There's two ways to write a paper: you can write it slowly over many weeks...taking time to revise, edit, rewrite and perfect every single sentence...or you can write it right away. As a teacher, there's always the dream of getting that "perfect paper" someday and having students not only spend the time improving their work...but wanting to spend their time improving their work. I think back to writing my dissertation, or to my 11th grade AP English class where we took a month to write a 40 page research project. Each step took days to complete, but the whole group of us were hooked.
However, when you're dealing with Seniors in the final third of their final year of high school, sometimes papers are better if they're written right away. If students are given two weeks to write a paper, they'll likely good around for a week before starting the process and then not even write the bulk of it until the day or two before. This year, I'm helping this process along by only giving them five days. Five days to conceive of an idea, write the thesis statement, find the quotes, make the heading...and then actually typing the thing. It sounds like a recipe for some bad papers, but after running this process last year, I found that the overall quality is pretty comparable. If anything, it's a little bit better since students are focused for a short burst rather than a long haul.
Paper Blitz kicked off yesterday, continues today and tomorrow, and the final products are due on Monday. We'll know by then if this was a good idea or not...
However, when you're dealing with Seniors in the final third of their final year of high school, sometimes papers are better if they're written right away. If students are given two weeks to write a paper, they'll likely good around for a week before starting the process and then not even write the bulk of it until the day or two before. This year, I'm helping this process along by only giving them five days. Five days to conceive of an idea, write the thesis statement, find the quotes, make the heading...and then actually typing the thing. It sounds like a recipe for some bad papers, but after running this process last year, I found that the overall quality is pretty comparable. If anything, it's a little bit better since students are focused for a short burst rather than a long haul.
Paper Blitz kicked off yesterday, continues today and tomorrow, and the final products are due on Monday. We'll know by then if this was a good idea or not...
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