Shipka Reading      

 

  Shipka’s article detailed a number of ways that students are able to express their engagement with a particular assignment without needing to resort to an alphabetic writing assignment that focuses only on a written argument and the implementation of secondary sources in order to convey a thesis. One of the first assignments explained in the article that allowed for this kind of composing was the “OED source assignment.” Shipka explains that one student created what seemed to be an interactive story that caught the “experiencer” off guard as they made their way through the assignment, thus bringing the word to life and demonstrating a deeper knowledge of the word “scare.” I would like to implement more assignments that require this level of mastery, and since we already use an online vocabulary practice database called membean, it would be easy to begin such a project. I know that at first my students would resist such an assignment out of a desire to remain in the safe realm of the 5 paragraph essay, but assignments like this reward such creativity would be a perfect place to push this alternate way of composing. I think this would also help to combat the notion that Shipka mentions of the “audience of one,” which implies that the students create work for the eyes of the teacher or the professor, yet their work is never displayed or seen by their classmates. The student named Mike that took the OED assignment as an opportunity to create a video expresses that he was grateful for the chance to work with others in the creation of the movie, something that would not have been possible with a strictly alphabetic assignment. I think that creating these opportunities for my students, though it would push both them and myself out of the standard alphabetic comfort zone, would foster both a level of creativity and a notion of mastery otherwise left unutilized.

          The part of the article that I was most interested in though was how the students’ reflections caused them to carefully consider the choices they made throughout the creative process. In addition to combatting the temptation to complete this work at the last minute as Shipka suggests, these reflections, in a similar way to my rhetorical commercial assignment, require the students to consider the effect of their words, an incredibly valuable practice in the high school English classroom. Similarly, by making clear in the breakdown of the assignment that a creative representation will complete the task of conveying the necessary mastery of the assignment, the students would helpfully see that not only is creativity allowed with assignments of that nature, but it is encouraged, and in some cases, required. Shipka quotes Kress in saying that all forms of media, from a written essay to a filmed commercial, theoretically have the same capability for conveying thought. With that being said, I believe it is important for students to understand the different media at their disposal fully, and while the alphabetic is still just one of these forms, it is still crucially important that students understand the written form of expression before embarking upon multi-media assignments like this. As an example, Shipka sees the display of grammar conventions to be a “surface feature” while what is considered a benefit at that level constitutes 25% of our 8th grade curriculum. It could be that students might be ready for multi-modal expression at an earlier age, but when it comes to analyzing their own creative choices, they may take more away from such a project once they are older.

          As I read through this article, I kept thinking of how membean.com could be used to create a similar project to the OED assignment featured by Shipka. Both my 8th and 10th grade students use this vocabulary program. Take a look at the video embedded to the left. Allowing students the opportunity to truly master a handful of words through a multimodal creative display for their classmates would be possible and a break from the alphabetic. I think both grade levels could do this, even if the 10th graders are able to analyze their choices more thoroughly.