Year Long Project
At the culmination of the year, I want students to see their own writing as organic and multi-faceted. One of the most common problems for writing in high school English classrooms is that students don’t understand that writing is an ongoing process and is quite possibly never done. Trying to get students to revise and reread their work is a harrowing experience. At all ability levels, they commonly believe that revision only happens once (after they peer edit between the rough and final drafts) and that it is a predominantly grammatical task. I have tried various things to remedy this problem from peer editing to having students revise their “final” draft with my comments numerous times to simply not assigning due dates—but too little avail. They constantly change only grammar mistakes and leave the content alone without any revision.
Consequently, the year-long assessment is an assignment that they will begin at the end of this unit and will return to at various points throughout the semester to help them grow as a writer and thinker. Specifically, they will be answering the following essential questions: How has image affected the way we analyze text over history? Furthermore, what is the best medium to express a complete answer to this expansive question? The first question speaks to the content of the unit--the relationship of text and image throughout time--and the second question to the medium of the year long project. The Statement of Inquiry also should stay prominent in the students’ minds while creating their pieces.
This project will only begin (and not finish until the end of the year) at the culmination of part one of the unit. Returning to it every unit will require the students to continually address the year’s statement of inquiry and essential questions. Teaching students that reading is a lifelong endeavor and that writing is an organic process is paramount in this unit. By showing the students the evolution of the relationship between image and text, I am aiming to show them how literature (in its many forms) is always expanding and changing. Furthermore, I want them to apply this ideal to their writing and analysis as well. Ideally, since I am introducing four literary criticism lenses in part one of this unit, these analyses will carry over into their writing for this piece and the strictly text-based literature that we study all year.
As students move through literary history during the year, they will be recording their reflections in graphic organizers and journaling in their binder. These informal writings done throughout the unit will aid them in the year-long writing task. Then, they will need to consider what medium might be the best way to express that growing relationship. Moreover, the medium in which the student communicates these ideas is up to the student and shouldn’t be limited to just being prose. In the end, the assignment should incorporate both text and image but the distribution need not be equal. The possibilities are endless and shouldn’t be constrained to the options here but some ideas to consider for composition are:
- Text in majority of prose with the aid of images
- Text in majority in image with the aid of little prose
- Poetry with images, such as Blake uses
- A comic/graphic vignette
- Borrowed text and image collaboration that works in a collage-like way
- Video or photography
Regardless of the medium, this has to be a work that they can return to over the semester and add to and/or revise.
In addition, the long-term writing assignment idea directly connects to staple assessments in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program Literature course and college writing in general. Whether it is Advanced Placement or IB DP Literature courses, the students will need to be able to critically analyze text and image independently and together for their exams in various subjects. I believe that this unit will set them up with an improved visual literacy to do so. Also, allowing this formal writing assignment to be in various forms lets students at varying levels of writing proficiency experience success and truly respects all media as legitimate "texts."
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