Fall 2007 schedule

I’ve posted the new schedule (see the link on the right) but I will also put a link below. Note that it is very similar to the summer schedule except I have added a few opportunities to discuss and practice self-reflection. This is in response to the low scoring of self-reflective writing in our recent assessment. Secondly, note the discussion of self-reflection below and the handout from our spring forum and, of course, the handout under “Second Sequence of Assignments” on the right. Also, I’ve added another student example of self-reflective writing here (I’ve made a link below too). The student examples are NOT meant to say this is THE way to do the assignment but I believe both have effective elements of self-reflection which allign with our stated course outcomes. If you have other ideas to enhance self-reflective/ meta-cognitive work, I’d be interested. Feel free to post comments to this post and/or email me.

Fall 2007 Schedule

Student example of self-reflective writing

In helping students with their summary-strong response essays, I find that they really appreciate having very concrete criteria for how their essays will be evaluated. With that in mind, I developed an evaluation sheet which I share with them before they turn in their final drafts for grading. I have broken the parts down into points. I find students find this clearer. And they are also less likely to dispute their grades because I have broken each section down into exact elements that I am looking for. I’ve linked the document here as a Word Document. I hope this is helpful.

Lynn Kilpatrick

Grading sheet for Summary Strong Response

Here’s a checklist for the SSR developed by Sue Briggs:

 Summary Strong Response Checklist

Adjunct Forum, Spring 2007: Self-Reflective writing and Lesson Plan share

As always it was good to get together with many of you (15 or so I believe). We first discussed the Annotated Bib assignment in 2010, the complexities of the genre and the usefulness of the process which informs student research. Next, we discussed Self-Reflective writing (I’ve made a link to a brief handout). Overall, we discussed how to make SR writing more meaningful and central to the course. I suggested that SR writing allows us to teaching writing as a rhetorical activity by allowing students more control over their own writing and the rhetoric they employ. I also remember Donna offered an interesting suggestion: have students direct their self-reflective essay to the next students entering 1010. In addition we discussed how we as teachers read SR writing: some suggested they like to read it first and highlight this to students in order to help emphasize its importance; others (I think we were evenly split on this) read it last because they want to see in the SR confirms what they experienced while reading the student essay.

We also discussed several other issues in the English 1010 curriculum: peer review groups, adapting the curriculum to different classes, and something else I’m now forgetting. Anyone want to add something else here? I don’t have my notes with me.

Many ideas were offered concerning peer review groups; it seems to me one overriding theme was to change up the purpose and focus on peer review groups. For example, the purpose of “peer review” during the early stages of the curriculum is more about having students become comfortable with terminology like scene, genre, and rhetoric rather than to actually critique student writing.

We then broke up into small groups where several interesting lesson plans were shared—see the links below. Feel free to make comments to this post and/or under any of the specific assignments. In fact if you had a similar activity you could post it in a comment to this post or to one of the lesson plans. Or feel free to email additional activities and lesson plans and I will create a link to them here.

Thanks to those who were wiling to share an idea or two–it’s much appreciated.

Genre Translation by Kate Taylor

Online teaching ideas and Fallacy activity by Heather Boworth

with-and-against-grain procedure by Alaina Stone

with-and-against-grain activity by Alaina Stone

Revision tactics by Aaron Phillips

Local and Global Revision Strategies by Kate Taylor 

Transition from a personal scene to a rhetorical situation by Lisa Middendorf

Handout on self-reflective writing (adjunct forum)

TEXTUAL OWNERSHIP

I thought we had a good discussion about how issues of textual ownership impact how we think about peer review and plagiarism. The most memorable event for me was watching Lisa move her hands back and forth while saying, “We need to teach students to police the borders” (i.e. that is the borders between what a student is saying and what an outside source is saying). It’s a great metaphor I think, one I actually used today in a small group peer review session.

 So, what stuck out to you from the forum? What’s worth remembering? If you were not there, what do you find noteworthy from the artilce and/or the links??

A New Blog for English 1010 at SLCC

Welcome to the English 1010 web log!

Under the heading Pages, instructors can find all the relevant course materials, including the syllabus, weekly schedule, and assignment handouts. All of these materials are available in easy-to-access Word documents.

Under the heading Blogroll, instructors can access engaging individual and collective blogs by other community college teachers and administrators.

Under the Textbooks heading, instructors will find links to the textbook websites.

Under the heading Theory and Practice, instructors can find a series of links to articles and websites that address the theory and practice of teaching writing.

Finally, instructors will be invited to be blog particpants.  As participants on this web site, instructors can provide feedback to the course coordinator and help each other with advice on how to teach certain assignments or how to best use the textbook. Instructors may also address larger issues in the theory and practice of teaching writing in their blog posts.