For your first-year writing course, you will be involved in an exciting and in some ways unusual type of writing class. This class will ask you to do more than simply read and then write about what you've read: it revolves around the concept of literacy and incorporates hands-on work as one of the primary course activities. That's not to say you won't be reading and writing, just that you will be involved in more in-depth learning by participating in and theorizing about your own "real world" experiences involving literacy. This version of English 110.03 asks you to combine intensive reading and writing about literacy, language, community, and culture with service in a particular community setting, Trevitt Elementary School.
The structure of the course requires that we meet three days a week in a "traditional" classroom setting (students and teacher in a campus classroom), and on the fourth day of class, we will meet in a different setting. That "fourth day" (Wednesdays, beginning Week 3, April 12) will be spent at Trevitt Elementary School, working with elementary school students (kindergarten through second grade) on their reading and writing. During our meetings at Trevitt, you will work as literacy partners, or tutors, with one or more students as they develop their language skills. During your weekly meetings you will read with them and talk with them about their reading, as well as working with them on other literacy activities. In our "traditional" class meetings, we will discuss your observations and experiences from Trevitt. Those ideas will serve as "data" that--along with the reading we do--will help you think, talk, and write critically about literacy. As with all sections of 110.03, you will use this material to inform your own classwork, writing, and understanding of ways the University at large--and other communities--looks at and practices literacy.
Of course, there will also be writing assignments! The writing you do for class will take a variety of different forms--from formal to informal, "published" to personal, and lots of different types in between. As far as major writing assignments go, you will have three more-or-less traditional assignments (Writing Projects 1 & 2, and the final examination) and you will work with your classmates on a less traditional assignment, based on your interactions with the students you tutor at Trevitt. These writing projects will give you an opportunity to write about literacy concepts and practices you're discovering through tutoring and expand these ideas about literacy and learning practices into your other work here at the University. In addition to the major writing assignments (I'm defining "major" as those which involve lots of drafting and revision), you will have informal writing assignments (informal in that I will not grade based on spelling and grammar, though clarity--a reader's ability to understand the ideas--is still important). Those informal writings will include responses to the readings; reflections on your weekly meetings with the Trevitt students; tutor activity plans; and in-class activities.
MATERIALS NEEDED FOR THE COURSE : (available at Central Classrooms Bookstore)
Michie, Gregory. Holler If You Hear Me. New York: Teachers College P, 1999.
Temple, Charles, et al. Intervening for Literacy: The Joy of Reading to Young Children. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2004.
access to a good dictionary & handbook; CDs/flashdrives on which you can save your work--and access to a printer outside DE 308 to print your assignments written outside class
pocket folder: all writing--drafts, essays, & journals--must be turned in at the end of the quarter. THIS MEANS YOU MUST SAVE ALL YOUR WRITING!!
TYPES of COLLABORATION
collaborate- to work together, especially in an intellectual effort
compromise- a settlement of differences in which each side makes concessions; something
midway between different things or combining certain of their qualities
consensus- definition from William W. Sternbergh, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Creative
Leadership: a decision with which the least happy member of the group could go along
negotiate-to work with others to come to an agreement
Collaborations
There are a variety of different ways in which you may collaborate with your classmates, both in class and during your peer group meetings. In order to help you identify and put them into practice, I’ll present some of the most common.
- collaborative decision-making
In these situations, you will have choices to make about some activity or assignment you are required to work on in a group, whether it’s about what to do or how to do it (for example, determining what topic everyone will write on for a weekly reflection journal or deciding how to handle in-class discussion). This involves talking with everyone in the group, bringing together ideas to choose from, listening to everyone and weighing what each person has to say, and then perhaps compromising or coming to a consensus. This may also happen when we have decisions to make about the daily or weekly class schedule and whether changes might need to be made to it.
|
- research
Whether for class discussions or in preparation for formal projects, I may ask you to select a topic related to the course and work in groups to find different types of resources that provide information about the particular topic, one of the practical ways in which collaboration is useful. Usually, this is done to be able to gather more information in a limited amount of time. People either inside or outside the particular research group, depending on the assignment, may then use this information.
|
- collaborative creating
You and a number of your peers may create texts (oral, written, visual or multimedia) together. One of the primary “texts” you will create collaboratively will be Project #3. You may also work with classmates to produce a single piece of writing for informal assignments; also, you might write something collaboratively as part of a presentation about Project 3, or as a response to one of our books or an explanation of a theme.
|
|
