Share, Collaborate, Engage
Contributed by Jaclyn Bergamino, 2015 On the first day of class, I wanted to start getting the students talking about the ideas. I divided the class into two groups. I was teaching on the theme of love, sex, and marriage so I brought quotes about writing and quotes about love all different, the same number …
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Contributed by Jaclyn Bergamino, 2015 To get students thinking about research topics, I often use the Research Paper Topic Generator Game and then take it a little further. Once students have their lists of things that evoke them, I have them choose three and write them on spread out on a piece of paper. They …
Contributed by Kerstin Aloia I used this as a context lesson plan. Students will learn that writing and speech is placed in a context of time, place, social sphere etc. Knowing a lot about these contexts will make us as readers see a message in a text that might be different if we don’t …
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 …
Contributed by Natalie Taylor, 2015 Cut-it-Up Peer Review Summary: Students take the scissors to their partner’s draft and help them rearrange it. This peer review session focuses on organization and transitions. Description: At the beginning of class (or in the previous class) we talk about different organization methods for the type of …
Contributed by Whittier Strong Summary: Have students learn by teaching! The class forms small groups based on what they struggle most with writing. Then each group creates and presents a lesson to the entire class on what they’ve studied about their particular challenge. Detailed Description: This is a good activity to present about …
Contributed by Whittier Strong Summary: Send your class on a rhetorical scavenger hunt in the library! Students research a text by splitting into teams, each assigned a component of the text’s rhetorical situation to investigate. Later, they report their findings to the rest of the class. Detailed Description: How I did it: A week …
Contributed by Natalie Taylor, 2015 Sentence Competition Summary: The class is split into two teams for a semester-long competition to create stronger, more argumentative sentences. Description: Throughout the semester, I collect a number of sentence-level issues that students are having. These issues range from grammatical problems, such as comma splices and subject-verb …
Contributed by Whittier Strong Summary: We talk a lot about the introvert/extrovert divide, but how does it play out in the classroom, say, when the instructor thrives on discussion but the students are naturally quiet? Here are some tips for how to make the classroom more comfortable for all involved. Detailed Description: Every …
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Here are several peer review activies from Patty Cady, Washington State University:
Contributed by Kori Hensell Students will learn how social experience and perspective makes an individual person a key piece in the exchange of ideas. By interacting with each other and with a variety of test subjects (all of whom are experts in at least one thing), students are both exposed to authority and involved in …
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 …
Evaluating Credibility 1. As a group, we consider things which make an author an authority in their particular field and the context of their subject, publications, research, employment, etc. We choose an author from readings done in the first unit for simplicity. 2. Has the author’s work been peer reviewed? If so, and it’s an …
Entering the Conversation Activity I. In class discussion, we choose a sample “hot’ controversial research topic, such as abortion (easy to demonstrate), and then brainstorm terms to use for searching for sources. Then, we look at common terms that come up during a simple Google search of “abortion.’ Motherhood, person, moral, freedom, murder, etc. …
This is an exercise that I did with my class to talk about style and learn more about writing effective descriptions. First, I split the class up into groups and gave each group a paragraph to work with from one of the essays we had recently read and discussed. They had to look …
Research Wikis (300 Points) Research plan post (10 points) due: Thursday 3/31/11 on blog Research paper prospectus (40 points) due: 4/5/11 and 4/7/11 in conferences Rough draft (50 points) due: Thursday, 4/14/11, in class for peer review session Final draft (200 points) due: Tuesday, 4/26/11 in class (turn in all drafts, research plan, …
Group 1: Discuss the author’s attitude toward the subject or theme. Explain what type of essay it is – argumentative, persuasive, exploratory, narrative, or otherwise. Define what the subject or theme of the essay is. * Try to sum up the subject/theme in one word or one sentence. Cite specific sentences or paragraphs where …
What I’d like to offer here is an example of how you can take a similar concept–a seemingly silly non-academic topic–and use it in a classroom on a smaller scale. In my class, before launching the zombie project, we spent several class periods working with garden gnome liberation, and my students had the option …
(this is designed for two class periods) Research interviews! I required my students to interview “an expert’ for their synthesis/research projects. In addition to actually doing the interview, this required them to identify what sort of expertise was needed for their projects, reach out to the interviewee, and create appropriate interview questions — all important …
I used this activity as an ice breaker, entry into a discussion of texts, as well as an introduction to the observation unit. This activity also presented an opportunity to engage the students’ lives with what they brought into the classroom. I didn’t add anything to the contents of my pockets before the class, …
Print Ad Analysis For this exercise, I like to bring in some goofy or bizarre advertisement or PSA For the last few semesters, I have used a PSA from PETA that I found at this URL: https://www.mediapeta.com/peta/Images/Main/Sections/MediaCenter/PrintAds/DiegoLunaHR.pdf Here is a citation: “Diego Luna: Safe Sex.” PETA.org. PETA. n.d. Web. 20 Jun. 2011. I like using …
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 …
(Like Reindeer Games, But Bloodier and Less Festive) A serum has been invented which has the power to turn everyone on the earth into a vampire. All of earth’s inhabitants have elected to take the serum, thereby effectively changing 100% of the human race into vampire-kind. The Pope, your grandparents, your former swim coach. Synthetic …
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 …
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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Each group gets a thesis statement and topic sentences provided. The thesis statements will all be on the same topic, but differing in their position. Each group will be given the same topic sentences. Groups will be asked to choose topic sentences that they think support their thesis statement, and put them in an order …
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