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This assignment is designed to run concurrently with a research project. The goal is to give students an informal venue to collect, digest, and reflect on their progress on a weekly basis. This helps students maintain some accountability and keeps their research projects front of mind to help dissuade procrastination. It also asks students to engage in metacognitive reflection on what they’ve learned and how they’re emotionally responding to the work. Lastly, the lesson helps support professor/student communication as it invites students to ask the professor questions, enabling the professor to respond to questions as they arise, and gives the professor insight into the students’ processes, allowing opportunities to (re)direct student focus as needed.

An informative zine created by librarians Gail Schaub and Mary Rugge to help students learn the basics of email etiquette when emailing faculty. The zine can be printed out and folded to create a pocket-sized resource for students.

Prewriting activity designed to help students think about what makes a good research question.

Students analyze sample writing assignments from 200- and 300-level GVSU classes, using FYW concepts to understand the rhetorical context & apply what they’ve learned.

PowerPoint addressing summarizing, quoting, and paraphrasing sources, as well as signal phrases and parenthetical citations as two ways to cite sources in-text. I originally created it to support a WRT 120 TED Talk summary/response seed text, but I’ve found it helpful when teaching research papers in WRT 130 as well.

Easy to use flow chart so students can figure out what they need in their in-text citations and if they need them at all!

We play this game near the end of the semester when students have already learned about evidence, topics, and some other writing strategies. Students are in groups and each group gets a range of cards-different colors for card types printed on cardstock. They choose a topic card, evidence cards, intro and conclusion cards, and so on. Then, groups have to discard a certain amount. All groups read their discard cards aloud and then I could to three and let them run to different groups to trade to get better cards to make the best paper. Here’s my Google Doc with the instructions and cards: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tZcTjTpLEsFulD2PHSVwhT3KnOXLq7XLPSNVpwbBtTU/edit?usp=sharing

Student teams create challenges for one another to connect a news article to totally wild academic subjects/disciplines. The point is to find out that there’s a connection you can make between academic subjects/disciplines and almost any current event/issue. It also forces them to think outside the box. Example: A team received a challenge from another team to connect a stock market article with dance. They had no idea what to do, but ended up finding an article that helped them make an interesting connection—that the skills and talents required for dance are also necessary to be a good stock broker like discipline, flexibility, long-term commitment, and so on. They went on to make even more specific connections and create a research question that could make for an interesting future paper!

The bingo squares include search phrases for students to use to find articles about AI related to a variety of educational/writing topics. Students get to choose what they search which helps them engage and feel more in control of what they want to learn and what connections are valuable for them to make between AI and education/writing. Still, providing the phrases allows me to guide them and ensure we can have conversations that add to our course dialogues on what writing means and what we want it to mean in our lives going forward. After students complete this activity/worksheet as homework, I group then according to topics of the articles they chose to do for the second page/deep dive into one article. Then, students present what they learned from their reading to the group and then the group to the class. After that, we make decisions as a class about how we want to approach AI in our class.

I was inspired by another professor who has students record their attendance on a notecard. She collects them and gives them back out each session. I made a template for this with a front and back for the whole semester. I put in important dates and a notes area. I’ve loved this particularly for classes where students miss often or struggle. The card helps them feel like they have more control or know exactly how many recorded absences they have. They also communicate with me in the notes area about future absences, struggles that day, and so forth! I usually use different color cardstock for each class section. The students also help me remember to pass them out as they are used to filling it out each class!

I print these out on cardstock and pass them out at week four for students to fill out. Then, I respond to them. I collect them and pass back at week 7 and week 11. It helps me communicate with the students about how they’re doing and can help put some constructive pressure on to get back on track if they’re struggling. I like this as a hands-on in-class activity, but could see doing it digitally.

This combination homework/in-class activity leverages prior knowledge in a fun way to get students thinking about target audiences in preparation for argument/persuasive essays.

This handout is pretty self-explanatory. I know many of us use the criteria listed on it. I also adapt it for narratives as well to discuss how we can still select novel, significant, and challenging stories to share with our audience. (Shout out to Jessalyn Richter for the “novel, significant, challenging” labels!)

Both of these one-page essays are written in a way that students can comment on a variety of issues in their feedback to the “writer.” I use them to help students practice peer review, but they could be used for many types of lessons like flow/transitions, editing, introductions, evidence, etc. My peer review lesson plan is also linked. The lesson takes between 30-50 minutes. I assign for homework or lab time peer review on their group’s essays. Also, in the past, I’ve had students read the attached article by Richard Straub.

This video featuring Lynda Barry provides writing prompts that use associative memory to help people tell their stories. It can be used by anyone who wishes to generate ideas for writing.

This module will help students plan for revising a Working Draft. In this module you will: 1. be introduced to various revision strategies 2. practice a revision strategy 3. make plans for your Working Draft revision

Originally designed for 150 when process contributed a plus or minus to a letter grade. Back then, students filled this wrote short reflections on the back side and what they thought they deserved in the class with their reflections. I printed this on colored card stock. I still like the idea of printed progress/reflection cards that get pulled back up periodically and in class.

This activity draws on the “Humans of New York” photoblog concept to help students connect and build community at the start of the term. By crafting a short personal narrative and combining it with an image (or avatar), then posting it to a shared space like Padlet, students create a roster for the class and a visual representation of “who we are” collectively.

Vox video about AI and homework.

Video from the New Yorker about an “identity crisis” triggered by a CAPTCHA. Good for a discussion of technology/humanity. Subtitled.