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Class Plan -- Day Two (Lecturers Only)

• Reading from PHG on Myths, Rituals, and Processes.
• Reading of initial course handouts
• Prewriting exercises.

Goals:

• To introduce the concept of writing as a process.
• To Introduce and begin prewriting for the Literacy Essay.

Assignment:

• Read PHG on Observing and Remembering (pp. 53-60; 103-112).
• Prewrite on the ideas you began generating for your Literacy Essay today in class.
• 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:

• Daily on writing process.
• Literacy Essay assignment
• Instructor's own "Literacy Essay."

Sequence:

• Start the class with a quick recap of the homework from last time. A good way to do this is to talk about the "blank page syndrome" (I usually ask about how many people have sat down to try to write something, beginning to end, and simply choked up.) That syndrome is usually the result of trying to think about too many things at once: your idea, how to communicate it to an audience, sentence structure, grammar, etc. (if you feel you have time, it can be effective to have students list these things on the board to show them how many different things are really going on in their heads when they're trying to write). Finding your ideal writing situation and conceiving of writing as a process in which you only work on one element at a time, prewriting, drafting, revising, returning to prewriting to solidify ideas, then going back to drafting, etc., is the way to get past that blank page syndrome. If you feel you have time, you can start this discussion by asking your students what their ideal writing situations are and what they believe are the most important processes or concepts involved in writing. (5 minutes).
• Then, quickly go over the most important points of your policy statement (attendance, percentage value of papers, office hours, etc.) and field any questions that came from the homework. Then collect the homework. (5 minutes).
• Take five minutes to have your students go around the room and introduce themselves (have them give their name, major, place of origin, and something about themselves that will help the rest of the class remember their names). While they're doing this, send around a sheet for names and phone numbers. Reproduce this for everyone for next time. (5 minutes).
• Then, spend the rest of the class introducing and helping your students generate ideas about the Literacy Essay:
• You might start out with an 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). 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.  125  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.