Weekly Notes and Advice |
The beginning of Portfolio 3 marks a new stage in your lesson planning. You are now responsible for creating nearly all your activities to accomplish course goals. As with Portfolio 2, there are some activity ideas provided and you may consult the Activity Bank in the Teaching Resources section of Writing@CSU. We encourage you to integrate the course texts (The Prentice Hall Guide and the New York Times) as well as technology components (Writing@CSU and the Writing Studio) into your lesson planning. If you have any questions about developing your lesson plans, please see Mike, Steve, Kate, Sarah or any of the lecturers. Please remember to provide lesson and course connections each class day and to introduce and conclude your lessons along with providing transitions between activities. |
Connection to Course Goals |
After creating a transition between Portfolios 2 and 3 and connecting these to course goals, the two main objectives for this week are to have students construct their claims and arguments and to have students think critically about how their target audience and context will influence the choices they make when writing their arguments. Use the PHG to introduce students to classical forms of argumentation, but also emphasize that audience and context are as important as "forms" when making choices about content and organization. To write successfully, students will need to think about their readers' needs and interests and shape their arguments accordingly. |
Goals for this Week |
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Activity Ideas: Postscript |
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Activity Ideas: Transitioning |
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Activity Ideas: Contexts of Portfolio 3 |
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Activity Ideas: Claims |
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Activity Ideas: Claims |
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Required Readings and Assignments |
Assign the following to students this week:
Additional Teaching Resources
Dartmouth's Teaching Argument guide discusses some of the challenges first-year writing students often face at the university level. The primary solution provided for how teachers can help students overcome these challenges is cited as moving students through a cognitive shift from dualism to relativism to reflectivism (based on William Perry's work on intellectual stages). Examples of how teachers have incorporated this solution into their classes are provided. The page also suggests a strong connection between teaching logic and successful argument writing. The guides Arguments and Elements of Argument are both geared toward student writers, but the information therein could be adapted to lesson plans. Definitions of argument purposes and types, ideas for planning, and a useful distinction between a "bias" and a "position" are just some of the useful concepts discussed here. |