1. Why do you think this novel is considered by some to be a classic?
2. Do you think American schools are right to ban it?
3. What did the extract from Slaughterhouse-Five have to say about war?
4. What do you think about war? Write 400 words explaining your thoughts.

The above lesson can be found here in these resources:

• PowerPoint on Context (this walks students through the lesson step by step).
• Suggested extract.
• Context overview.

Acknowledgement: The following material has been adapted and modified specifically for this blog. I would like to acknowledge some of my colleagues (who I no longer get to work alongside but miss all the same!) - Lauren Hage, Ashleigh Galea, and Amra Winter - who also developed some additional material not included here. Hi! :)