Entry #5- Card Strategy Lesson

This week in class, we utilized Kucer and Rhodes’ (1986) Card Strategy Lesson to begin drafting our first Genre Piece. While reading about this strategy, I thought it would be very helpful in brainstorming different key points related to an overall topic. When it came time to write those key points related to my overarching topic of “changes in teaching since the pandemic began,” it was actually more challenging than I thought it would be. I felt that I was repeating myself on the cards and struggled to come up with new ideas. However, after coming up with “feeling” words such as “stressed” or “overwhelmed”, I had more cards to work with. After coming up with 20 cards to describe my overall topic, I selected 7 of them to help me draft my first genre piece, relating specifically to teacher burnout. I then organized my cards in such a way that made sense to me and numbered them. Without revealing the order I put the cards in, I gave my cards to my partner, Holly, and had her organize them as she saw fit. It was so surprising to see how different our orders were! One thing that really surprised me was when I was ordering Holly’s cards, we had ordered them in almost reverse orders, meaning I put her #1 card last, and the last card in her order as #1 in mine. This really stood out to me because it showed that you can view one specific event from different perspectives. 

This writing strategy is very different from ways that I have brainstormed in the past. Usually, I would write out my overarching topic at the top of a piece of paper, then write down at least 3 different ideas that support my topic. These ideas would serve as the paragraphs for the writing piece. From there, I would organize those ideas in an order that made sense to me. Lastly, I would come up with some conclusion to write at the end of the 3 ideas. Looking back, the strategy I used to use to brainstorm is very limiting, and doesn’t allow for creativity with genre or layout. When using the Card Strategy, there is much more flexibility and creativity involved, since 20 ideas can be written down, and these ideas can be manipulated and arranged to serve different genres. I also enjoyed the Card Strategy because it allowed me to talk about ideas with a partner and have them share their perspective on the way these ideas should be presented. Holly and I were also able to discuss different genres that could support our ideas and how the order of the cards might change based on the genre. 

Reflecting on the cognitive and metacognitive strategies discussed in chapter 2 of Tompkins, the Kucer and Rhodes’ (1986) Card Strategy used a few of the strategies listed. The three strategies that stood out to me were generating, narrowing, and organizing. The Card Strategy encouraged me to generate ideas relating to my overall topic, then narrow down some of these ideas to fit one specific theme, and lastly organize this narrowed list of ideas into a way that makes sense to a reader. I will definitely be using this strategy again to help brainstorm ideas to draft future writing pieces!

References

Kucer, S. B. & Rhodes, L. K. (1986).  Counterpart strategies:  Fine tuning language with 

language.  The Reading Teacher, 40(2),186-193. 


Comments

  1. Ah! Yes. These are really important realizations to have Brenna -- for you and for your students. The other key component of this Card Strategy is the peer conferencing that takes place during this strategy. Without even knowing it, it was a prewriting conference.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Entry #10- "Bless, Address, and Press" Marissa's Blog

Entry #13- The Final Blog Post!