Ono. Quizzes
I gave you all these quizzes (that aren’t quizzes) recently:
- Lo-Fi [Onomatopoeia] Quiz — Paul Graham’s “The Age of the Essay”
- Lo-Fi [Onomatopoeia] Quiz — Instructional Post: “Splitting the Atom”
Two interesting things happened as a result of this. First, you all were eerily focused for a few days on just filling in those boxes. The second, unrelated thing is that I realized these quizzes were a bad idea.
My original intention was to provide traditional feedback to some of you in the form of handwritten commentary and scores out of 100 points, thereby empowering you to teach others about the content of the quiz. The scores wouldn’t count, of course, but I thought they might let us weaponize that lizard part of your brain again. Hence this:
Except, well… that last hyperlink (“that lizard part of your brain“) is to a post called “How Feedback Should Work,” and everything we’ve done since then is expressly about pushing the boulder away from the Pavlovian, Skinner-boxed logic of the system. Attaching a point value to your work is toxic, even as a symbolic exercise. You don’t need unilateral commentary to teach each other, either. Feedback can’t be forced; that defeats (or at least undercuts) the purpose, which is to give you a universal language for learning and writing while encouraging you to experiment and grow as students.
Instead of focusing on these quizzes (again, not quizzes), I want you to focus on the links in this post, if you need to look at them again, the full scope of the instructional post given before reading Graham, and the Q&A that will be posted later tonight.
Walking Deadlines
Except for the assignment due on November 6 — the one that asked you to respond to The Aft Agley Gang and The Ironic Use of TL;DR — you won’t have any formal deadlines in Google Classroom for the rest of the month. Instead, you must use the space and each other to organize your work, keep goals in front of you, and track your learning.
This is an extension of our look at self-control. If you want to see why that is, read the sixth section of this essay:
That conversation between Malcolm Gladwell and Bill Simmons touches on the psychological danger of preparing, since it makes your performance entirely about your ability, not some outside factor. For a while, at least, you won’t be able to self-medicate through deadlines in here, so let’s see what we can do to avoid other forms of self-handicapping. (The opening of that essay also shows you what kind of abomination my traditional gradebooks were, along with other interesting perspectives on the course.)
Remember, too, that there is a date on which we pause to determine a GAP score. This time, it’s December 1. See the calendar again for more information:
Ask questions about these updates below.
In my opinion, this onomatopoeia quiz was helpful in terms of consolidating my ideas but not necessarily in terms of self-reflection. When I do any of these quizzes, I have a tendency to internalize better because every time I recall a specific piece of information, I can recall it faster the next time. So the quizzes certainly help me in that respect. But I feel that I spend most of my energy filling in the boxes and less energy analyzing what I wrote there and if it is truly representative of what the passage tried to convey (maybe this is my fault- like in a “you get out what you put in” sort of way but I think it’s that I’m not conditioned to process my own work: I’m conditioned to hand it in and wait for the teacher to tell me how successful I was).
Also, when I read the sixth segment of Occam’s Razor Wire, I noticed a connection with Splitting the Atom. Malcolm makes the case (in that segment just like he does in Outliers) that it can be hard to tell where the skills of the individual end and the positive effects of their environment begin. Ken Robinson and Splitting the Atom seem to argue that it is pointless to atomize/separate students when grading them, which seems especially pertinent to our work here because we do most of the work together. I guess we could sum it up by saying that when the learning environment is entirely collaborative, ranking students individually loses meaning.
These comments are part of the learning environment, and that environment is as collaborative as you’ve said. Which means I can address everyone else, as if we were sharing exemplary work during our 42 minutes of class:
Jane is exactly correct, and she’s articulated her points exceptionally well. That is the result of doing the reading, writing, and thinking as demanded by this course. It is not some ineffable talent that you could not hope to have. It is the product of, as she says, “get[ting] out what you put in.”
This system works for you when you take the time to understand it. It works against you when you don’t. The payoff is the exponential growth of the skills you actually need, not just the ones you need academically.
I liked these quizzes actually. They helped me focus on the main ideas of the “Age of Essay” and allowed me to really comprehend them through expressing my ideas and “answers” to the questions. The questions were a good guideline to follow along in the writing. However, yes I did spend the last two classes filling in these boxes but I think that it was an effective use of my time to help grasp the concept.
I’d like us to develop a way for you to generate your own boxes, so to speak. You are receiving, in AP, a set of ETA questions that will show you the depth possible in analyzing a piece, however recent and on whatever subject. These boxes are another, simpler example of analyzing a text in a way that helps you understand and emulate it.
I agree with Haile. These quizzes helped me to focus on some things that were mentioned in the “Age of the Essay,” that I may not have seen as important before. It also made me dig deeper into the piece. Also, like Haile mentioned, filling in these boxes are exactly what helped me to understand the point the author was trying to get across and understand certain things I otherwise wouldn’t have. It may have looked like we were all just filling in boxes without thinking or caring, but I know that for me at least those questions helped and filling in those boxes was very useful.
I agree with Haile. Personally for me, when I’m given a lengthy piece of text to read, whether it be an article or an essay, I can very easily lose focus and therefore miss the overall point of the piece. That being said, the onomatopoeia quiz was extremely helpful in forcing me to maintain focus while I read, “The Age of the Essay.” Although it would be a lot to have to an onomatopoeia quiz for every piece of text we’re given to read, it definitely would help me while I’m reading longer texts. In addition to helping me remain focused, the quiz also helped me obtain a better understanding of the piece as a whole, as the questions on the quiz forced me to think about what I’m reading and really digest it, rather than just read it to read it.
Just adding on to what everyone said… while taking the quiz I realized something about how I read. I was fairly confident that I understood Age of the Essay after reading it he first time, however, the quiz showed me that I still needed to dig a little deeper. I had to read it another time to be able to complete the quiz to the best of my ability, which taught me something about myself. It taught me that rereading is something that I should be doing to help internalize texts. No matter how focused I am while reading something once, I won’t be able to reach a deeper point of understanding unless I reread it. I won’t be doing this for every single text/book I read because that would just be a waste of time, however, if I am taking a test or I know what I am reading is especially important, I will make sure to reread from now on. So, this onomatopoeia quiz not only helped me understand the important concepts of Age of the Essay, but it also was able to teach me something about my reading which will eventually make me a stronger English student. This shows just how important it is to have these quizzes once in awhile.
I agree with you there. I find that rereading is infinitely useful with regard to internalization. I’ve come to the conclusion that this is related to Graham’s ideas of forming hooks when we learn things. I think reading a text the first time gives you the full context and any underlying ideas you need, but that you need to reread in order to fit the smaller and more subtle details into place to really round out your understanding.
I agree with this, these quizzes made me understand the essay more than just reading and annotating it. Although at first filling in all the boxes seemed time consuming, it ended up being very beneficial to me. Also as Meagan says, a onomatopoeia quiz for every text would be helpful, I just don’t think it’s necessary. By all means, if it works for you and you need to do one of these quizzes for each piece, go ahead. However I think it could be very helpful to do thee quizzes on a piece you maybe read and didn’t fully understand, or feel you are missing the meaning. If these quizzes were available for each piece, or if we were able to create our own I think that would be very effective. We can each do the ones we feel we need, and we can individually decide. That way not all are required, only the ones we feel would be beneficial to us.
I liked the quizzes also, they really helped me pull apart the “Age of the Essay” and helped me understand it that much better. I think self evaluation things like these are very important. It helped me understand Paul Graham’s purpose in writing this piece and how it could help me. These quizzes don’t only help you figure out what you know and don’t know, but also it is going to help you when you are drafting your essay. When you have a strong understanding of this piece on a deeper level, you will know what to do when you begin writing.
I agree with this. While I didn’t have too much trouble understanding the essay as I read it, the quizzes gave me a chance to sort of elaborate on what I read, which helped me understand even more.
I also agree with Haile and feel that these quizzes game me a sense of how much I remebered from the essay and it highlighted the key ideas from it. I did spend the last few class periods answering the questions but I feel it helped me. I feel it depends on the essay whether or not this quiz would help.
I agree with most of the people who wrote in the comments. The quizzes gave us a glimpse back into a traditional style english class, where we would read a passage and then have a worksheet on it, answering questions about the literature of the piece. It bettered my understanding of the essay as I needed to search back into the passages to find the correct answers. I feel as if these worksheets can help my peers and I in the future become more engaged in our reading.
when the quizzes were given to me it made me understand the age of the essay reading a lot more becuase it made me think about the reading and more about the topics. after doing the quizzes i feal like i under stand it a lot more than i did before the quizzes.
I noticed the same thing! While we are accountable for assessing our own understanding of texts through self-awareness, it certainly helps to have guidelines for what we should be extracting from the text so that we can take responsibility for internalizing what will be relevant in the future.
I was reading the 6th section of Occam’s Razor Wire and one thing that Gladwell said was really relatable, and I had actually written something really similar. He talks about how devastating it is to work as hard as you possibly can and still fail. I wrote, “the only regrets you would and should have is if you were wasting your time putting so much effort into something that yielded nothing.”
I think that not giving us deadlines for anything recently is a good wakeup call. It is a reminder of the amount of self-control that is required in this course. I like that I get to work at my own pace and be in charge of my own success. I take it upon myself to get work done well as opposed to trying to meet deadlines and maybe not doing my best job. I think the quality of work is more important than getting it done to meet a certain due date. Although I still do get my work done in a timely manner.
I agree with everyone in the comments saying that the “quiz” was a good way to see how much information we were absorbing while reading. However, I found that the quizzes were slightly frustrating because I found myself wondering if I was writing the correct answer. I know that these quizzes don’t have a “right” answer so I guess it was my own fault for getting caught up in that but nethertheless, it still bothered me. Anyone agree?
On another note, I miss having deadlines because I like to get assignments out of the way as soon as possible and deadlines encourage me to do that. I guess this tells me I need to work on my assiduousness more than I thought.
I see what you’re saying about wanting to verify that you are getting the most that you can out of a text. I agree that it’s a hard shift, but it’s doable when we gradually improve our internalization and self-awareness and feedback loops over time. For me, I tend to judge that I have done a sufficient job of internalization when I see the connections of the details I have put forth match the underlying ideas of the text. This shows that I have latched onto the relevant details that the author expresses and that I have been able to tie them together without jumping to any unrealistic conclusions. In simpler terms, I find that when my thoughts all connect and I can explain how the main conclusions of the text are reached, I have understood the text, whereas I can tell that proper internalization is lacking when I am fumbling around for details to substantiate my conclusions.
I agree. Although it is nice to not have the thought of dates and deadlines lingering over you everyday, in a way I kind of appreciated them. Perhaps it is my fault that I have not been conversing with my classmates very much, but I am pretty unaware right now as to how much work everyone is doing. I am not sure if I am behind, or if the amount of work I’m doing is appropriate in order to get the grade I am aiming for. Simply put, I guess I sort of liked the deadlines in terms of making sure my work was getting done in a timely fashion.