Blog # 5: Staging a Major Writing Assignment

Faculty creating writing intensive courses at LaGuardia are teaching either Urban Studies or Capstone courses.  Both call for a staged writing assignment.  The capstone also requires research.  To begin developing a staged writing assignment, please read Bean, Chapter 13, "Designing and Sequencing Assignments to Teach Undergraduate Research."  If you are not teaching research, specifically, read the chapter selectively.  Here are some recommended sections that will help you with your assignments:

1.  Examples of critical thinking (short) assignments that can be blended into longer assignment: pp. 242-244.
2.  Recommendation memo: p. 234.
3.  Skills and Knowledge Needed to Produce Expert Insider Prose in a Discipline: p. 254

For those teaching the research essay, the following may be especially helpful:
Backward Design Assignment Sequence: p. 246

YOUR BLOG ASSIGNMENT WILL BE TO CREATE, POST, TRY OUT AND REFLECT UPON ONE SHORTER ASSIGNMENT THAT WILL LEAD TO (BE BLENDED INTO) LARGER ESSAY.

(In Blog # 6 you will submit all parts of that staged essay assignment and, at end of semester, include uploaded samples of student work.)

Blog # 4: Responding to Student Work

Please Read Bean, Chapter 5: Coaching the Writing Process and Handling the Paper Load and Richard Haswell's "Minimal Marking." (See course documents.)  Also watch the 8 minute film "Beyond the Red Ink" in which students respond to teachers' comments on their essays.  Here is the url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XluNo599LMY.

For this two-part blog, first share your current practices in responding to student writing.  Then, after reading Bean, Haswell and listening to Bunker Hill CC students in video, what new ideas do you have that might make your grading practices better?  What aspects of the reading and viewing helped you the most, even suggested ways of making your grading practice easier, clearer, more effective?

Blog # 3:Designing Problem Based Writing Assignments

Hello WID Faculty:  for your third blog please read Bean Chapter 6, Formal Writing Assignments, where he focuses on how to create "problem-based assignments to promote critical thinking and active engagement with course subject matter" (89).  This chapter is rich in suggestions on how to vary assignment design (p. 92), how to start with micro-themes (pp. 112-113) and how to design "meaning constructing" tasks by giving students a RAFT (role, audience, format, task) and a TIP (task as intriguing problem) (pp. 98-99).  Take time to browse through this chapter and then begin by designing a micro-theme that fits the material of your course (like the Dear Dr. Science one on p 112).  Share that assignment on the blog, try it out in class and return to blog to share how it went.  We will move to a more formal assignment (still encouraging critical thinking) in our next blog.

Blog #2: Classroom Strategies--Designing Tasks to Promote Active Thinking and Learning

Please read Chapter 8 of Bean's Engaging Ideas, "Designing Tasks to Promote Active Thinking and Learning."  After reviewing Bean's "Ten Strategies for Critical Thinking Tasks (beginning on page 151), write a two part blog reflection: 1.  What approaches do you already use in your course to encourage active learning in the classroom?  What has worked thus far and what hasn't? What Bean strategies do you think would most benefit your students (and are most relevant to your course)?

Please follow up this reflection and reading by designing an activity specific to your course that employs one or more of Bean's strategies.  Post that activity here after your reflection.  Please try to post by October 16, one week from today.  (This activity, like your low stakes assignment in blog #1, will form part of your WID portfolio).  After you have tried out this activity in class, return to this post and add a reflection on how it went, how you would refine it for next semester.

Note: On the subject of active thinking and learning, if you have time, take a look at Ken Bain's Chapter under course documents, "What the Best College Teachers Do."  WID participants have found his essay provocative, convincing and helpful.