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Kate's Sample Syllabus

Week 1
Tuesday: Intro to course. Talk about writing rituals and myths. Ask what connections they see between reading and writing - start a list on an overhead we can add to over the next several weeks.
Read for Thursday: Chapter 1 in Frame Work

Thursday: "Bad girls": connections between stories, culture, and reading/writing in college. Work closely with the Donofrio piece and the embedded narrative of Waithia in Silko's piece. Are these stories about "bad" girls? How? Why? What difference does it make if we call Donofrio rebellious rather than bad? In what ways can we say these stories are about learning?
For Tuesday: Jot down a story of your own in which you tell about a significant moment of learning.
Read for Tuesday: FW pp. 35-36, 50-62, and a piece from the New York Times.

Week 2
Tuesday: How can we consider the Times piece as a story like those we read last week? (Is Venter a "bad" boy?) Will the "story" framework include all your reading in college? Where do you expect the framework to break down? Bring in examples next week from your textbooks so that we can look at other academic frameworks.
For Thursday: Jot down a story in which you tell about a time when you learned something about yourself either related to school or to informal education.
Read for Thursday: Ch. 3 in FW.

Thursday: Looking at student story drafts.
For Tuesday: Write a journal entry on one of the essay options on pp. 81-82.

Week 3
Tuesday: Who did you write your most recent journal entry for--yourself, teachers, classmates, parents? Why would the target reader matter? Who would you like to read your story eventually? Look at audience, purpose, and reading/writing connections in more detail. Are there any stories in texts you're reading for other courses? What do those readings look like?
For Thursday: Pick one of your three stories to workshop in class.
Read for Thursday: Ch. 4 in FW.

Thursday: First revision workshop on selected journal piece (to get closer to the personal essay for portfolio 1). Generate criteria for successful personal essay based on the strengths they saw in each other's drafts today.
Read for Tuesday: FW pp. 115-124.

Week 4
Tuesday: More reading/writing strategies--summarizing. Continue discussing academic discourse communities and their disciplinary expectations. Talk about the different kinds of summaries different fields might expect and why. Have half the class draft a quick summary of Kluckhohn for a friend still in high school and the other half draft for a teacher in an anthropology class. What kinds of differences do they see as they read the two versions? How are these differences related to target reader and that reader's purpose?
Read for Thursday: FW pp. 168-174
For Thursday: Draft a summary of Holland for a classmate who missed class on Tuesday.

Thursday: Look at draft summaries. Which are the best ones? Why? Generate criteria for good summaries written to students in CO130. How would these criteria change for different audiences?
Read for Tuesday: FW pp. 175-193 and draft summary of Shen article for a reader you identify.

Week 5
Tuesday: Who are the target readers for the Shen summary? How did you adapt your summary for your target reader? Look closely at the ways the target reader dictates details, organization, and style.
Read for Thursday: Ch. 8 in FW
For Thursday: Pick one summary to revise for the workshop. Be sure to note your target reader at the top of your draft.

Thursday: Revision workshop on selected summary
Read for Tuesday: Times editorial
For Tuesday: Think more about the Fan Shen article. Jot down points where you'd agree or disagree with him. Also jot down points where you'd agree or disagree with the Times editorial.

Week 6
Tuesday: Move into response: How might response draw on the strategies you used in your personal essay draft? What responses did you have other than those based on personal experience? How could you write about your response to the Shen essay or the Times editorial?
For Thursday: Start drafting a response essay.

Thursday: Response--variations for audience and purpose
For Tuesday: Revise your personal essay. Be sure to note your target reader on the draft.

Week 7
Tuesday: Workshop personal essay again
For Thursday: Jot down a revision plan for your personal essay. Complete the draft of your response essay.

Thursday: Questions about response/conference day
For Tuesday: Revise selected summary; revise response essay.

Week 8
Tuesday: Workshop on summary and on response essay.
For Thursday: Jot down revision plans for the pieces workshopped today. Revise at least one piece for Thursday.

Thursday: Final workshop for portfolio 1.
For Tuesday: Revise and proofread for portfolio 1.
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Portfolio 2 is less clear in my mind still, so keep the goals for the unit in mind as you decide how you want to shape this six weeks of the course. I would use chapters 13, 15, and 16 in FW, but I keep debating with myself about what the final paper should look like. Given that warning, here's a general plan that I think would work.

In Week 9, I'd collect portfolios on Tuesday and begin collecting what the class knows about doing research. I'd assign Chapter 13 to talk about on Thursday. "Story Skeleton" can help students see how writers shape what we learn from them by what they emphasize, and then Lord can illustrate how writers use personal experience to question cultural "learning" v. academic "education" (a la anthropology). I'd hope to have enough time on Thursday to set up groups to focus topics within the subject area "education."

In Week 10, one class would be devoted to a library orientation, and students would read Ch. 15 and 16 to do more work on interrogating academic discourse and "education." I would also have ready a packet of 6-8 readings representing a range of approaches to various problems in education--a Times piece on education legislation, an excerpt from a polemical book on elementary reading instruction, a longer Harper piece on how high school teaches students to hate lit, an editorial on ratings colleges, maybe a piece (or two) on technology and education.

Now here's where my uncertainty really shows up. Because I think it's harder to do rhetorical or discourse analysis, if the group seems likely to struggle with that approach, I probably will want them to do source evaluation rather than rhetorical/discourse analysis. The selected pieces come from a range of journals and books, and the source evaluation would be interesting for them and me. But that almost certainly means they'll need to do a response paper ("argument" supported by sources) as the main piece in the portfolio, and that presents some problems because we don't really have much time to cover argument strategies in any detail. If the group is stronger, then they probably can handle the discourse/rhetorical analysis that Jill outlines in the part of your packet that discusses using FW in the course.

Weeks 11 and 12 would include mostly group work finding and evaluating sources; Weeks 13 and 14 will be given over to drafting and revising the major paper with some class time devoted to strategies for writing and revising the paper I'd set up for students.

Portfolio 2 would come in on Tuesday of Week 15, and students could begin the revision (almost certainly from portfolio 1) and course postscript to turn in during the final exam period.

(To complicate matters, I thought of a third option for portfolio 2: a position paper that asks students to argue for the ways they plan to interrogate their education and learning. This paper could focus on accepting or rejecting the storytelling framework presented by their text, could take up text analysis as Martin does it in Ch. 14, could look at cultural frames.... But, as you can imagine, this paper strikes me as even more sophisticated than the other two options.)