Category: All #Writing
Symptoms and Root Causes
Have you ever done a root-cause analysis of your problems? Sometimes breaking down a problem can help you find a solution – or at least make the problem less daunting. As my first year writers prepare to write their own good faith arguments we began our work by writing about the problems we encounter in our daily…
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Looking For Problems
What issue(s) in your life are both uncertain and significant to you and others? Chances are that is an issue worth writing about. As my first year writers prepare to write their own good faith arguments we begin our work by writing about the problems we encounter in our daily lives as move about our…
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Tell It Slant
What truth does your writing reveal? What truth does your writing teach you about yourself? What truth does your writing reveal about the world? What does your writing reveal that so dazzles the eye you must consider whether or not others (or yourself) can handle the truth? I have written much in recent years about…
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Games as mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors
How do games reflect our lives, open windows into others’ realities, and offer us a way to share experiences with others? As I’ve noted before, I love teaching writing using games, specifically rhetorical analysis, because games offer us so many ways to see our lives and text (and perhaps see our lives as text) in new and…
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Gaming layers
How does exploring games help us explore our self and our identity and our history? One of the reasons I love teaching writing using games, specifically rhetorical analysis, is that games, even simple childish games such as hide and seek, offer so many dimensions and layers to explore that students quickly learn to see all texts in…
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Can a game help us know ourselves?
Even after five years of teaching writing using games, I am always surprised when seven weeks into the semester we are still able to find new ideas and stories inspired by games. Currently, my first year writing students are preparing to write rhetorical analysis essays with games as the text they will analyze. We dug…
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Something you should know
This delightful title is borrowed from an equally delightful poem by Clint Smith that I have used repeatedly in many writing contexts. I especially like to use Something You Should Know by Clint Smith to inspire reflection, but it is also useful to help my students glean the most important message from their pages of…
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Playing for life and learning
What do games, play, and creativity teach us about our life, learning, and communication? That is the question that my first year writing students are exploring as build on the writing generated by The Importance of Games and What Does Play Teach Us? This week my students began working on their This I Believe essays…
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What Does Play Teach Us?
Many people dismiss play as something that children do and the rest of us must outgrow, but this belief ignores the tremendous potential of play to make us smarter, saner, and more collaborative. There is a great deal of evidence that play may be the most important thing that we do and that play make…
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The Importance of Games
What games did you play as a child? Who played those games with you? What house rules made or broke you? What games still haunt your memories? Games are the focus and primary text of my Writing II class for first year writers at Morehead State University. On my teaching blog I have written several…
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A Winter Solstice Writing Challenge
Come write toward the light with me this Advent season. For this third year of my Advent Writing Challenge (where my friends including the JustWrite Virtual Writing Group write together for 25 days) I have decided on the theme of the winter solstice. In many ways this is an extension of last year’s challenge which focused on…
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Lessons
When did you last explore the creases in your brain? Have you ever considered the jagged edges of your life? As my students finish crafting their “What If” stories, I asked them to reflect on the lessons they had learned during their writing journeys this semester and invited the Just Write Virtual Writing Group along. We…
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