Wednesday, 31 July 2013 - 7:55 PM EDT

In thinking about this question, I found that I couldn't choose one assignment as the BEST writing assignment I had been given. All writing assignments have helped shape me as a writer, whether they were academic essays, reflective journal entries, or creative free-writes. Given the diverse nature of these assignments, they were all graded in equally diverse ways, although most were graded according to some sort of rubric. The diversity of these assignments, intentionally or not, allowed me to experiment with many different types of writing. The feedback I received on these assignments then allowed me to pinpoint my strengths and weaknesses and improve my writing in my next endeavours.

The worst assignments I have ever been given were those that required me to write several numbered paragraphs, each in response to a specific question that asked me to summarize the main points of a text. Not only did these responses feel tedious while I was doing them, but they did not require any special writing schools and thus did not help improve my writing. These assignments also tended to be graded on a simple check system, and sometimes did not have any comments, either, which made me think the teacher had not read it. These assignments thus did not help me grow as a writer nor was I motivated to complete them, given the lack of response I was given by the professor. These are the types of writing assignments I would avoid assigning to my students, although checking their comprehension is key. 

Thursday, 1 August 2013 - 6:02 PM EDT

The best creative writing assignment I’ve had was in my creative writing class senior year.  The first assignment of the class had for the year was to write a short story about anything we wanted to.  I decided to write a sort of mock coming-of-age story which one of my close friends that was in my class read and found to be hilarious.  After that assignment I really had no interest in any sort of work and after some negotiation, my friend, managed to convince my teacher to allow me to continue writing my story for the rest of the class (two quarters).  Lucky for me, both were well-aware of my relative lack of academic motivation at the time and knew this would be the only way for me to remain actively engaged in any type of work.  The teacher graded me by making sure I was constantly adding new material or revising old material, he also gave me a required minimum length to ensure I wouldn’t cheat the system even more by “revising” my work over and over.  The assignment’s grading and objectives went hand in hand.  My formative assessments were my summative assessment as I constantly and consciously created an inventive and developed complete novella.

The worst writing assignment I can remember was freshman year gym (not “health” class).  I had to write five papers, two pages each, on five aspects of physical education and their importance.  The reason I had to write these papers was because I had a broken leg and couldn’t participate while others were class.  One of the worst parts of this assignment was that I had to sit and watch everyone in my class swim.  For the most part, there was no “physical education,” everyone just played pool basketball.  Rather than doing the assignment during that time, I had to write the paper during my own “free” time; I need to cite various sources so I, for the most part, couldn’t get any of the work done without having sources I could “research.”  The assignment was graded like that of any “normal” research paper:  purpose, content, organization, grammar, use of references etc.  The teacher was trying to have me achieve a better understanding of various aspects of physical education demonstrated by my “research” of academic sources on things like nutrition, exercise, and whatever else it was I wrote about.

Saturday, 3 August 2013 - 11:01 PM EDT

As I thought back on my middle and high school writing assignments, my mind immediately turned to my all-time favorite course, British Literature. I took this class during my sophomore year, and I contribute most of my fond memories to my teacher, Richard O’Connor. I would say that all of his writing assignments were great, but the best was an assignment that we did a few months into the school year. We wrote a paper on the text that we were reading, and then had to remove all of the "be" verbs (am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been) from our papers. After that, we had to vary the sentence starters throughout the paper (some repeats were allowed). This was a difficult assignment, but it has been the most helpful lesson that I learned in writing thus far. This has improved the clarity of my communication, as I constantly work towards writing and speaking in an active voice while eliminating passive verbs as much as possible. I don’t remember how this assignment was graded, but I know that Mr. O’Connor frequently used rubrics, so we always knew why we received a particular grade. If my memory serves me, I also think that only our final draft was graded. I believe that he assigned this paper because he wanted us to become stronger writers that understood the importance of word choice.

In order to think of the worst writing assignment, I looked through all of my saved papers from 8-12 grade. I honestly had a difficult time finding a bad assignment in any of the content areas. When I stumbled upon an 8th grade assignment called “'The Outsiders' Book Report,” I assumed that I would choose this as the worst because typically, traditional book reports are known for being too superficial. That being said, I actually think that this was a good assignment. In addition to the basic information about the book, the questions included: Is the main character realistic? Explain; Give examples of the following: sarcasm, personification, simile, metaphor, symbolism, foreshadowing; Give three examples of sensory imagery; Give five important events that happened in the book in order of occurrence; What is the theme in your book?

This assignment consisted of 11 questions that required us to look more in-depth into the text. So my answer for what was the worst assignment would be a standard book report that stays in the “knowledge” domain of Bloom’s taxonomy without moving towards the questions that require students to understand and synthesize the information.  Presumably, teachers assign traditional book reports in order to prep students for becoming literary critics, but there must be a level of analysis in the report in order for it to be a successful writing assignment.

Tuesday, 6 August 2013 - 12:31 PM EDT

         In what is probably a rare occurrence, poor planning by one of my high school English teachers actually resulted in something fun—my junior-year journalism elective course quickly lost all its journalistic elements and became a creative writing seminar. After reading each short story (my favorite of which was “The Radio” by John Cheever) my teacher would give us a paragraph from another short story by the same author and ask us to write our own creative piece using that excerpt as our intro paragraph. We could write whatever we wanted as long as we emulated the style and technique of the original author. We were graded on adherence to the original writer’s style, quality of plot structure, and proper use of standard English conventions. This was by far my favorite assignment because it had fewer restrictions than most English class writing assignments and, probably more importantly, I love creative writing. The assignment was graded, but almost everyone received an A or B if they made some attempt to emulate the original writer’s style; however, the grade wasn’t the important part for me. Exploring what I could accomplish outside of the five-paragraph essay was the most refreshing and rewarding aspect of this assignment. Though these assignments were not the result of careful planning by my teacher, I think that she realized that we all needed a break from “standard” English and wanted to get us more interested in writing by removing the restrictions that burden most English writing assignments.

            The most dismaying writing assignments in high school were always five-paragraph essays. I will try to stop myself before entering into a rant on how overemphasized the five paragraph was in my school and say, simply, that it is a valuable foundation on which to build essay writing and organizational skills for students that struggle with writing; however, most teachers build this foundation year after year and never attempt to move past the five-paragraph. There is no five-paragraph assignment that stands out at me for being particularly offensive, but I do remember steadily developing a weariness and repulsion for the essay throughout high school. The five-paragraph’s deleterious effects on my literary freedom and academic morale were slow and painful like the progression of some nagging venereal disease. Its standardized form made certain that any of my attempts to “spice up” the formula with my own stylistic flair were punished. It is a writing style that favors mediocrity. I know that my teachers were trying to help struggling writers prepare for college by proving a template on which to base future essays, but I was not challenged enough by the five-paragraph to remain engaged in English classes that overemphasized their importance (and, as I was no literary genius, I know many of my peers felt this way as well). 

Tuesday, 6 August 2013 - 3:41 PM EDT

0 0 1 369 2107 Neag School of Education 17 4 2472 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

The writing assignment that I remember most fondly was a creative non-fiction assignment in my high-school ELA class.  My teacher told us that we could pick absolutely any topic we would like, as long as it was a true and we used descriptive language to tell the story.  I wrote about a girl that I was fond of and my observations of her, her family life and what she went through when she lost her mother.  It was at this point I realized that I had the ability to express my feelings and observations keenly through writing.  My teacher graded the assignment holistically and there was no rubric.  After my teacher handed back our papers she spoke with me individually.  She told me that she thought that I did a wonderful job and that the topic must have been dear to my heart.  She really boosted my self-confidence towards writing.  I believe that the teacher was trying to achieve many different things with this writing assignment.  It appeared to me that she was most specifically trying to help us find that creative and interesting happenings are all around us.  The Burke book explains a particularly poignant purpose of the common core is explained in that, “writing is the key means of defending claims, showing what they know about a subject, and conveying what they have experienced, imagined, thoughts and felt” (Burke, 68).  In regards to this assignment, my experiences, thoughts and feelings were definitely expressed.

I can’t remember one particular writing assignment that was the worst, but I never appreciated it when I was given a research paper topic.  I appreciate research papers, although arduous, because I have always learned a great deal on the topic researched.  However, it is always nice to have some say in which topic you will research.  I felt more engaged during instances where I could pick a topic within a particular subject area or from a list of topics.  Typically research papers were graded holistically on the depth of information attained and expressed.  In some cases I remember teachers grading based on the number of sources referenced.  I believe teachers choose research topics for the student to avoid any discourse or inappropriate topics.  It can be imagined that the purpose of a research paper is to teach a student how to become better informed and how to structure a paper, rather than to assess the style of his/her writing, especially because much of the writing, in this format, is quotations and paraphrasing. 

Tuesday, 6 August 2013 - 9:54 PM EDT

0 0 1 463 2640 Neag School of Education 22 6 3097 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

I truly don’t have any memories of specific assignments from middle school and high school.  It has been a long time. In middle school my most salient memory involves being confused when I was asked to peer review a classmate’s paper written in slang, 9th grade is blur, in 10th grade I had a teacher who truly tried to teach but then had to stop to regress our education for CAPT preparation and my 11th and 12th grade AP classes were memorable for each teacher telling everyone in the class to forget what we learned about writing the previous year.  Unfortunately, purposeful forgetting was a part of the overall curriculum.  My other classes also weren’t particularly memorable for academic reasons.

However, since I am a bit of a hoarder I checked some of my notebooks from high school to see if I could find anything noteworthy.  I came across my creative writing portfolio and in it I found pieces of writing: poems and stories.   Each piece of writing had two drafts to show progression, two peer assessments as well as a short piece by me stating what I revised in each piece and why I made certain revisions.   This was probably the only class I had that encouraged revision of each work and some sort of reflection of the writing process.  I remember truly liking that aspect of the class because it was helped me to challenge myself as a writer and become more conscious of my writing process.  I think that was the intention the teacher had, and she also wanted us to learn how to learn from our classmates’ constructive criticisms as well as know how to give similar advice.  Also, the teacher wanted to give the class the tools and some framework of how to actively engage with the work created.  So, my portfolio’s grade was reflection on how well I reflected on my work and organized all these parts within the portfolio, which I think was a very good way to assess work in a creative writing class.

Next I came across a folder containing some of my work from my 12th grade English class.  No one assignment particularly jumps out at me, but I remember a general bewilderment of trying to learn what felt like a new style of writing. The goal of the class was to prepare me to take the AP test, but beyond that I remember always being confused by the purpose of each writing assignment, which seemed like islands unto themselves with no bridge between them.   Each class I felt like I was thrown into the sea and forced to learn to swim, float or hold onto a piece of drift wood, and what I produced at the end of each assignment seemed to either reflect my ability to swim, float or just latch onto something.  Unfortunately there was no progression in my survival skills.  One day I would be swimming and the next day I was trying not to drown in all the confusion. A lot of my efforts were spent on deciphering the materials read and trying to represent them in interesting way in an essay.  There was also little constructive time spent in the class on reinforcing the mechanics of writing.  It was more about reading and interpreting.  I felt like I was teaching myself to write a certain way with little help.  Maybe having the students figure it out themselves for the most part was the intention of the class.

Tuesday, 6 August 2013 - 11:56 PM EDT

0 0 1 484 2764 Neag School of Education 23 6 3242 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

[Sorry for late response.]

When I began my senior year of high school, I was ecstatic that my school finally offered creative writing as an elective. I turned to writing on a daily basis during middle school since it was a cathartic art form. I was so excited for every assignment in creative writing that I would go home and immediately begin my writing process. However, I do recall a time when my teacher assigned something that left me stumped. He asked us to write a two-page memoir on a life-changing moment, whether it affected us negatively or positively, and gave us only a week to do it. Personally, I was very uncomfortable with this. Even though I consistently wrote and shared poetry reflecting on instances in my life, his seemed more difficult because it was not written as a metaphor. I’d rather not relive those bad moments, and I thought back then that I was way too boring to write about a good moment. This assignment marked the first time that I was not honest with myself. It was Thursday night, the night before the memoir was due. I opened up my laptop and began typing away at the keyboard. I chose to write about a moment that changed my life, but of course this “life-changing” event did not even happen. In this class, we were given a rubric for our writing pieces. I made sure I followed all the “five-pointers” to the “T” and filled my assignment with all the “fancy-shmancy” things that I thought would impress my teacher. When I finally got to class the next day, my teacher chose me to present my writing first. I walked up to the front of the class. As I looked down at the words on my paper, my voice couldn’t find its way out. I was getting all these weird looks from my classmates. I finally mustered up the courage to say that I was not honest with my writing. I ran out of the classroom. When I finally collected myself and went back to class, my teacher asked me to read my writing to the class. Now that the secret was all out in the open, how would anyone enjoy it? When I was done, the classroom filled up with the sound of applause. Everyone, including my teacher, said that it was a wonderful piece of writing and fulfilled everything that a creative writing piece should be. He gave me an A for that reason. My teacher then went on to explain that it didn’t really matter if it was based on a true story or not. After all, what my audience doesn’t know won’t hurt them. The thing I realized is that I don’t really have to reflect everything about myself in my writing. From that point on, I began to

I remember when my junior year history teacher assigned us a term paper topic. I felt like I was doomed. How was I supposed to know how Ayatollah Khomeini gained power after the overthrow of the Shah? The worst part was actually doing the research for this. I did not have any research skills and my teacher didn’t give us anything to go off of besides our assigned topics. I still have this paper that I managed to pull an A on, but I do not understand how I even was graded. There was no rubric and I was thrown into the assignment with no prior knowledge. However, I can honestly say that I did learn some great research skills from doing this assignment by myself that I carried on to college.

Wednesday, 7 August 2013 - 12:31 AM EDT

The best writing assignment I had in high school was during 11th grade American Studies. I had to choose a song relevant to American history and/or current events and write an 8-10 page essay explaining its relevance as well as its impact on American culture. The assignment was graded based upon a rubric so each student was able to know exactly what the teacher was looking for. By giving this assignment the teacher hoped to make education fun. By giving students the freedom to chose their own song lyrics the students, myself included, became engaged and excited about the assignment. Writing topics relevant to my own interests are always the most motivating assignments and make learning seem more like fun than actual effort.

The worst writing assignment I had in high school was to create an annotated bibliography. In fact, the assignment was given within the first week of the school year and because of it I went to guidance and had my class schedule changed so that I would have a different teacher who I knew did not assign an annotated bibliography. Granted I was not the most intrinsically motivated student but nonetheless I have always enjoyed developing my education. There were actually a few reasons why I disliked the assignment so much.  For starters, topics were written on small pieces of paper and put into a hat. Students then chose a piece of paper from the hat and their topic was revealed. I don't remember the topic I was randomly given but I remember wanting a different one. Not being able to do the assignment on the topic I found most interesting was an immediate turn off for me. To increase my dislike for the assignment it was required to be some several hundred pages long. Of course the pages were due in increments throughout the school year, but the absurd length for a high school course was overwhelming, slightly intimidating and anything but motivating. I don't remember how the assignment was to be graded but I assume assessment follwed some sort of a rubric. I believe the teacher gave this assigment to help my peers and I develop research skills that would be useful in college. While developing such skills is definitely useful for college, it was presented at the time in a way that appeared tidious and boring. Had I been able to choose my own topic and/or complete the project with a partner or even small group it would have been more engaging and motivating.

Wednesday, 7 August 2013 - 12:57 PM EDT

My favorite writing assignment was the end of the unit assessment where the teacher would hand out a three page assignment that you had to type up. You would generally have a week to do it, and it would require you to choose one of three questions that the teacher proposed and answer it using things gone over in class and the text. I really liked these because I took awesome notes so it was easy for me to have really good responses. The teacher would collect the papers when they were due and would grade them one at a time. You would be graded on the content of your paper, meaning how well you answered the question you chose. I think the teacher was trying to see how well we understood the things talked about in class and content of the unit.

My least favorite writing assignment was the in class writings we had to do for exams. In my case, this type of writing was always less rehearsed and therefore less thoughtful. I imagine that we were still graded on the content of the essay and how well we answered the question. The teacher was still trying to achieve a sense of how well the class understood the material.

Wednesday, 7 August 2013 - 1:01 PM EDT

0 0 1 287 1637 Neag School of Education 13 3 1921 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

My memory of high school writing revolves around a love for creative writing. It began in middle school with a teacher who had scheduled weekly creative writing workshops. My love for creative writing initially began with the freedom, and ease with which is came to me. I liked the fact that I could easily come up with new stories every week and that I didn’t have to work very hard for them. This enjoyment through ease was definitely how I began to prefer creative writing, but then it became more. It became an outlet for my creativity that I could access both for my own pleasure, but also for school credit. It was really the first time that school and my interests were fully aligned and I realized the truth to the old saying, “you never work a day in your life, if you love what you do.” Homework was fun, editing was enjoyable. This attitude remained with me and even spread into more formal writing assignments that required a more analytical attitude. Through the creative writing assignments I learned that I loved to write in all different mediums, and still do.

            That being said, my least favorite assignment that I was ever given, was a collaborative essay, similar to what we were just discussing. I not only hated how the different voices were fused together into a seemingly unreadable document, but the very process, or varying process of every writer made the experience awful and impossible. To make matters worse, we were then asked to reflect individually so as to rat out the other students who worked poorly in the group or who just didn’t do anything at all. I chose to write an essay on why I refused to discuss other students’ participation within our group, citing the principles of not being a “rat.” I was apparently very snarky and dignified as a sixteen year old. He didn’t appreciate my take on the reflection process, but it still stands out as my least favorite assignment of all time.