Institute/Session Summary:

The purpose of this session is to share practical and simple methods for using experiential learning to teach developmental writers about audience, point of view, sensory details, description, comparison/contrast and organization.  Learning objectives include how to make a multi-dimensional point-of-view box and to use "spyglasses" to demonstrate to students how limiting or expanding the writer's point of view affects the audience/reader, how use a trip to an ice cream or snack shop to teach sensory details and description, and how to teach organization, including comparison/contrast, through interviewing identical and/or fraternal twins.

Outline of the Content:

1. Point of View and Audience

1.  Introduce activity. 
2. Provide paper for participants to make "spyglasses," simple, rolled-up cones of paper that can be widened or narrowed to increase or decrease field of view.
3. Have 2-3 volunteers use their "spyglasses," each with different-sized fields of view, to explore the point-of-view box and describe what they can see.
4. Have volunteers abandon their spyglasses and describe what they were previously unable to see.
5. Ask participants to discuss the appropriateness, or lack thereof, of various views for different audiences.

2. Sensory Details and Description

1. Introduce activity.
2. Provide candy to participants to enhance the viewing of ice-cream-shop DVD, and provide handout for making notes about sensory details.
3. Explain to participants that they are "going" to an ice-cream shop and that they are to make notes about what they see, hear, taste, smell, and feel as they go through the shop.
4. Have participants work together to assist each in naming specifics:  colors, shapes, sizes, brands, aromas, flavors.
5. Provide handouts outlining the steps students can use to take their notes to write description or narration.

3. Using Twins Interviews to Teach Organization and Comparison Contrast.

1. Introduce activity.
2. Discuss the steps for conducting twins interviews.
3. Show Twins Interview DVD.
4. Provide handout on which participants record answers to interview questions.
5. Ask participants to suggest categories for similarities and differences.
6. Have participants list twins’ traits in the appropriate similarity and difference categories.
7.  Have participants discuss application to organization of comparison/contrast essays.
   

2. Handouts

1. Provide handouts with instructions for all activities.

The theoretical basis for this session is experiential learning.  Students are provided a concrete learning experience/activity and are led in guided, written reflection geared toward the learning objective for the individual activity.  Students' written reflection is then connected with the abstract principle/concept being taught, and students practice the abstract principle/concept using knowledge gained through the concrete learning experience/activity.  The significance to the field of developmental writing includes the addition of "expandable" concrete learning experiences for students and of enjoyable methods for teaching tired concepts.

The relevance to CRLA Members and other conference attendees, including seasoned and novice developmental writing teachers and tutors, consists of the gathering of new ideas that serve as a springboard for additional ideas and that can be immediately applied upon attendees' return to the classroom.  Handouts and instructions (paper copies) will be provided during the session with electronic versions for teachers' modification provided upon email request after the conference.

The presenter's experience with topic includes twelve years teaching developmental writing with use of these ideas successfully over the past year.  Her education includes a B.A. in English, Georgia College & State University, Milledgeville, GA; an M.A. in Higher Ed., Developmental Ed. with 18 SH in English, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC; and Certification as a Development Educator, Kellogg Institute, National Center for Developmental Education, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC.

Presenter1 Name: Judy Parks
Presenter1 Institution: Macon State College in Macon, Georgia
Presenter1 Bio: Parks has always been a teacher at heart and loves the time she spends in the classroom with her students. She has lived most of her life in Milledgeville, Georgia's antebellum capital and home of Andalusia, Flannery O'Connor's farm home.