Suggested Interactions I have found are helpful to writers in a sentence workshop Questions about Choices Made: Why did you choose [certain word or phrase that interests you]? This word makes me think about… Why this order for your sentence? …
Tag Archives: Clarity
Lesson: The Peer Review of Elimination
Contributed by Natalie Taylor, 2015 Summary: Students pair up and take the pen to unnecessary sentences, phrases, and words in order to trim their paper down. This peer review session focuses on the practice of revision. Description: On peer review day, students came with 1 copy of their first draft of a paper. They …
Lesson: Quittin’ Time
Contributed by August Johnson, 2015 Summary: In this lesson we use a resignation letter to discuss the rhetorical situation. Description: This lesson requires at least two days, as there is a homework reading assignment involved. We will read Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Serving in Florida” from 50 Essays. This essay contains a grim depiction of a restaurant …
Lesson: Students Present the Syllabus
Contributed by Jaclyn Bergamino, 2015 I do this activity on the second day of class, as a more interactive way to go over the syllabus. I cut the syllabus into parts half as big as the class, so for example, if I have twenty students, I cut the syllabus into ten pieces. In pairs, students …
Prompt: Defining Utopias, Dystopias, Heterotopias
Contributed by Jen Schell Although it is short, Michel Foucault’s essay “Of Other Spaces’ is the most difficult reading we will complete this semester. This piece uses many, many challenging and confusing words, and it deals with abstract and theoretical ideas. So how do we cope with this piece? One way of dealing with a …
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Lesson: Letter to the Editor
Contributed by Whittier Strong, 2015 Summary: Connect the classroom to the larger world by having students write a letter to the editor regarding a class subject. The letter challenges students to consider tone, brevity, audience, and authorial intent. It also encourages students to consider how their writing can change the world around them. Detailed …
Lesson: Thesis Statement Translation Workshop
Contributed by Natalie Taylor, Fall 2013 Context: In the analysis unit, we were using Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue’ and Richard Rodriguez’s “Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood’ to think about language, identity, and contexts. We had also watched John McWhorter’s TED talk “Txting is killing language. JK!!!’ They were working on argumentative papers using a …
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Reflection Unit Plan: Into the Wild Movie Reflection
For our final, “Reflection” unit, I decided to pair watching a movie with a low-key writing assignment in my class. I chose Into the Wild because 1) I think it is great 2) Alaskan students generally have a lot to say about it 3) students can relate to the main character, which makes for good …
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Handout: How to Write an Abstract
This handout is attributed to Philip Koopman, of Carnegie Mellon University. A link to his text can be found here: https://www.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/essays/abstract.html. It is also copied below: Because on-line search databases typically contain only abstracts, it is vital to write a complete but concise description of your work to entice potential readers into …
Lesson: Finding Sources at the Library
For this library visit we will be scouring the library for sources that you can use in your essay. For this assignment you need to provide (at least) 1 source from each category: Book, Scholarly Journal, Popular Journal, & Website. Once you find the source, either print it out (scholarly journal) or bring the physical …
Lesson: Sentence and Context
This activity asks students to look closely at sentences and challenges them to create and change meaning through a variety of techniques. The goal is to get students thinking carefully about how they construct meaning, at a sentence level. It’s also FUN – there’s lots of room here to play around. I’ve never gotten through …
Lesson: Battle of the Sentences
Bringing the Sentence Workshop (Macro in the Micro) To a New Extreme I used this for my unit on Analysis. It took about 15 minutes. This can be done with student produced sentences, or sentences between texts you wish to compare. For my exercise, I chose Deborah Tannen’s “There is No Unmarked Woman” and Lennard …
Lesson: Creating Thesis Statements
A topic sentence is the sentence that conveys a central position of a paragraph. Like a topic sentence, a thesis statement is a sentence that conveys your central position for a multi-paragraph essay. Argumentative/Persuasive thesis statements must contain an arguable claim. Statements of fact are not argumentative thesis statements. An argumentative/persuasive thesis statement must be …
Lesson: Use Your Senses, An Introduction to Observation
Introduction to Observation activity: Use your senses! 1. (10-15 minutes) Choose a short piece of writing that features sensory details. I chose the first chapter of “We the Animals’ by Justin Torres (it’s one of my favorite books!) Read the piece aloud in class. I read the piece to my students so that they could …
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