4 Chapter 5: Implementing Elementary Skills

Section 4.1 Cierra Poe: Student Researcher

Rhetorical Patterns: Effect on Secondary Students

The main inspiration for my “rhetorical patterns” style of feedback, seen in section 3.2 of “Personal Narratives”, comes from the article “Written Feedback to Support Students’ Higher-Level Thinking About Texts in Writing” by Elaine Wang, Lindsay Matsumura, and Richard Correnti. This research based and peer reviewed article, while mostly explaining how elementary students should receive feedback, gives a basis for the questions that should be asked to high school students in order for their researched facts to become a well thought out interpretation. Although this style isn’t called for in all aspects of student writing, this style can be the first type of feedback given to students after their first drafts, which will help them further their writing and give it a deeper meaning. The fairly simple ideas of “cause and effect” and “compare and contrast” can help high school students organize their thoughts to come up with a clear thesis and help them make sense of their writing.

In the article, the researchers found that students tend to focus on the information at hand rather than a deeper cause or meaning behind the events in a text. To aid this, students could be asked to compare and contrast elements of the text in order to analyze mood and theme in different elements of it (105). For example, if a high school student is researching the short story, “A Rose for Emily,” they could be asked to compare and contrast Emily’s feelings and the feelings of the townspeople. They could also create Venn diagrams to compare and contrast characters, settings, or plot lines when given feedback about their ability to create a developed argument about the text. These comparisons help students see where conflicts or solutions arise in the text, therefore giving them a basis for an argument about those topics. If students are writing narratives and they don’t produce an in depth plot line, they can analyze what differences have come out of their own lives throughout the years, or gather inspiration from other stories by comparing and contrasting simple elements in those works.

Also, in supplying an overarching idea in non-fiction or a theme in fiction, students tend to focus on one word that encompasses the entire reading; however, an actual thematic statement or main idea should include the effects of the theme or main idea on all parts of the text. For example, if a student identifies courage as a theme in a fictional work, feedback could include cause/effect questions like, “What is the author saying about courage? …what causes the characters to act courageously and what happens as a result?” (106). In the high school setting, this can also apply to research articles. For example, if a student is researching animal adaptation, they need to know the history behind that adaptation and what results come from their ability to adapt. Asking students to think deeper about what the author is explaining leads students to come up with more in-depth interpretations of the text and better developed theses.

Works Cited

Wang, Elaine, et al. “Written Feedback to Support Students’ Higher Level Thinking About Texts in Writing.” The Reading Teacher, vol. 71, no. 1, 2017, pp. 101–07. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26632513