So the next paper I have to do concerns ‘invention and research.’ Kind of broad words there, but the paper has to do with teaching others – recall, my class this term is teaching me how to teach others. I have all sorts of ideas as to the ‘research’ portion, but was feeling fairly clueless concerning the ‘invention’ part. Until I read this, “Some composition faculty use formal methods derived from logic or problem solving (sometimes called heuristics); other teachers use various forms of brainstorming, cognitive mapping, or clustering of ideas. Still others ask students to do unstructured five-minute writes, freewriting, or aptly named discovery drafts as ways to uncover or develop ideas. These are all forms of what classical rhetoric called invention: the finding of topics for development” (White, p 9). Huh. That clicked. I mean, it really helped me get an idea of what this paper should be about. It also got me thinking about my final paper – not due for 6-7 weeks yet, but still… we’re supposed to decide what age group we wish to teach. Our final paper consists of creating a syllabus, four lesson plans, a grading rubric, and our teaching philosophy that explains several other details. Any-hoo, while I’m not really entertaining the idea of education as a career, I did think about targeting high school age on up, creative writing. Of course, I may change my mind over the next few weeks, but that’s what I have thus far!
I haven’t gotten much of my required reading done; a neighbor has been blasting the most annoying music for the last six hours! The steady thump of bass and squeal of trumpets has made it impossible to concentrate and retain anything read, along with giving me a headache. *sighs* Today was designated a reading day, and tomorrow to be a writing day… now my schedule is off. Although it does sound like the music is finally stopping (yay!) so I just might be able to get some reading done – I can push through the headache, and salvage some of the stuff I wanted to get done today. *fingers crossed*
I am anxious to get back to my writing, too. The story I was working on during my last term… oh yeah, forgot, old blog describing it was deleted. *sighs* Okay, breathe, Shari…. So, this story is one that had been poking around in my brain awhile ago, but put on the back burner due to school requirements. I pulled it out for the class because I had a wee bit of blockage going on – I’ll discuss it later, I am so not up to the additional headache tonight, thankyouverymuch! But it’s family related – and grabbed all of my old notes to do a required assignment. Well, it blossomed. Turns out it’s a paranormal romance with a bit of action and intrigue going on, and it’s shaping up to be part of a series. Some family issues popped up [surprise, surprise, she said sarcastically] as class ended, taking up most of my week in-between that term and this term, so I didn’t get any writing done on the story. Although I did manage to edit a tiny bit. Then, this term started and I tossed myself in full blast, reading and making sure assignments are completed on time. Whew!
This class still does confuse me quite a bit, yet at the same time I feel like I will get a handle on it and, as always, will do my best. So I’m hopeful I’ll be able to carve out some time for creative writing – hence the aforementioned reading/writing schedule.
M’kay, music has definitely stopped so I’m going to get back to reading. So, I am so outtie….
White, Edward M. Assigning, Responding, Evaluating: A Writing Teacher’s Guide, 4th edition. Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s. 2007. Print.