All Daily Assignments

*These items will populate daily throughout the Seminar.


BEFORE ARRIVING AT THE SEMINAR ON Monday, PLEASE:

  1. Complete this incoming Qualtrics survey.

  2. Secure your copy of John Bean’s Engaging Ideas, 2nd. ed. (E-copies available from the UVA bookstore, instructions below; hard copies from Amazon and other vendors)

  3. Read through Engaging Ideas, Chapter 1

  4. Post a response to Chapter 1 on our Collab Forum.

  5. Post a response to the Initial Thought Exercise, also on our Collab Forum.


    *To order an E-copy through the UVA Bookstore:

    -https://uvabookstores.com/

    -Click Menu.

    -Click textbooks, a menu will drop down for online ordering.

    -Scroll down and select University of Virginia Fall 2021

    -Select Special – Special Text Orders

    -Course – Special

    -Select a Section – Ebook


MOnday DELIVERABLE (due before midnight on monday)

Post your course schedule in the appropriate Collab Forum, along with any notes this exercise raised for you.

Steps:

1. Select a course that you have taught, will teach, or imagine teaching someday.

2. Draft a rough working schedule for a 15-week format, labeling at least:

• the names or themes of your major units

• the major assignments you’d plan for (exams, essays, etc.) and target due dates

• where you would place the following writing instruction:

a) giving a broad overview your course’s major writing assignments and associated grading rubrics

b) introducing any style guide or similar formatting requirements

c) introducing each individual major writing assignments/grading rubric

d) reinforcing style guide/similar formatting requirements

e) smaller, low-stakes, write-to-learn (W2L) writing assignments

f) peer review

g) covering mechanical issues, including grammar, using and citing sources, etc.

h) revision opportunities

3. Note any questions this exercise raises for you.

*For example, you might wonder how to achieve more effective peer review, or how you’re supposed to allow for revision grading and still get any sleep, or what kinds of W2L assignments would be best for your course, etc.

Resources:

BEFORE ARRIVING AT THE SEMINAR ON Tuesday, PLEASE:

Please read chapter 2 (“Designing Writing Assignments and Assignment Sequences”) of Gottschalk and Hjortshoj, The Elements of Teaching Writing.


Tuesday DELIVERABLE (due before midnight on tuesday)

Please post a prompt for one of your major assignments for the course you mapped out on Monday, as well as 2 activities, lesson plans, or W2L prompts that would scaffold towards that larger project.

1) An assignment prompt for a W2C project, along with

2) 2 activities/lesson plans/W2L activities that would scaffold towards that longer project.

Note down any questions or concerns that came up for you while you developed these prompts.

N.B. If you are TAing and don’t have control over your assignments, you can EITHER make up your own W2C project for some imagined future course OR you can offer a “translation” of the prompt you’re stuck with. (So, in about 300 words: how would you describe this project to your students? How would you break it down for them? What vocabulary do they need? How will they be evaluated? etc. These 300 words can be in bullet points rather than a paragraph.

Resources:

BEFORE ARRIVING AT THE SEMINAR ON Wednesday, PLEASE: 

  1. Post materials to Collab:

Please post to Collab discussion forum before 9 am Wednesday. Please "start a new conversation" for your post and attach an example of student writing or your writing (see below for instructions).

•    If you have taught writing before in any of your courses, please post an example of student writing (an essay of about 3-6 pages or a reasonable excerpt of the same size from a longer work that makes sense) from your course. Please remove or cover over the student’s name and any identifying information. Include the assignment if you have it and the name of the course and any other context you think would be helpful. Do not include the grade. Please do not choose the worst or best piece of writing; if possible choose an example somewhere in the middle. Ideally the writing should be a MS word document or pdf file. 

OR

•    If you haven’t taught writing before in any of your courses, you can post a sample of your own writing, with or without a professor’s/reader’s comments. Again, not the best or worst draft, but a draft at the stage you sought feedback or received feedback or would like feedback now. (So, please don’t post your already published article or finished dissertation chapter.) Here too, keep it short (an essay of about 3-6 pages or a reasonable excerpt of the same size from a longer work that makes sense). Ideally the writing sample should be a MS word document or pdf file.

 

2. Required reading/skimming: 

Skim and read Bean, Part Four: Reading, Commenting On, and Grading Student Writing

Bean’s writing is very skimmable. You really don’t need to read everything closely, but getting a sense of the bigger picture in these three chapters will be very helpful for our work on Wednesday.

Below I have asked you to pay particular attention to specific sections that I will discuss tomorrow morning, but you should feel free to read other sections as your time and interest allow.

  • Ch. 14 “Using Rubrics to Develop and Apply Grading Criteria”

    • Pay particular attention to the opening of Chapter 14 and “Controversies About Evaluation Criteria” (pages 267-269)

    • Skim the examples of rubrics (pages 269-276 and 279-286). Which rubrics, if any, do you find familiar? Which ones are you more or less drawn to?

    • Pay attention to the “Controversies about Rubrics” (pages 276-279).

  • Ch. 15 “Coaching the Writing Process and Handling the Paper Load.”

    • Pay closer attention to “Use Efficient Methods for Giving Written Feedback” (pages 312-316)

    • Skim “Writing Comments on Students’ Papers” pages 317-321

    • Pay closer attention to pages “The Purpose of Commenting: To Coach Revision” and “General Strategy for Commenting on Drafts: A Hierarchy of Questions (pages 321-326)

    • Skim 326-333

    • Pay closer attention to “Suggestions for Writing End Comments That Encourage Revision” pages 333-336.

Resource: Across the Drafts, optional video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sbZnoFAZ9o

WEDNESDAY DELIVERABLE (due before midnight on Wednesday)

1. A rubric/evaluative criteria for a specific and significant W2C assignment from your Tuesday deliverable. 

Using Bean to consider options for designing rubrics, including those that are not grids, pick an option that appeals to you and design a detailed rubric for the assignment you worked on for your Tuesday deliverable. Make sure the rubric is specific to the assignment.

2a. Create a reflective, annotated list of your commenting practices. See Bean, pages 335-336 for list of commenting procedures, practices, and principles. Which do you feel like you already do pretty well? Which do you want to work on in the future and why? Which ones do you value the most? Which procedures, practices, and principles would you like to add to Bean’s list? How else might you personalize this list of suggestions in such a way that you might print it out and keep it nearby when you sit down to actually comment on your next group of student writings?  To make your annotated version of these practices easier, I copied and pasted them into a word document (attached below), so you could edit, highlight, annotate, comment at will.

OR

2b. Design a brief rubric/criteria for a short W2L assignment with notes about what kinds of comments you might give individual students or a statement of how else you might get some feedback to the whole class (rather than commenting on all submissions individually).


BEFORE ARRIVING AT THE SEMINAR ON Thursday, PLEASE: 

  1. Submit your portfolio to the appropriate Collab Forum.

  2. Be prepared to give your presentation and facilitate a follow-up discussion.

  3. Be prepared to listen attentively and participate in discussions of your peers’ presentations.

    *Scroll down for Portfolio and Presentation instructions.




Portfolio+Presentation Instructions

Each of the 3 daily deliverables M-W (each due before midnight on the day it’s assigned) are designed to help you build a small portfolio, which you’ll refine and submit by Thursday morning.

During our meeting times on Thursday, you’ll each have 10 minutes to present *part* of your portfolio.

YOUR PORTFOLIO SHOULD INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING:

1. A schedule of writing assignments for your unit or course, with a paragraph in which you explain why you put writing assignments where and how writing will figure into your course.

2. An assignment prompt for a W2C project, along with 2 activities/lesson plans/W2L activities that would scaffold towards that longer project.

3. Grading rubric/s or evaluative criteria for that longer assignment, with EITHER notes on your commenting practices OR a WRL rubric.

Please post your primary materials BEFORE 10 am on Thursday to the designated Collab discussion forum so your colleagues can give you verbal or written feedback.


 FOR YOUR PRESENTATION AND THE FOLLOWING DISCUSSION:

For your presentation, you will have ten minutes to present and then your colleagues will have ten minutes to respond to your presentation. We will ask you to do the following:

  1. Share your screen so that your audience can see whatever materials you are talking about.  

  2. Provide us with some brief background information about the course or your experience teaching writing.

  3. Show us in more detail ONE part of your portfolio, and present or elaborate on your rationale or thinking in relation to this part.

  4. Please rehearse and time yourself and make sure that what you have planned stays within the ten-minute time limit, so that your colleagues have a chance to respond to your ideas. 

  5. You’re in charge of running the discussion that follows your presentation, so you’ll want to have some questions ready to ask your colleagues. This is a chance to explore your doubts and reservations and to elicit response that may help you improve your new materials, as well as stimulate further reflection on your writing pedagogy.

 

ADDITIONAL GUIDANCE

  • Watch out for overload. The most common mistake we’ve seen in these presentations occurs when the presenter displays multiple pages of materials and races through them (or doesn’t take the time to read key parts of them aloud), while the audience finds itself unable to keep up. The best presentations are those that slow down and focus on a single part or a single page, which allows both the presenter and the audience to think carefully about the wording of the new material and offer thoughtful responses.

  • Note for audience: your attention and participation is crucial. We hope these presentations will be helpful to the presenters who get feedback, but also to the audience members who will encounter a wide range of thoughtful teaching materials.