Using Sources
Assignment Sequence: WR 120
These assignments and assignment templates are meant to offer new Writing Program instructors an easily adaptable overview of the WR 120 assignment sequence. They refer to sources using the BEAM/BEAT framework, which we recommend but do not require you to introduce to your students in WR 120. Opportunities to specify your course material and alternative […]
Synthesis Paper in WR 112
In WR 112, students will write a formal, argument-driven synthesis essay bringing together three texts. (Consult the sidebar here for notes on some texts that faculty use successfully in WR 112.) Scaffold the assignment with a series of reading journals, summaries, claim-writing workshops, and other pre-writing assignments as you see fit, and walk students through a […]
Picture Prompts for Online Classes
Instructors may want to use visual prompts to foster discussion, help unify remote and on-campus students, and create a classroom community. Picture prompts can be varied to connect with the course theme. Activity Review the New York Times Learning Network’s “Picture Prompts” series, “144 Picture Prompts to Inspire Student Writing.” On the landing page, there’s […]
Strategies for Engaging with Critics
In this exercise, students practice engaging with critics (argument and theory sources in the BEAM/BEAT framework). The templates provided scaffold students’ responses to the critics before students need to engage more deeply with critics in an essay. This exercise can be done individually or in pairs. Objective To use templates to practice different strategies for […]
Reading for Research
This handout prepares students for the different purposes and ways that they’ll use reading as they research their topic. You might start with a general discussion about reading practices and strategies before turning to this handout. For a greater focus on reading and analysis of exhibit sources, see this close-reading exercise. Objective To familiarize students […]
Developing Key Terms
All good arguments draw their strength from strong textual evidence and analysis. This exercise has two parts. In the first, which can be done for homework, students select passages from shared readings, closely analyze them, and then examone their responses for key terms. In the second, which is an in-class exercise, they use key terms […]
Close Reading Exercise
For this exercise, instructors should first select five key passages from their exhibit sources and type them up on a single sheet. Students will independently read and annotate the passages, and then, in small groups of 3-4 students, complete the exercise below. Assign each group one of the passages, and ask each group to introduce […]
Use a Text as a Theory Source
The goal of this exercise is to teach students how to use theory sources to complicate and deepen their claims. Start by reviewing a sample paragraph that draws on a theory source in the service of making a claim about an exhibit source. Then, have students create their own paragraph in small groups. Because this […]
Acknowledgment and Response
Each Flipped Learning Module (FLM) is a set of short videos and online activities that can be used (in whole or in part) to free up class time from content delivery for greater student interaction. At the end of the module, students are asked to fill out a brief survey, in which we adopt the […]
The Early Stages of Research
Each Flipped Learning Module (FLM) is a set of short videos and online activities that can be used (in whole or in part) to free up class time from content delivery for greater student interaction. At the end of the module, students are asked to fill out a brief survey, in which we adopt the […]