Haikus for learning
Dr Jessica Clare Hancock
What is the idea?
Students are asked to do different kinds of writing at university, often with the assumption that they know how to write, for example, an essay or report, even though these kinds of writing vary greatly between disciplines and institutions. This activity asks students to produce haikus as a way into a discussion about producing different types of writing, including working to a word limit, and the elements that may help them develop literacies in different types of writing, such as scaffolding and examples. An extended version of this activity also involves students producing sonnets as an alternative to haiku.
Why this idea?
Many students find writing for university assessments difficult for a myriad of reasons, not least because the purposes or kinds of writing expected are not explicitly analysed, but also because many assessment instructions and criteria remain unclear (Hancock, 2019). Despite great strides being made in an academic literacies approach (Lea & Street, 1998; Wingate, 2006), particularly in the gradual professionalisation of learning development (ALDinHE: https://aldinhe.ac.uk/), too often writing itself, as opposed to the content, is not addressed during teaching sessions which leaves students confused and frustrated.
This activity uses poetry. This is a form of writing not regularly used by most students, but one which is relatively easy to get to grips with in terms of the rules and expectations for particular poetic forms, such as haiku and sonnets. These kinds of poems also have the benefit of being fairly short so are something that can be composed during the course of a teaching session. Alternatively, this activity can be undertaken as a group task to be done between sessions, bringing the results to share and discuss with the whole class.
If used with teaching staff who are involved with assessing students, this activity is an effective way of enabling them to see writing from a student’s perspective (for the lecturer or tutor, it often feels ‘obvious’ to them what might be required if they set their students a particular type of written task). If used with students, it can be a way into reflecting on the emotions and practicalities involved in tackling academic writing – but using a low stakes task that is not as difficult to discuss as a real example of a written assessment that they might have struggled with.
How could others implement this idea?
I have used this for students on an MA course about learning and teaching in HE, as a starting point for reflection on their own support for the writing of their students. Participants work in groups to compose a haiku about a particular topic – such as ‘the university experience’. The haiku is intended to be a new kind of writing for them. At first this is the only instruction – after five minutes I provide some more information about haiku, and after another five I provide them with some examples. This enables