My I-search topic was YA literature and relevence in the classrom. I started researching the topic after my first day of field experience because the students told me they hated the books the had to read for class. It's really amazing how many good books are available to be used for curriculum in English classrooms, but are passed over for the "easier to teach" books that everyone falls back on. Some of my favorite books that are on the lists I had never heard of before I started school at MSU.
I'm developing a lesson plan for my field experience on writing a short mystery story for a creative writing class and we read the story "Sorry, Wrong Number" today in class to prepare for it. It was amazing how excited the kids got while reading it because they were ENTERTAINED! My I-search revolved around the idea of keeping books interesting for the student by relating them to their lives.
I found some really good articles on NCTE's website and encourage anyone thats intereste to go there, it's so simple, just search "Young Adult Literature" and a whole bunch of lesson ideas and articles pop up that really helped me!
As for the reading, chaapter seven is good. It's true that in most high school writing classes there is very litle collaboration, with either the teacher or fellow students. I remember writing papers with nothing to go on for the first draft, getting back the draft with a few marks on it and never changing a thing, just to see if the teacher noticed...they never did. I really like the suggestions of the new model, it's what we follow now and I am amazed at how much my writing has improved, just from taking EGN 520 last semester in which we really focused on the new model.