(Sean Molloy and Liz Goetz September 16, 2015)

Sean: This collaborative exercise uses creative energy to develop thesis questions for writing projects.  In this version, which we did together for two of Liz’s ENGL 120 writing classes in this month, the goal was for students to collaboratively generate good questions to write about in their second drafts of essays responding to and analyzing Gloria Anzaludua’s Taming the Wild Tongue.

Liz: ……

Sean: As scaffolding, Liz had already asked her classes to write freeflowing discovery drafts, building on freewriting exercises in class.  The students workshopped these drafts in three person groups.  The  groups offered positive each other  feedback, considered how each writer used quotes in the drafts, and then compiled a list of key words that seemed important or powerfully connected to Anzaldua’s essay.

We asked the class to shout out the key words and wrote them randomly on the whiteboard.  Then we asked