JOHN S. KNIGHT INSTITUTE FOR WRITING IN THE DISCIPLINES WRITING 7100: TEACHING WRITING Summer 2011 Course description Writing 7100 prepares new instructors of Cornell’s First-Year Writing Seminars to teach courses that both introduce students to particular fields of study and help them develop the sophisticated writing skills they will need throughout their undergraduate careers. Seminar discussions and readings on pedagogical theories and practices provide an overview of the teaching of writing within a disciplinary context. Participants develop written assignments designed to be used in their own First-Year Writing Seminars. Writing 7100 Instructors Amanda Gilvin, Graduate Student, History of Art; Co-facilitator Bryan Alkemeyer, Graduate Student, English; Co-facilitator David Faulkner, Faculty English/Knight Institute Joe Martin, Director, Writing Workshop; Faculty, Knight Institute Jessica Metzler, Graduate Student, English; Co-facilitator Tracy Hamler Carrick, Director, Walk-In Service; Faculty, Knight Institute Course Rationale Writing 7100 has three purposes: one theoretical and two practical. First, we want to introduce you to the challenges of teaching Writing Seminars with a disciplinary focus. Second, we want you to leave the course with an advanced draft of a syllabus and a selection of assignments you can use in your First-Year Writing Seminar. Because reflection on the learning process helps facilitate good teaching, we ask you to include rationales in the assignments you draft for this class and encourage you to share versions of these rationales with your students. Third, we hope this seminar will be a laboratory in learning and teaching. In this seminar we try to model effective teaching methods; we encourage you to experiment with strategies and techniques you can use in your own seminars. Most American colleges and universities require students to take one or more introductory writing courses. At many institutions, these courses are taught exclusively within English departments, often by graduate students or adjunct faculty members. Others are taught in stand-alone writing programs, often by faculty members with temporary appointments. Cornell was one of the earliest universities to institute a Writing in the Disciplines model, in which writing courses, taught by faculty and graduate students, introduce students to the university by teaching writing within academic disciplines. The guidelines for First-Year Writing Seminars (included in The Indispensable Reference) represent practical manifestations of a philosophy about teaching writing. Writing should be the central activity of each course—a substantial amount of class time should be devoted to it. Therefore, we require a certain number of assigned papers and place limits on the amount of reading assigned each week. Writing is best taught and practiced as a process. Therefore, we require guided revision and encourage preparatory writing and sequenced assignments. Writing Seminars succeed when they help build communities of writers. We hope this course will help build communities of teachers. Sharing assignments with other teachers and, we hope, learning from the work colleagues produce will be among the central tasks of Writing 7100. Learning Outcomes: • You will draft and revise course materials—including a syllabus and sequence of assignments—for a First Year Writing Seminar to be taught within the next academic year. • You will demonstrate, through your course materials, an understanding of how to teach a First Year Writing Seminar embedded in disciplinary practice and in accordance with the Knight Institute’s guidelines. • You will develop strategies for responding to student writing. • You will explore models of collaboration that are transferrable to your own courses and to other professional settings. • By engaging with course reading and classroom discussion, you will begin (or continue) to develop your capacity to participate in professional, reflective discussions on theories and practices of teaching writing. Meeting Times Wednesdays from 1:30 – 4:00 p.m. beginning on June 29 and ending on August 3. Each seminar section will be led by a faculty member and an experienced graduate student instructor. Section assignments are included in the materials distributed at orientation.Summer 2011 2 5/12/11 Writing Assignments These assignments should help you develop a semester-long plan for your seminar, draft individual assignments, and prepare detailed plans for at least four weeks of teaching. Because these assignments are intended to help you build your course, we encourage you to think of each week’s assignment as part of a cumulative sequence, portions of which you may choose to revise over the course of the summer (and again during the semester). Assignment Rationales/Learning Outcomes Each assignment should include a rationale, both to open a discussion with those who read and respond to your assignments and to prepare you for discussions with your future students. The rationale is a place to explore your desired learning outcomes for a particular assignment and locate it within the work of the course. Most of the sample assignments available through our eCommons archive include rationales. No assignment will be considered complete without a rationale. As part of your course planning, we expect you to produce learning outcomes that will help direct your course. We encourage you to include specific learning outcomes with each assignment. Learning outcomes, like rationales, help you articulate what you are doing and why. They help you describe your teaching to audiences of students—which can be crucial to your success as a teacher—and to colleagues—which could be crucial to your success as a faculty member. The instructions below assume that you will submit your assignments via Blackboard. Your seminar leaders may provide more specific guidelines for submission. Peer Collaboration We will often ask you to share assignments and exchange comments with classmates before or during class meetings. We will frequently ask you to exchange copies of assignments with partners and your instructors by email or through Blackboard at least one day in advance of the class meeting. When peer review is assigned, you should read your partners’ assignments carefully as part of your preparation for the class. (Your instructors will provide more