A Sequence of In-Class Writing Activities Using Money Changes Everything

A Sequence of In-Class Writing Activities Using Money Changes Everything

By Lawrence Weinstein

For a fuller presentation of these teaching ideas, please see my (Lawrence Weinstein’s) book for writing instructors, Writing at the Threshold, published by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). It can be obtained at ncte.org.

WEEKSIn-Class Activity for Critical Reading

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Distribute photocopies of one or more challenging excerpts from Money Changes Everything. Possibilities include:

the first 3 pages of “The Vanishing Middle Class,” page 64
the first 4 pages of “What’s a Little Money between Friends?,” page 92
the first 2 pages of “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits,” page 157
all 3 pages of “Should Working-Class People Get B.A.’s and Ph.D.’s?,” page 206
the first 2 pages of “Military Service,” page 259.

Be sure that your copies have left ample margins around the text.

Have students use class time not just to read the chosen excerpt, but to record their reactions to it in the margins.

Ask class members to call out some of their reactions, then distribute copies of the same excerpt that include your own (presumably abundant) reactions to the piece.

After everyone has had a chance to study your reactions, ask, “Are there types of comments in my margins that don’t appear in yours—or that appear in yours but don’t appear in mine? Can you come up with good names for these types of reaction?”

Don’t neglect to explain the importance of this in-class exercise: Unless a person actively and fully engages with a reading, she or he will come up short of things to write about it that are worth sharing!

Follow-up

For homework, have students read “Finding More to Say about What You Read,” which begins on page 6 in Money Changes Everything. Have them write a paragraph or two responding to these questions: “Which types of reaction to a text already come naturally to you? Which don’t? Of the ones that don’t, can you say why they don’t?”

In-Class Activity for Promoting More Extensive Thinking

Most first-year college students don’t know how to sustain inquiry, how to get past their initial answer to a question to other (usually more complicated) answers, ones that better fit the facts of the case.

Early in your course, declare war on the tendency to rush to judgment. In class time, have your students open their copies of Money Changes Everything to study one of the following:

the painting “The Fortune Teller,” page 222—with the question being “Whose side is the artist on?”
or the chart “May 2011 Wage Estimates,” page 247—with the question being “What patterns are reflected here? For example, do blue-collar workers earn less than other people earn?”

Have class members write down their thoughts as they occur to them.

After five minutes, tell them to stop, to skip a space, and to write the phrase “On the other hand…” or the phrase “On closer inspection, however…” Then have them resume their thinking, but in line with the new phrase.

After a few more minutes—or as soon as students’ mental activity seems to be slowing—tell them once again to stop and skip a space. This time, have them restart their thinking with the words “What prevents me from answering this question with more certainty is….”

Open the floor to discussion: What observations about the nature of inquiry does this exercise produce? (Students need to know that discovering evidence that contradicts an initial hypothesis is not a sign their minds are deficient, but a sign their minds are working well, exhibiting the attentive trial-and-error to be found at the heart of all good inquiry. And they need to know the same about discovering ambiguity in the question at hand, about discovering gaps in their knowledge which need filling before they can make further progress, and so on.)

For an example of this process in print, refer your students to the train-of-thought about requiring deposits on cans, on page 12 of Money Changes Everything.

Follow-up

On one or two occasions, let students start work on their next assigned paper in your presence during class time. Have them start by “thinking with a pen in hand” (or on a laptop) about the assigned question. (I call this focused free-writing.) As they think and write in front of you, quietly intone a list of exhortations that will jump-start unconstrained inquiry. My script:

Be sure that you’re writing for yourself now, not for an audi-

ence yet. This is you speaking to you, thinking on paper. (pause)

As a hunch—a possible answer to your question—occurs to

you, put it down, play it out…then, check it against all the facts

available to you. (pause)

Keep it honest. Don’t stick to some hunch that doesn’t truly

stand up to scrutiny. Try out other possible answers. (pause)

Bring all your resources to bear: firsthand experience, second-

hand experience, reasoning, intuition, etc. (pause)

Leave room for uncertainty. (pause)

Think about the things you’d want to know in order to be more

certain—and about how to ascertain those things.

When it works, this “background music”—a variant of coaching from the side- lines—actually stops many students in their customary tracks and sends them down new paths. With enough repetition, they internalize it.

WEEK 4In-Class Activity for Formulating a Thesis

When turning their attention to an audience, the first crucial matter for students to settle—if they have succeeded in mulling a hard question extensively and crossed into complicated territory—is whether to speak honestly.

I believe that what is true of me in this regard goes for most faculty at the college level: We don’t mark down papers that fail to answer a question definitively but show real grappling with that question. On the contrary, we prefer such papers to simplistic ones that only sound authoritative.

Have your students turn to page 25 in Money Changes Everything and read item no. 8 there, a longish writing prompt about a famous quote attributed to George W. Bush: “Go shopping.” Give them ten or fifteen minutes to ponder the question, taking it as far as they can in the allotted time (in notes on paper or computer, as above), without research. Then, have them call out fifteen or twenty of their thoughts, and put these on the board. Having done that, tell them to now put themselves in the place of an imaginary student who (a) has had all of the (no ` doubt contradictory) thoughts on the board and (b) is out of time for thinking: he or she must straightaway formulate a thesis for a paper on the subject. Ask them to take five or ten minutes at their desks to compose theses that do justice to the complexity involved.

In the discussion that follows, introduce them to types of thesis that may be unknown to them, like:

the thesis with concessions

Except in four rare circumstances, the answer to our question is X.

the thesis pointing to a difficulty

Though I don’t yet have an answer to this question, I can finally articulate what, exactly, makes the question so hard.

the thesis of elimination

Whatever the answer may be, it cannot be Y, because………….

the speculative thesis

If we make a certain plausible assumption, the answer that results is Z.

the thesis which identifies next steps

Getting to a final answer to this question requires that we………….

WEEKSIn-Class Activity for Developing a Repertoire of Ways to Organize

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Many students know no pattern for shaping prose beyond the well-worn Five- Paragraph Theme, that model which assumes a single, simple proposition and a stock of facts (or sub-points) that line up neatly in support of it. Writing at the college level benefits from having a whole repertoire of organizational patterns to choose from.

Have students pull out their copies of Money Changes Everything and open to “CSI USA: Who Killed the American Dream?,” page 169. Ask them to describe its organization. (It’s a variant of the Five-Paragraph Theme—a taxonomy, which is one kind of list.)
Have them do the same with “Inequality and (Un)happiness in America,” page 212. (It’s an example of the Set-up and Reject Sequence—a very common pattern among scholars, wherein the writer starts out by acknowledging at length a position held by someone else—and does so respectfully, to show that there’s intelligence at work there—but then points out the problems with that view and replaces it with something better, in his or her opinion. Usually, the writer announces that a set-up is coming with a phrase like “Some have argued that …” and, by and by, signals that the crucial turn is coming with a phrase like “However, on close inspection, it becomes painfully clear that….” Can your students find the corresponding cues in “Inequality and (Un)happiness in America”?)
Have them do it with “Should Working-Class People Get B.A.’s and Ph.D.’s?,” page 206. (It’s a case of Comparison/Contrast. In it, the authors take up one aspect of their stories at a time, going back and forth between the sisters throughout, aspect by aspect. The alternative was to set forth all the salient features of one sister’s story before moving on to the other sister’s story.)

Finally, have them do it with “When Spending Becomes You,” page 61. (It’s a specimen of the Inductive Approach: either letting facts speak for themselves, or letting them lead up to an explicit thesis…in due course.)

Having done all the above, re-purpose the array of student thoughts you assembled (when teaching types of thesis) on George W. Bush’s exhortation to “go shopping.” Either put it back up on the board in your classroom or distribute hard copy of it. Ask everyone in class (a) to again formulate a thesis from the array and (b) to come up with at least two ways to organize a paper built on that thesis.

As people finish, ask whether anyone has followed the Five-Paragraph Theme? Have that person transfer his/her outline (abbreviated, if necessary) to the blackboard. Do likewise with the Set-up and Reject Sequence, Comparison/ Contrast, and the Inductive Approach. Have each outline-maker walk you and the class through the outline. Raise some questions:

…Can all members of the class agree that the student’s outline qualifies as an example of the type named?

…In what situations would that type of outline be a good choice for the ` writer?

…How could parts of two or more outlines on the board be combined into a strong “hybrid” outline?

In-Class Activity for Writing a Fluent First Draft

Perilous indeed is the moment when a student tells herself that she must now sit down and “write” her paper, if, by “write,” what she has in mind is just to follow her outline, adding two or three sentences for each point found there as she gets to it. The result is likely to be textual deadweight for the reader. Textual vitality depends partly on flow of expression, and flow is hard to achieve when a writer conceives writing either as the filling in of blanks on an outline or as the meticulous creation of one flawless sentence after another. When writing flows, it’s because the writer dwells in what John Trimble calls “warm, imaginative touch” with her audience, exercising her good instincts for rhythm and for saying next what it would be most helpful to a reader to be told next.

Have your students bring to class their outlines for an upcoming paper. Then:

Make a statement of your own about the dangers in moving from outline to draft.
Urge your students to think of writing as a form—albeit a refined form—of human speech. That is, urge your students to think of a first draft as a letter (or very long email message) to you.Letters occupy a curious niche on the continuum from speech to formal writing. Yes, they are produced through fingers rather than through lips, but they generally pass between people familiar to each other and, therefore, take on many of the features of real-time conversation. They have fluency.
Have your students give one last look at the outlines that they’ve brought to class and then put those outlines out of sight.
Have them use class time, on the spot, to start actually drafting their papers. Tell them, “Talk it to me, on the page.”Maybe even have them open their papers by writing. “Professor, you have asked where all my reading and thinking on my topic has taken me so far. Well….”
Assure them that there will be time enough for lopping off their salutations—as well as for attending to word choice, grammar, and the rest—later.

Follow-up

In the class discussion that ensues, get students to report what the writing felt like, in comparison with past experience.

Also, point them to some diverse examples of “voice-infused” student writing in Money Changes Everything—maybe these student passages:

prompt no. 4 on page 137 (about misleading a customer—written in a defensive voice)
prompt no. 3 on page 277 (about having to choose between personal long-term health and keeping a football scholarship—written in a baffled and lamenting voice)
prompt no. 7 on page 164 (about Milton Friedman’s piece in Money Changes Everything—written in a sarcastic voice).

Ask them to guess, without looking, what fraction of the pieces in Money Changes Everything are written in describable voices, rather than voicelessly. Then give them time to browse in the book. Are they surprised by the proportion? In what situations would they say that voiceless formality is called for? Even in those situations, might the final product benefit from starting with a draft that more nearly resembles an informal letter?

WEEKSIn-Class Activity for Building Revision Skills—Part I: Radio Scripts

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Have students turn to the graph on income disparity on page 210 of Money Changes Everything. Give them five minutes to read the headnote and study the graph itself. Then ask them to imagine they’re reporters for National Public Radio assigned to cover the release of these findings. Give them ten or fifteen minutes to write good scripts.

The medium in this scenario—radio—is an important feature of the assignment: their audience will have no access to the visual graph itself. They must use their words clearly and precisely enough to enable their listeners to recreate the graph in their own minds, as well as to understand it.

As students finish, have two or three come to the board to write the scripts out for all to see. In class discussion, take up one script at a time, moving from basic concerns to more sophisticated writing matters:

Is the text free of ambiguity? That is, is it worded so carefully that no part of it can be misread to mean anything but what the writer intended?

If not, how can it be made unambiguous?

Are the grammar and spelling in it correct?

If not, what corrections are in order?

Could it be made more concise than it is?
Could more vivid words, metaphors, or other linguistic resources be deployed to spice it up—add interest to it—without changing its meaning?

When the class period is almost over, encourage your students to write out the foregoing list of questions (or whatever questions you, the instructor, prefer) as a checklist to consult before submitting final copy of a paper.

In-Class Activity for Building Revision Skills—Part II: More Grist for the Mill

Treat students as belonging to the same world of writers they find represented in Money Changes Everything—treat them as sources of feedback it would behoove those writers to heed!. As homework to prepare for class, have students browse in Money Changes Everything until they find three problematic sentences: one that’s ambiguous, one that’s hard to follow because it’s too wordy, and one that’s simply dull. Also, have them find a sentence that qualifies as beautiful.

In class, get volunteers to put their problematic sentences on the board—two or three of each kind. Lead a class-wide brainstorm of ways to revise these.

Save time also to look at some of the beautiful sentences, giving their respective champions first crack at saying what makesthem beautiful.

In-Class Activity for Building Revision Skills—Part III: The Mutual Aid Society

When students are in the revising phase of work on a paper, do as follows:

Have each student identify two revisions (other than mechanical corrections) he or she is contemplating making that may not yet go far enough toward solving the writing problem at hand. Have each student prepare two “before-and-after” sets of materials, with enough copies for all class members—one set for each of the two revisions under consideration. In the case of a changed plan of organization, the before-and-after set would consist of an outline of the paper as originally submitted and a new outline. In the case of revised text, the before-and-after set would consist of one or two paragraphs of the paper as originally submitted, and one or two paragraphs intended to replace those paragraphs.

In class, have each student take a turn…

distributing copies of his two sets,
explaining his aims in revising,
and eliciting response. (Are the new versions actually better than the original? Do they go as far as they could toward achieving the writer’s aims?)

You, as instructor, should withhold your response until other class members