I like to think we had a good time in English 261 today. I'm using Heather Seller's text The Practice of Creative Writing because it works well with a sixteen week semester. She splits the book out into seven "tools" which allows me to teach/practice a tool (energy, form, insight, image...) for a week and then workshop student work featuring the use of that tool the following week.
Today was our second session on Pattern and we looked at Dinty Moore's cnf essay Son of Mr. Green Jeans: Alphabetically Arranged.
They read the essay as an assignment and then in class, we discuss the first six sections (A-F)and the connections that stitch them together. They then split out into pairs to discuss the pattern of connections between the remaining sections. The benefits of this exercise are two-fold: they always find new connections that have escaped me, and the opportunity to listen to their peers make connections opens up the essay for them.
However, at the beginning of class, before any discussion, I have them select three tiles from a Scrabble bag. The bag contains 26 tiles - A-Z. Then they write for five minutes on one of their letter tiles. The prompt for today's writing is An Essay on Studenthood: Alphabetically Arranged. After that first in-class writing session, we discuss Moore's letters A-F. Then they write on a second tile before they head off into their paired work. Finally they write on the third tile before we discuss their analysis of pattern in Moore's entire essay.
Towards the end of the session, they read their tile pieces out loud, in alphabetical order. A later assignment will be to polish these pieces and email them to me. I then collate the pieces and create a full collaborative alphabetical essay. I use this to kick off their end-of-semester readings.
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