Notes for Further Courses

Through speaking to the class about the course, their papers, teaching, writing, and all sorts of things, I have decided to revise (to re-see) the way I want my course run.

1.) At the beginning of the course-- the first or second week -- I want to devote at least one day -- maybe more-- to 20-30 minute individual conferences where I get to know my students as students and unique individuals. I want to ask them about their history, background, extracurricular interests, entertainment choices (music, movies, books), major, schedule. I want more connection with my students.

2.) I will produce a Prezi (or at least a lecture) that explains the language we will use to describe writing in class and in peer review, including (re)introducing topic sentences, diction, paragraph structure, transitions, organization "flow," development, 'style', complete with examples of each.

3.) Near the above Prezi, I will give my style lecture, which someone suggested that give at the beginning rather than end the course. I think this student was absolutely correct.

4.) Peer Reviews will be "take home" and will consist in writing a letter (to be turned in via Sakai and emailed to the peer reviewer) at least a page single spaced that addresses the paper's author. In this letter, my students will explain the strengths and weaknesses of each other's paper, referring directly to specific parts and quotations from the paper before the peer review day, where we will do nothing but talk to each other about the letters and papers.

5.) I am thinking I may require a reflective letter, addressed to me, attached after the Summary/Analysis paper, Synthesis paper, and Research paper,  laying out directly and more "informally" what the student was trying to accomplish, issues they had articulating certain ideas/points/arguments, and assessing the work's strengths and weaknesses, ending the letter with possible revision ideas. I believe that framing this as a "letter" will allow students to visualize me as an audience, whereas, in the paper, they will struggle with discovering the appropriate audience for the topic. These letters will be turned in as a separate attachment, which I will read after commenting on the main paper.


Ultimately, these reflections have led me to believe that the function of the 'letter' as explained in technical writing can be meaningfully incorporated into the First-year-writing classroom. I am not sure if work has been done on the effectiveness of this method, but I may write a piece dealing with this technique.