Thursday, February 24, 2022

Entry 5

Kucer and Rhodes (1986) introduce a unique writing strategy called the “Card Strategy” (p. 189), which I read about this past week and engaged in during our session 6 class. This strategy is intended to help one to “focus on chunks of meaning” (p. 189). When I started this process I had a solidified topic idea in mind, I was interested in focusing on The Guilt of Relaxing. I had a general idea of which direction to take this, but my brainstorming had primarily been mental, envisioned, not laid out. I had engaged in a few practices through our class- free writes and the brainstorming table from week 5. All of these strategies helped me generate ideas and see some direction in which this topic could go.


The most significant difference between any prior brainstorming and the card strategy is the active involvement it requires. What do I mean by this? I think about the movement of ideas, the flexibility and thinking aloud that myself and my partner Lauren demonstrated through this activity. I began with a topic idea, I then created index cards that represented all of the major ideas that are related to this topic. I had a total of 19 major ideas! I selected 11 of the 19 ideas and worked to arrange them, this represents step 5 in the process. By moving around these idea cards, I was able to manipulate and rearrange the direction this topic could go. I recognized significant subtopics, and important connections between subsets of ideas. For example, 3 of my cards were “Why do we feel guilt?”, “family”, and “society”. Lauren and I were able to independently recognize the connection between those ideas. We were able to connect the cards “stress”, “college student”, and “adulthood” as well. This active process helped illustrate connections between ideas, or “chunks of meaning” as Kucer and Rhodes (1986) state (p.189). The flexibility and variety of approaches I could take made this brainstorming session a unique way to organize my thoughts, and then reorganize. 

This approach was also different because it involved someone else's input. At this stage in the process, I had only just solidified my idea, so my writing group had yet to meet and discuss this particular topic in such an interactive manner. As Lauren moved around my cards, she was able to interact with my thoughts and organize them in a meaningful arrangement to her. 


I would use this card strategy in my classroom, and for my own writing for the Genre Pieces Project. I appreciate the interactive component, the message it sends that there are a “variety of possible idea organizations” (Kucer and Rhodes, 1986, p. 191) and that it can lead to new discoveries and meaning chunks. Engaging in this process myself was a powerful way to reinforce what I gathered from the article itself. 


Reference

Kucer, S. B. & Rhodes, L. K. (1986).  Counterpart strategies:  Fine tuning language  with language.                              The Reading Teacher, 40(2),186-193.


1 comment:

  1. Elise, this was a rich description of how the Card Strategy came to life for you. I can't help but wonder though, as you think about teaching first graders (for example), how might you engage them in this type of gathering and organizing ideas activity?

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