Programs: Writing Workshop
Service Projects
Background
Pilots
Beginning in 1999, the Writing Workshop piloted its service-learning courses. Currently, we have three English 110.03/193 classes that tutor first-graders at Medary and Trevitt Elementary Schools and Johnson Park Middle School. But in 1999, our pilots were somewhat different.Trevitt Pilot. One version, an English 110W/193W class, was funded by an OSU President's Council on Outreach and Engagement Grant and worked with third graders after-school at Trevitt Elementary School. Victoria Dunn (who had done the groundwork for these courses in Winter 1999) designed, taught, and assessed the English 110W/193W at Trevitt ("OSU & Trevitt Elementary School Partnership for Literacy Evaluation, 1999")
Hubbard Pilot. The second version was funded by an OSU Campus Collaborative Seed Grant. It was a three-quarter series of, 109.01, 109.02, and 110C courses that worked in the classroom and after school with third, fourth, and fifth grade students at Hubbard Elementary School. Teachers for that first year were Lucinda Kirk (109.02, 110C) and Mindy Wright (109.01). As part of her English 110C grant, Lucinda Kirk and her students prepared materials from their experiences, Learning to Serve, Serving to Learn: A Resource Book (2000). This project was funded by an OSU Student Involvement Grant. Rebecca Greenberg Taylor assessed the Hubbard project ("Hubbard Elementary/ OSU Partnership for Literacy: Summary and Evaluation 1999-2000").
Course Formats
Since that first year, we've made changes. By 2005-2006, we worked toward developing methods rotating well-qualified teachers of courses on campus, helping train new teachers for on-campus teaching, and providing supervision at schools, which currently allows almost all of our teachers to teach in one or more of the service-learning courses throughout the year.Trevitt. At Trevitt, we have continued to work in an after-school format, but we've worked with a variety of age levels: fifth, kindergarten, and now first grade. Pat Kedzerski taught the service-learning section at Trevitt consistently over a two-year period, 2001-2003. During 2003-2004, Brian Granger and Martha Sims also taught that class. Beginning in 2005-2006, the following Writing Workshop teachers have taught the on-campus portion of the Trevitt class: Pat Kedzerski, Amie Wolf, and Martha Sims. Mindy Wright operates as the on-site supervisor/liaison, collaborating with the on-campus teachers and our first-grade teacher/supervisor at Trevitt, Joy Seagraves. In addition, the continuing leadership of Mr. Edwards as principal at Trevitt has allowed this program to remain a strong partnership for both OSU and Trevitt.
Medary. At Hubbard, we moved to the English 110W/193W course and focused on working alongside two third grade teachers in their classrooms, Stacie Santilli and Mary Ann Bergman. In Autumn 2002, we moved that course (now English 110.03/193.03) to Medary Elementary to work with first-graders designated by their teachers as needing additional one-on-one reading instruction during the school-day. There Writing Workshop teachers Lucinda Kirk, Sara Webb-Sunderhaus, and Mindy Wright worked with Stacey Blackstone, Cathy Mast, and principal Larry Jones. For 2004-2005, Martha Sims and Nancy Pine also taught the course. For 2005-2006, Nancy Pine acted as on-site supervisor and liaison with the following Writing Workshop teachers: Lucinda Kirk, Amie Wolf, and Ellen Seusy.
Johnson Park. 2005-2006 was the pilot year of the 109.01/.02 Johnson Park Middle School/OSU literacy partnership project. As in the past, we have tested and tried a number of ways to facilitate this partnership. OSU's P-12 Project has assigned a graduate student site liaison to help coordinate all the elements of the project. And by the end of 2005-2006, she will have findings to report on the pilot year. Part of those findings will include a set of procedures that we want to follow for 2006-2007. For this first year, JPMS students visited campus during fall quarter. Students who would be writing for the M staff (5-6 students from grades 6, 7, and 8 who are in the gifted and talented program) met with the English 109.01 class to look at examples of magazines, both online and in hard copy. Their goal was to come up with a list of characteristics that they thought would be true of a good magazine for an audience of middle school students and families. For more information on this visit, please see http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/wright7/AU05109/Schedule.html. Students were paired up at this on-campus meeting. Through these pairings, OSU and JPMS students would exchange e-mails on, with OSU students acting as online editors for the JPMS magazine writers.
