Return to Unit One:TR

Class Plan -- Day 2 (GTA's Only)

• Prewriting exercises from PHG.

Goals:

• To introduce the Literacy Essay and continue prewriting.

Assignment:

• Draft the Literacy Essay. Your draft should be 2-3 pages long (handwritten length). Do your best to incorporate the elements of the assignment on the assignment sheet with the general writing elements we discussed last time. Bring a photocopy of your draft to class to exchange with a classmate.

Setup Needs:

• Instructor's literacy narrative or anecdotes about experiences with literacy.
• Copies of Literacy Essay assignment sheet.
• Be familiar with the prewriting techniques outlined on pp. 125 of the PHG, and, perhaps, be ready to talk about the ones that work for you.

Sequence:

• To begin the class, wrap up any further questions/concerns about the course policies. A good way to prepare for this is to note the most frequently asked questions in the two-column log your students did for the first day's homework and address those questions at the beginning of this class session.
• Start by introducing the Literacy Narrative assignment. You might start this out with am Daily exercise that helps connect the assignment with the course (for instance, asking your students to try to define "literacy"), or simply by having students read the assignment sheet aloud and freewrite about the main purpose and elements of the assignments along with any questions that come to mind.
• Once you've gone over the assignment itself, start a discussion about the possibilities for subject matter. Start by reading your own literacy narrative aloud, and then take some suggestions from the class about other kinds of instances they might talk about. It's possible to fill a lot of time just discussing people's experiences with language, so either watch the time on this closely. OR, if you feel this discussion is really valuable, assign all or part of the rest of the activities in this lesson as homework.
• Then, discuss prewriting strategies. Start by connecting the assignment to the four elements: what sort of focus, development, etc. will you need to adequately communicate this experience to other members of the class (When you discuss development, be sure to bring in the Observing and Remembering material that they read for this class from the PHG). Ask your students, "How do you find that information?" Introduce the idea of prewriting as a way of finding the focus and detail you need without having to come up with a complete draft first.
• Give the drafting assignment for next time.
• For the remainder of the class, have students try some prewriting strategies to find an incident to write about in their Literacy Essays and to begin remembering details about that incident. To speed the work along, have the following prompt on an overhead:

"For the rest of the hour, your job is to begin to find a an incident     

you can use to focus your Literacy Essay, and to begin generating the     

detail you need to communicate that incident and its implications to      

your audience.  Start by working with any of the prewriting exercises on  

pp.    of the PHG.  If you work with one for ten minutes and it doesn't   

seem to get you anywhere, try a different one.  KEEP GOING UNTIL YOU      

HAVE SOME IDEAS YOU CAN WORK WITH."                                       

While your students are writing, make the rounds to field questions, encourage your writers (who'll be a little nervous about having to produce a draft), and push them to keep working with the prewriting techniques. Be gentle about it--but keep everyone moving. If anyone stops writing, have him/her try another technique.