Re-vising and re-visioning
I just re-read Nancy Sommers’ Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers in which she examined the revisions of...
Queer and gendered language
I just read David L. Wallace and Jonathan Alexander’s article Queer rhetorical agency. I’m still digesting the content and it’s clear...
The red pen
In Chapter 5 of Engaging Ideas, Bean discusses addressing issues of grammar and correctness in student writing, noting that “whatever the...
Threshold concepts
Switching gears to a different book that focuses on teaching writing: Naming What We Know; in Chapter 6 Heidi Estrem examines the...
Caring comments
In Chapter 16, Bean addresses the extremely difficult (in my opinion) task of writing comments on students’ papers. I would prefer to...
Mixing Critical Thinking and Group Work
In Chapter 10, Bean advocates “goal oriented use of small groups” (p. 184) which follows certain criteria: The teacher presents a...
Critical thinking
In his eighth chapter, Bean presents ten strategies for designing critical thinking tasks. Several of these I already use regularly,...
Writing personality
Bean points out some interesting ways in which “assigning different genres can draw out the strengths of different kinds of learners and...
Cognitive dissonance
I’ve been re-reading Engaging Ideas: the Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the...