Thinking about the Bob Ross thing reminds me of some other useful pedagogical theft I've engaged in
.
My new favorite lesson plans I straight up stole from Every Frame a Painting. I call it: "Wreck a Passage to See How it Works."

Thread:

If you haven't seen EFAP, is some of the best pedagogy around right now. It's all about the quiet work of film editing.

In the incredible Lateral Tracking Shot video, Zhou is trying to show you the subtle emotional effect of a lateral tracking shot. https://vimeo.com/95552335 

So he shows you the opening sequence of Pixar's Up, which uses it to great effect. And then he re-edits it with a different kind of cut, and it totally destroys the emotional effect. And suddenly you *see*, so vividly, why the original shot works so well.

I'd been struggling with teaching students the importance of micro-transitions and quiet structure. And I saw this and was like, "Maybe this will work." So I tried wrecking a passage in class. And it worked beautifully - the students loved it and their writing got better

Here's how it works. We pick out a particularly lucid and clearly written passage from a paper they've read. Then I surgically destroy it in front of them.

I copy it to a word file on projector. I start taking out key bits of micro-transition, like a "However" or and "If" or a "You might think" or a "For example". And then we re-read it after some cuts, and see how much less clear it is.

Then I make more cuts, and we re-read it again, until the thing is incomprehensible. I often like to take it to a point where all the *content* is there, but the lack of subtle bits of writing transition and reader-guidance makes it totally unnavigable.

Then we compare the wrecked version to the original, re-reading both. And I think this helps them *see*, in a gut and intuitive level, how much work is being done by a lot of this micro-structure.

Before this, I'd been doing an exercise where students collaboratively write paragraphs together in small groups, we put them on the board, and then the class collaboratively improves them. That's a good one, too, but I think this "wreck it" exercise makes an excellent prelude.