Miguel Diaz's brand of rigor: The Studio story (12)

Introduction by James Jobbins

What does 'rigour' mean, in an educational context? How do we know it? Whatever it is in practice, there are two things that I think it must mean, two things that are related to each other: high expectations of students' potential; and treating students as professionals in the subjects that they are studying. 

From the instructions below, as Mr Diaz has said many times, the A4 writing pad and the Courier font become the standard canvas for our professional writers. They are tools, set as standard to leave attention entirely on the words, sentences, paragraphs, sections. whole text structure and themes, and away from questions of physicality and visuality, which while not unrelated to writing are distinctly different pieces in the creative process. 

Rigor: high expectations and the assumption of professional standards at whatever age and stage of the learning process. That will do as a working definition while we get on with the harder - and much more interesting job - of putting the notion into practice.

Notes for Teachers of Studio Kids Canon and Studio Primary English by Miguel Diaz

Intellectual Development

One of our major goals is to help students improve their serious intellectual development. When many of our students come to Studio Education: they think that to write an essay or story means to write that which is scatological, ghoulish, hopelessly silly, farcical, and generally murderous. Please help your students move away from these and into more positive and thoughtful ways to see the world.  

Reading and Writing

1. We’ve selected books for the Primary English and Kids Canon programs to reflect various literary genres, themes and writing styles. There will be instances where students will not be crazy about certain titles. Please persuade them to see books, which they wouldn’t ordinarily read on their own, in a positive light.  
2. For the writing portion of our program, ask students to write essays that relate directly to issues in the book that they are reading at any given time. Their stories should also be similar to the books.
3. Please note that our writing program needs to remain strictly focused and disciplined on the books at hand. Teachers should not assign “free writing” activities just for the sake of free writing, and we cannot follow a holiday schedule, meaning that if Halloween falls at the time when the students are reading a science fiction book, then they should not write Halloween related essays or horror stories instead. 
4. Please do not bring Hollywood movies/films into the classroom, without exception—even when a film is based on a book. 

Formatting for Essays and Stories
Primary English (all levels)
Kids Canon Foundation and Kids Canon Intermediate

1. All drafts (usually a first and a final draft) of essays need to be handwritten and completed in class without exception. 
2. Stories can be completed at home and in class.
3. Students are required to write neatly.
4. Student names and story titles need to be written neatly and in letters that match the size of the body of the writing. Students should not be allowed to scrawl massive names and titles on any essays and stories.
5. All essays and stories should be double-spaced and written on lined A4 paper only.
6. Page numbers need to be written on the bottom of each page.
7. The page length requirements are listed in the Teachers Guide.
8. The students should not type anything. All writing should be completed by hand.
9. All stories should be single and seamless stories, and not stories that are broken into chapters; otherwise you will get fundamentally flawed stories that are broken into fundamentally flawed chapters. 

Kids Canon Advanced, Kids Canon Classics and All Teens Canon

1. All drafts (usually a first and a final draft) of essays need to be handwritten and completed in class without exception. Please do not assign these for homework. All writing, including students’ names and story titles should be writing in standard sized text and not in massive letters. 
2. All students in Grade 5 (and above) need to type and print their stories at home (KCA and KCC students in G3 and G4 may type if they volunteer to do so). 
3. The stories should be typed, double-spaced using Courier or Courier New, size 12 only, with standard margins. The stories should contain page numbers at the bottom but no headers or footers of any type. Please make sure that your students only use this font. Courier is a professional writers’ font. It is easy to correct and it keeps students focused on the content of their writing and it will prevent them from getting distracted with trying to decide which font is the cutest or most glamorous. 
4. All stories should be single and seamless stories, and not stories that are broken into chapters; otherwise you will get fundamentally flawed stories that are broken into fundamentally flawed chapters. 

Corrections (essays and stories)

• Students need to make self-corrections on their vocabulary exercises and comprehension questions. Please ask them to correct their own vocabulary exercises and comprehension questions with a red pen or a bright marker. 
• Teachers should make careful corrections on all mistakes found in all essays and stories with a red and blue/black pen. Final drafts don’t need to be corrected. 
• A red pen needs to be used to correct capitalisation, punctuation, spelling, grammar, word use, and to rewrite entire sentences when needed. A red pen should also be used to help students with the use of quotation/speech marks. For capitalisation and punctuation errors, point out each instance and make corrections. Many of our students are prone to disregard capital letters and they’re prone to write long run-on sentences. For spelling mistakes-teachers should put a line through errors and should write the correct spelling for each mistake. For grammar mistakes-teachers should change the nouns, verbs, etc. so that the sentences will conform to English conventions. For word use mistakes, teachers should write correct alternatives for the words that have been used incorrectly. For incorrect and awkward sentences, teachers should cross out the wrong sentence and write the entire sentence in each instance. You will need to do this often from Primary English Beginners, Primary English Pre-Foundation and Primary English Foundation students, but this is not limited to these levels.
• Please don’t write grammar rules for the students: simply correct their work. 
• Black/blue ink needs to be used to write formative comments on the lines and margins and not just comments such as “well done.” Black/blue ink should be used to ask students to write neatly, to ask for clarifications, to point out contradictory or illogical statements and arguments, or to comment on any other content and thematic questions. 
• Please don’t do peer editing. All corrections on essays and stories need to be made by the teachers.

Sharing

The students should be given the opportunity to share their essays and stories with the entire group upon completion of final drafts. 

—— To be continued —— 

These stories are told from Studio perspective. Every family has its own story with Studio. We’d like to hear and publish yours too. Please email  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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