All Daily Assignments
*These items will populate daily throughout the Seminar.
BEFORE ARRIVING AT THE SEMINAR ON Monday, PLEASE:
Complete this incoming Qualtrics survey.
Secure your copy of John Bean’s Engaging Ideas, 3rd ed. (E-copies will be available shortly from the UVA bookstore, instructions below; hard copies from Amazon and other vendors)
Read through Engaging Ideas, Chapter 1
Post a response to Chapter 1 on our Collab Forum.
Post a response to the Initial Thought Exercise, also on our Collab Forum.
*To order an E-copy through the UVA Bookstore, once they’re available:-Click Menu.
-Click textbooks, a menu will drop down for online ordering.
-Scroll down and select University of Virginia - J-term 2022
-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:
Read Bean pgs. 59-72 (the first part of ch. 4, up to “A Common Problem”) and look at the table on p.193 of Bean (“Metadisciplines, Metagenres, and Examples).
Tuesday DELIVERABLE (due before midnight on Tuesday)
Please create and post (to the appropriate Collab forum) a prompt for one of the major assignments (i.e. a paper or some other writing project) 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.
Steps:
1) Using the concepts of backwards course design and considering the learning goals you brainstormed this morning, draft a major W2C assignment. (By “major” I mean something like a paper, an exam, or another writing project that you’d expect students to do substantial work on.)
2) When you have the assignment, consider the things students will have to learn to do in order to complete it successfully. Try to break it down into smaller pieces for yourself.
(For instance, if you ask students to write an essay that makes a claim about a painting, they’ll have to understand how to do visual analysis, what counts as an interpretation in the context of Art History, what a well-structured argument looks like, what forms of citation are appropriate, etc.—they might also need to know how to figure out historical or cultural context, how to use or not use a painter’s biography… in other words, really think about all the things that at this point come naturally to you as a scholar and that you expect students to understand how to do.)
3) Draft at least 2 activities/lesson plans/W2L activities that will help students develop and practice the skills they need to do the larger assignment.
4) Post your assignment and your 2 activities/lesson plans/W2L activities to Collab.
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:
more on backward course design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cveylXCpUmw
BEFORE ARRIVING AT THE INSTITUTE ON Wednesday, PLEASE:
Watch Part I (1-18:40) of “Across The Drafts: Students and Teachers Talk about Feedback” (from Harvard’s Expository Writing Program).
The total video is 33:34 minutes long but is broken up into two parts. The first part, "Across the Drafts," runs from 1:00-18:40 minutes and is about getting and giving feedback. This is the part you should watch.
Note: The next part of the video, “Shaped by Writing: The Undergraduate Experience,” is optional but might be fun for many of you.
Read through Bean Ch. 14
Note: By “read through,” I mean, read lightly—no need to memorize this, but the ideas can help you think through some of the questions and challenges involved in developing your own practices for responding to student writers (through comments, assessment, etc.).
Some of you might also like checking out Ch. 12 on rubrics; some of you might find it overwhelming. Only visit that one if you want to.
Post to the appropriate Collab Forum:
an example of anonymized student writing, about 3-6 pages, in Word, Google docs, or PDF format.
Be sure to remove any names or anything that would identify the student author.
Include the assignment prompt if you have it; the name of the course; and any other context you think would be helpful.
Do NOT include the grade or teacher comments.
Please do not choose especially “good” or “bad” pieces of writing; if possible, we’d like to see examples that are representative of “most students.”
*Note: This writing sample may be one that you've graded as a TA/instructor, or in a pinch, the sample might be one that you yourself submitted, preferably as an undergraduate.
Wednesday DELIVERABLE (due before midnight on Wednesday)
1) Sketch out a brief “philosophy of responding” for yourself--aim for a 2-3 sentence, plus some bullet points with more specific notes as needed. Consider:
What are you valuing in your grading approach? (more aimed at individual students, the student body, the faculty/institution, external bodies, etc.?)
What are your top 3-5 learning goals that deserve assessment?
What do you most want to give to your students in terms of feedback you believe will be value-added for them as writers in your course/discipline?
2) Create a set of evaluative criteria or a rubric that directly correlates to the assignment sheet you created for Tuesday.
3) Submit both your philosophy and your rubric/criteria the appropriate Collab Forum.
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 your colleagues will have five minutes to respond to your presentation. You’re welcome to create original slides for this purpose, but you’re also welcome to simply project the documents you’ve created. Regardless, we will ask you to do the following:
Share your screen so that your audience can see whatever materials you are talking about.
Let your group know what input you’d find especially helpful. Tell us up front, so we can watch for those items and discuss afterward.
Provide us with some brief background information about the course or your experience teaching writing.
Show us in more detail ONE part of your portfolio, and present or elaborate on your rationale or thinking in relation to this part.
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.
Connected to #2 above: 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.