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Use of Authentic Questioning and Creative Writing Activities in ELA

Grace Holodak

Department of Education, Manhattan College

EDUC 376: Curriculum and Methods of Teaching English Grades 7-12

Sister Mary Ann Jacobs

December 1, 2022
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Abstract

In this paper, I will discuss how students are struggling to engage in the ELA classroom,

what I experienced in my own high school ELA classes, and implementation strategies to

increase student engagement. I focused on the lack of enjoyment that students feel about reading

and writing, and through my research, found three strategies that were proved to be effective to

combat the problems that students face. Out of the three strategies I researched, I focused on two:

authentic questioning and creative writing. I implemented these strategies in my learning

segment and put my signature pedagogy into practice. I will discuss how I used these strategies

in my lessons, how effective they were, and what I would do differently in my conclusion.

Look at the problem

English Language Arts is taught in different ways, depending on the teacher and their

approach. However, no matter what variety of strategies are used across the board, most ELA

classrooms are run similarly. Typically, students are assigned to a novel which is read either in

class, at home, or a combination of both. A large amount of time spent in class is

discussion-based on the novel that the students are currently reading. How the teacher runs their

discussion varies, however, what is done during discussion is most likely the same throughout

many ELA classrooms; close reading and analysis. What students may find difficult with this

discussion based approach is that in a large classroom, they may either feel anxious to

participate, or they become disengaged because they know that other students will participate

instead. This approach makes it difficult for the teacher to gauge whether the students have done

their reading, or if they understand it. Another problem that is common among students is

writing ability. Oftentimes, students are told to write an essay with little to no guidelines or
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limited time for revision. This leaves students in the dark and discourages them from writing

because they start to believe they are not good at it.

Examine what you know

Some approaches that I experienced through my highschool varied, yet mostly stuck to

the same formula. This consisted of reading for homework, discussion in class, followed by a

major essay we had to work on independently. What I liked most, which was done a lot in my

freshman and sophomore year ELA classes, was when we would do group work. My teachers

divided us into groups of three or four and gave us a worksheet with close reading analysis

questions to work on. Once the groups were finished, we talked about our answers as an entire

class. I liked this approach because it was collaborative in the sense that we could be inspired by

the interpretations of our peers and build off of each other’s ideas. A problem with this approach

was that more often than not, one student in the group would take the lead and do most of the

interpretations while the rest of the group members would simply agree without offering their

own interpretations. A different approach in my 11th grade ELA class that I was not used to was

cold calling. During discussion, my teacher would ask a series of interpretive questions and cold

call throughout the entire discussion. This approach gave me a lot of anxiety the first couple of

weeks of class, but without this approach I would not be on the road to becoming an English

teacher myself. Cold calling forced me to engage and listen attentively the entire time, prepared

me for thinking on my feet, and allowed me to feel less anxiety about getting an answer

“wrong.” In literature, I learned that there is no right or wrong interpretation. I improved

significantly in my close reading skills that year. Lastly is an approach that was done in my

senior year English elective that I absolutely loved. My teacher split us into groups of three and
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we got to choose any short story of our liking to teach to the class. He gave us guidelines and

essentially we had to write up a lesson plan (which of course I loved because at that point I knew

I wanted to be a teacher). This was a unique approach compared to giving a presentation on one

novel where every student would have a very similar presentation. In this approach, we had

freedom to choose what we wanted to teach and were able to engage with the short stories that

other groups taught.

As for writing approaches, all four years of high school ELA classrooms had the same

approach. My teachers showed us an effective way to write a thesis statement, how to cite

properly, that we need to have an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion, and then we

were on our own. The process of writing or revision was not taught and I knew nothing about the

writing process until I became a writing consultant at my school’s writing center my junior year.

This taught me that the process is fluid and that there is no one way to write an essay. Oftentimes

when teachers would assign essays, whether that was a week in advance or done in one class as a

form of an exam, they would give us comments after the essay had been graded with little to no

opportunity for revision. How were we supposed to improve our writing if we did not have the

opportunity to do so?

Acquire Knowledge

I researched writing strategies and found Angela M. Wiseman’s paper titled “‘Now I

Believe if I Write I Can Do Anything’: Using Poetry to Create Opportunities for Engagement

and Learning in the Language Arts Classroom,” in which she discussed the benefits of allowing

students to express themselves through poetry in the classroom. Wiseman sat in on a poetry

workshop set up by an active community member, teacher, and poet named Theo. Pamela
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Martin, an eighth grade ELA teacher, collaborated with Theo to involve her own students in the

poetry workshop. Theo taught a weekly workshop in an eighth grade classroom as well as held

bimonthly poetry coffee houses open to families, adults, children, and anyone in the community.

The students in the workshop were asked to write from their own personal experiences, allowing

them to express themselves creatively through language. Wiseman stated that the implementation

of teaching poetry based on personal experience resulted in “personal reflection and critical

analysis of real world events.” (24) Wiseman touched on the four components of the poetry

workshop that made this experience immersive and engaging for students. This included a safe

learning space, collaborative learning, authentic purpose for student learning, and knowledge

shared from all participants. Students were able to put their complex feelings into words, relate

to one another and help each other talk about difficult topics. Some were even able to realize that

they wanted to become writers and poets in the future. Wiseman recorded what some students

expressed about these workshops and concluded that across the classroom, “students were able to

contribute to the curriculum in ways that were relevant and meaningful.” (31) She also touched

on the social emotional learning aspect of the workshop stating that “the focus on emotional and

social aspects of their lives was relevant to their own priorities and values.” (31)

The poetry workshop was an effective strategy for writing, but I also wanted to know

about teaching reading strategies. I found a paper written by Sedat Maden on the Jigsaw

approach titled, “Effect of Jigsaw I Technique on Achievement in Written Expression Skill.” The

Jigsaw approach is a collaborative learning strategy in which students can actively engage with a

reading. Students are split into initial groups and assigned one reading per group. Then students

are split into second group, called expert groups, where everyone in the group read a different

text. Each group member then has to teach their expert group what their reading was about. This
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gives each student a role and adds “accountability to each individual for the group’s

performance.” (912) Maden pulled from other research and studies to explain why the jigsaw

method is effective. Maden touched upon the fact that teaching as a way of learning is seen as

effective and with this approach, students who are on the lower level of reading can be assisted

by the higher level reading students in their initial groups before teaching it to other students.

Collaborative learning in English Language Arts enables students to be open to a wide range of

opinions and discussions that otherwise they would not be immersed in. Sedat brought up

important information that the Jigsaw technique has been revised overtime. What has improved

this technique is the addition of quizzes to ensure that each member of the expert group was

actively engaged in the teachings of their other group members. Another addition to the

technique is the re-teaching of missing parts in the subject by the teacher to ensure that each

student understands each text, in case one group member did not thoroughly teach their reading.

After researching both writing and reading strategies for the classroom, I lastly wanted to

research strategies for effective discussion. Meghan E. Dale, Amanda J. Godley, Sarah A.

Capello, Patrick J. Donnelly, Sidney K. D'Mello, and Sean P. Kelly conducted research on how

“teacher talk” affects student learning in the ELA classroom, particularly during discussion. This

paper titled “Toward the automated analysis of teacher talk in secondary ELA classrooms”

touched on the positive effects of authentic questions, incorporating student ideas in teacher talk,

and feedback on students ideas. The authors describe authentic questions as “inquiries that do not

have prespecified answers,”(3) also known as answers that are up for interpretation, which

allows for more in depth student discussion and allows students to build off of one another’s

answers. For teacher feedback, authors stated that when teachers expand on students' responses

and offer follow up questions to challenge critical thinking, studies have shown that this
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enhances student learning. Another interesting point made was that studies found how neutral

feedback was seen as more effective than positive feedback because it “elicited more high

cognitive talk from students” (3). When discussing incorporation of student’s ideas into the

teacher’s discussion, the authors found that this encourages students to listen to each other’s

ideas as well as “expand on their own ideas and provide evidence of their perspective” (3). The

authors collected classroom audio data from 16 teachers in two different school districts. For

authentic questions, they found that 26% of teacher questions were coded as authentic, which

means that 74% of questions asked had one right answer. This is not ideal for an ELA classroom

as most reading comprehension is interpretive. With one teacher in particular who asked mostly

authentic questions, they found that through a series of questions, the teacher “prompted multiple

students to share their unique perspectives and interpretations on the same topic.” (8) The data on

teacher uptake concluded that it was uncommon, being that there was only 7% total teacher

uptake and many classes with no teacher uptake at all. However, with those teachers who did

engage, this encouraged other students to build onto each other’s comments and perspectives that

the teacher had pointed out. As for high cognitive questions, the authors pointed out that

although important, there should be a variety of both high cognitive and low cognitive demand.

In one class in which the teacher did pose both high and low cognitive questions, they found that

the class discussion ran more smoothly and resulted in more student participation.

Devise a Plan

I can implement all of these teaching strategies in my classroom because the research

covered strategies for writing, reading, and discussion. I am very passionate about increasing

student interest in writing and I believe that personal writing is a perfect way to do that. Angela
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M. Wiseman concluded that the students in Ms. Martin’s class benefited heavily from Theo’s

poetry workshops, specifically because they were able to express themselves from personal

experiences, relate to one another, and find relevance in what they were doing. This format of

writing workshop could be used with other genres of writing as well. The Jigsaw method could

be implemented in the classroom to introduce a new genre of writing. In my plan, I would use

the Jigsaw method to begin each new unit of study because based on the research in Sedat

Maden’s paper, having a student teach a topic improves their understanding of it. In my

classroom, I would use the jigsaw method and writing workshop to introduce poetry first, then

measure whether or not I should continue this method for other genres based on how well the

students respond to this strategy. Poetry is also a genre that many students feel they struggle

with, so I believe this strategy will encourage them to view poetry in a different light and see that

it is not so scary.

First, I will introduce my students to poetry with a selection of readings on how to read

and analyze poetry. These texts will not be too long or complex because this will be an

introduction to poetry and they will have to teach their other classmates. Based on the Jigsaw

technique that I read about, I will split my class into groups, hand out around four to five

readings to each group (depending on how many students are in my class), all tending to a

different area of analyzing poetry (form, structure, literary devices, speaker vs. author, etc.) After

reading and annotating their passage and talking with their first groups about it, they will break

into their expert groups to teach the other students about their passage. I will give the students a

worksheet to answer questions about each passage, ensuring that the concepts are understood. I

will re-teach some concepts that students are still struggling with based on these answers. Once

students have an understanding of how to read and analyze poetry, I will move onto reading
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poetry, using the “teacher talk” strategies from the last reading. During discussion of the poems

assigned, I will incorporate student’s ideas into my “teacher talk” in order for other students to

expand on those ideas, as the authors of the reading observed in some of the classes. I will use

authentic questions for students to respond to and give their own interpretations, which will

hopefully allow other students to provide their own different interpretations and perspectives.

Once students have spent quality time on analyzing poems and discussing interpretations in

class, I will introduce the poetry workshop. Using Theo’s method, I will give students the

opportunity to write from their own personal experience, allowing them to share aloud what they

have written, give feedback on their peers, and have respectful and meaningful conversations

with each other. This will not only allow students to practice social emotional learning, it will

give them opportunities to practice using language creatively and apply what they have learned

in terms of poetry form to their own writing. Using these strategies, I hope to give students more

immersive and collaborative opportunities to learn as well as practice writing creatively, a skill

that I was given the opportunity to practice in high school.

Execute the Plan

For my mini-lesson and full lesson teaching episodes, I decided to focus on teacher talk

and authentic questioning to teach poetry, while also using some of the poetry workshop methods

to allow students to create their own blackout poems. In my mini-lesson, I taught point of view

in the narrative poem, Clap When You Land. I used authentic questioning throughout the direct

instruction portion of my lesson in order to keep students engaged. I had my students look at

excerpts from various stories to determine which point of view it was written in. When students
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came up with an answer I asked them to share how they came to that conclusion, in order to

elaborate on their critical thinking skills and use evidence to support their interpretation.

My full lesson gave me more time to practice my signature pedagogy in depth, and as I

used day five of my lesson, students would be more familiar with the elements of poetry that

Elizabeth Acevedo uses in Clap When You Land. I continued to use authentic questioning when I

had students interpret the examples of the blackout poetry. In each poem, I asked questions such

as how they interpret the subject, tone, imagery, and point of view. The students discussed in

their groups before sharing aloud. These authentic questions allowed for each student to have a

different interpretation of what they believed the meaning to be, as long as they had evidence to

back up their interpretation. I proceeded to use student ideas in my own teaching during the

guided practice when I asked students to form their own blackout poetry as a class. I used the

projector to look at a passage from Clap When You Land, read it aloud to them, and asked the

students to shout out words that stood out to them. I circled those words and asked the students

what words connect to each other. This activity was completely student-centered and got students

thinking about how they would be creating their blackout poetry independently. The authentic

questioning continued after I had students independently practice, creating their own blackout

poems. I asked each student who shared their creation how they interpreted their own poem,

which did not have one correct answer. From the poetry workshop I read about, I allowed

students to participate in a form of this because they had the freedom to choose words within a

text to create a new meaning, or build on the meaning of the original text. For a lot of the

students, their poems were personal to an experience they went through, which brought an aspect

of social emotional learning into the classroom as well.

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Repeat the Steps as Needed

My strategy has shown to be effective as students gave me feedback on how they believe

my signature pedagogy was evident through my lesson as well as how this would be beneficial

for students. My ability to ask authentic questions throughout the lesson allowed for my students

to give multiple different interpretations of texts. The activity I used for blackout poetry allowed

my students to apply what they learned about elements of poetry and create their own poems.

They continued their interpretive skills when they had to find meaning in their own poems they

created. How I would improve is to ask more authentic questions in my mini-lesson. As I

watched it over, a lot of the questions I asked throughout the lesson had one definite answer and

were not up for interpretation. In both lessons, I would allow more time for students to discuss

with each other and allow for more “turn and talks” to incorporate collaborative learning into my

lessons. If I had more time in my full lesson, I would have found it beneficial for the students to

choose a partner to share their poems with and offer their own interpretations to see how each

student's perspective differs, which also goes along with the vocabulary learned in one of the

previous lessons. In my next learning segment that I create, I will look more into using the

Jigsaw Method, which is the one strategy I researched that I did not get to practice. After

watching James incorporate Jigsaw into his mini-lesson, I saw how effective this turned out to be

and I would love to try this out in the future. In conclusion, using authentic questioning and

creative writing activities proved to be beneficial and I will continue to develop this signature

pedagogy so that I can one day use it in a real classroom.

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References

Dale, M. E., Godley, A. J., Capello, S. A., Donnelly, P. J., D’Mello, S. K. (2021). Toward the

Automated Analysis of Teacher Talk in Secondary ELA Classrooms. Teaching and

Teacher Education, Volume 110.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0742051X21003097.

Maden, S. (2011). Effect of Jigsaw I Technique on Achievement in Written Expression Skill.

Educational Sciences: Theory and Practice, http://Www.edam.com.tr/Estp.asp, 30 Nov.

2010, https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ927383.

Wiseman, A. M. (2010). Now I believe if I write I can do anything: Using poetry to create

opportunities for engagement and learning in the language arts classroom. Journal of

Language and Literacy Education, 6(2), 22-33.