Deceptively Simple: Writing's Answer to the Mobius Strip

Authors

  • Jeraldine R. Kraver University of Northern Colorado

Keywords:

writing across the curriculum, graphic organizers, multimodality, pre-writing

Abstract

Integrating writing instruction into the content-area classroom poses a variety of challenges for instructors at all levels. Beyond the need to embrace a new skill set involving writing instruction, there is the resistance of students (and faculty) who find a disconnection between content-area and literacy learning. Developing a method for engaging reticent (sometimes even antagonistic) students in discipline-specific writing is simpler than one might imagine if we privilege less the literacy product and more the literacy learner--if we, in short, begin from the student's perspective. In teaching writing, I do just that with what I reductively call the "Stick Student." I think of the Stick Student as writing's answer to the Mobius Strip, a tool deceptive in its elegant simplicity.

Author Biography

Jeraldine R. Kraver, University of Northern Colorado

Jeri Kraver is Professor of English at the University of Northern Colorado.

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Issue

Vol. 40 No. 2 (2011): Summer/Fall 2011

Section

Articles

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