First-Year Writing at MSU
Course Resources
Teaching first-year composition course at Michigan State University for two semesters helped me not only to develop the pedagogical and administrative sensibilities that inform my teaching philosophy, but also to practice creating course documents and presentations that reflect those sensibilities and communicate them clearly to my students. These resources provide my students and me with shared language to understand, discuss, and evaluate the learning goals of our course.
The project rubrics were co-created by my students and me through class discussions about what we understood as indicative of success in their writing projects. The peer review documents are based on my experiences with peer review activities as a student writer and composition instructor, and are designed to give students guidance in giving useful feedback without restricting the exchange of ideas among their peers.
These presentations I have created are used to introduce ideas and concepts to students and spark classroom discussions and activities on these ideas. Some concepts can be intimidating, overwhelming, and abstract at first glance, and these presentations and the conversations that follow them can help students feel these ideas are more concrete and within their grasp.
The project rubrics were co-created by my students and me through class discussions about what we understood as indicative of success in their writing projects. The peer review documents are based on my experiences with peer review activities as a student writer and composition instructor, and are designed to give students guidance in giving useful feedback without restricting the exchange of ideas among their peers.
These presentations I have created are used to introduce ideas and concepts to students and spark classroom discussions and activities on these ideas. Some concepts can be intimidating, overwhelming, and abstract at first glance, and these presentations and the conversations that follow them can help students feel these ideas are more concrete and within their grasp.
Course DocumentsSyllabusLearning MemoirStudents are asked to tell a story about their learning and literacy and analyze its significance to their current educational goals.
Download Learning Memoir Assignment Sheet Download Learning Memoir Rubric Cultural Artifact AnalysisIn this analytical project, students choose an artifact from the world around them, investigate how that object is used and perceived, and make a claim about what the artifact signifies about a particular culture and its practices and values.
Download Cultural Artifact Analysis Assignment Sheet Download Cultural Artifact Analysis Peer Review Download Cultural Artifact Analysis Rubric Disciplinary LiteraciesIn a project designed to improve research and analysis skills, students will seek out and analyze texts produced by members of the discipline or field they hope to enter after completing their degree in order to gain an understanding of how knowledge is created and shared within that field.
Download Disciplinary Literacies Assignment Sheet Download Disciplinary Literacies Peer Review Download Disciplinary Literacies Rubric REMIX Remix created by Lauren Pacholski
This project asks students to choose one of their earlier projects and remix it into another medium, frequently a digital video. Students must move outside their comfort zone of standard written essays and make different rhetorical decisions based on the mode of delivery and their audience. In order to emphasize that their audience will be their peers, I asked my students to evaluate each other's remixes.
Download Remix Assignment Sheet Download Remix Rubric Revising LiteraciesFor the final project of the semester, students will demonstrate how their literacies and writing skills have changed throughout the semester by referring to and analyzing writing they have done for our course projects and journals as well as writing they composed outside our course.
Download Revising Literacies Assignment Sheet Download Revising Literacies Rubric |
Classroom PresentationsThe Three Cs
The Three Cs are a concept I developed for helping students conceptualize different ways to improve their language use in their writing. Based on student language use issues I noticed during my first semester of teaching, conceptualizing language "errors" in terms of clarity, consistency, and conciseness helps students become more aware of their language use and better understand the implications of usage issues on their writing and their readers.
Download Three Cs Presentation Is This Analysis?
To help open up a discussion among my students about analysis, I created this quick introduction to the basics of analysis in academic writing.
Download Is This Analysis Presentation Remix
The idea of creating a remix can be overwhelming and unclear to many students at first. By drawing students' attention to the numerous remix-like images and videos they are exposed to in popular culture and asking the right questions about those remixes, I hope to help students understand their capability to put a new spin and a new face on their ideas.
Download Remix Presentation |