Olympic Style Analysis - Reading and Writing Summer Course

Olympic Style Analysis - Reading and Writing Summer Course 

Effective writers examine while reading 

I have taken on teaching a writing and reading course on Saturdays this summer through a local tutoring agency and feel compelled to showcase my thoughts on how the lesson went today. 

For today's lesson, I had the students read through three different writing excepts - these are excerpts I had taken from various essays I had found online (I will link them below). I made sure to choose writing excerpts that were quite different. Even though all three essays were on the topic of "identity," I wanted to make sure that each piece was varied in terms of style of writing, subject matter, voice etc. I chose pieces that would appeal to different readers in distinct ways. I truly believe, and kept reiterating to my students, that the most effective writers, are effective readers. It is important when you are reading for the sake of improving your writing, to actually take time to examine and study various forms of writing and ask yourself questions - What works? What doesn't? Why do I like this piece over another one? What is it about the way language is used? 

I wanted to get the students to really begin to pick out and pinpoint, describe and put a name to what they find most effective about what they read. If they are intrigued and interested in a certain style, they must ask themselves why and actually take the lengths to describe what they find to be the most effective. This is a process that they then transfer over to their own writing. I let my students know that effective writers in essence, borrow, imitate, combine, and create based on what they have read - based on what has excited them about other people's writing and from there they generate something new, their own voice. I also let my students know that the purpose of writing is to communicate the power of their own unique and original voice. I told them that they are singular in their thoughts, opinions, views, and backgrounds and that there is nobody else on the planet who thinks the same way they do or can offer the same things to the world as they can. Writing is thus about getting out their own  particular colour or shade of thought and shining it out onto the world - for the world to enjoy, be challenged by, find affinity and commonality in - and so much more! :) 

I thought this activity went particularly well and I was pleasantly surprised as God helped me come up with some random ideas throughout. There were three excerpts. We read each excerpt twice and took turns reading. I told the students that (in my view) reading is not only done once but twice, three times (even more!). I let them know that effective reading is rereading as it is only when you read something a few times that one can truly grasp, understand, and pick up various understandings. Each time they read, they are to slow down, truly take in the language, loiter, understand how one idea connects to the previous, question what they have read, linger in the writing, hangout there, make sense and meaning. As they read again, they can start breaking language down - hmmm, they used this word instead of this word, what is the author really trying to say here, they used a particular type of description - why? How does this create the meaning of the piece? Reading and rereading is about losing oneself to the world of that novel, that essay, that article - it is unique to the individual how they will lose themselves in the text, but they are to do it. They are to use their own creativity and imagination to do so - their own background, experiences, their own previous play in language, to connect ideas, to go places, to experience more through the text. The text is their own bouncy castle or spring board in which they can reach amazing heights within themselves. 

Gamification of lessons! - This was one of the God ideas - but I told students to pretend that this is the "Reading and Writing Olympics" - as the Olympics are happening right now. They have to rank each piece of writing and give a Gold, Silver or Bronze medal to each piece BUT they must choose ONE aspect of writing in which to make their examinations by - subject matter, voice and style, structure, or grammar. I had searched online previously and looked up - "what makes effective writing" or "what makes good writing" and these were the categories that came up. I then made a kind of criteria sheet for the students to use when they are analyzing and critiquing these pieces (which is at the end of the document that I will link below). Another God idea was to have each student focus on ONE area to critique rather than to critique each of the various areas. I find this helpful as it allowed each student to narrow in on one aspect and concentrate their thoughts more effectively as I find if they focused on all categories it would become quite confusing. It is important to chunk and break things down. 

Now I don't know if I was reading the room well but I think the students enjoyed this activity quite a bit. I felt like having them rank the piece gave them some type of autonomy and power to make choice and exercise their opinions. While student answers were similar, their choices were different. For example, where one student chose bronze for a certain excerpt, another student chose silver. I thought that was great as it enabled students to give the reasons behind their choices and the other students had to listen. This also enabled students to exercise critical thinking skills and actually analyze and understand why they like one piece of writing over another. For example, one student said that the writing, "Childhood Dreams" by Jennifer Yee, enabled her to paint a picture in her mind when she was reading it as the language was descriptive. She said that the topic was very interesting to her and examples presented were quite specific. Another student said that they were tied between "Childhood Dreams" and "Nothing in a Name" but it was ultimately the grammar in "Nothing in a Name" that made them finally choose "Childhood Dreams" instead. Another student said that "Narrative Essay on Cultural Identity" was a bit confusing in the beginning and they weren't exactly sure where the piece was going. 

The breakdown of the excerpts was effective. I told students that this is what I would like them to do with their own writing - to break down what they write and examine it through a lens of what makes effective writing. In this sense, students are always revising and improving their writing and becoming effective communicators through their words. This exercise took the full 1.5 hours and I do think it could have gone even longer if I probed and asked more questions. There were many times where I was trying to have students be more specific with what they liked and didn't like. 

I think if one wanted to extend this activity, they could have students do some of their own writing and have other students perhaps (anonymously) rank and examine each other's pieces and give their reasons why. In a classroom, one could do this activity, and perhaps even give awards or medals like the academy awards and rank different students' writing in various categories - best figurative language, best grammar, best subject matter, best depth, etc - I think that could be really fun! I feel that there is so much more I can say but I will end my thoughts here for today. Overall the ideas here went well and it was a good class.

Writing Samples 

https://forlackofwonder.blogspot.com/2021/08/writing-samples-olympic-style-analysis.html