Sample Syllabus 1: Weekly Calendar

By Megan Butler

Week 1: Introductions and Course Foundations

So much prep and the first day of class has finally arrived! Take a breath and realize that in this first class your focus is introductions: to the students, the course, the topic, and the tools you’ll use throughout the quarter.

This calendar offers many options and ideas, though we are fully cognizant that there are many other options and ideas. We use a mix of power points and canvas posts, we incorporate the class white board, and we use social annotation/discussion boards. At every point, we recommend you adopt what works best for you or use these ideas as launching pads for your own methods.

Day 1 | Introductions & Syllabus; Introduction to Course Theme; Academic Identity & Confidence, Rhetorical Triangle

Before launching into the class details, we do an icebreaker with the class. There are many different ones you can try but my back pocket go-to is to have students write the name they’d like to be called in class on the white board. I make bubbles around groups of three names, ask students to move into the bubble groups and have them make introductions. They also need to find something all three have in common. When I pull the class back together, they each have to introduce someone else from their group.

First hour (or more) things to consider doing:

  • Introductions/Ice breaker
  • Library/Writer’s Centers intro
  • Intro/set-up for any tools you’ll use in the class, this could include Canvas, the social annotation site Hypothesis, subscribing to The New York Times, etc.
  • Zotero set-up, highly recommended as a useful tool for all classes
  • Assignment sequence and the moving parts of the class
  • Class community and academic integrity

Second hour:

Homework:

  • Read and annotate our syllabus in Hypothesis (Important to have students ingest the syllabus at their own pace)
  • Read and annotate Amy Tan, The Threepenny Review “Mother Tongue”
  • Read Carlo Rotella, Boston Globe “Silent Students Shortchange Themselves”

Day 2 | Genre and Genre exercise, Reading discussions, SA1

Each day we try to reinforce what we taught the day before, not by reteaching but by incorporating what came before into the next lesson. In the last class, we taught the rhetorical triangle, which will be present in assignments and readings throughout the quarter. Today we’ll focus on genre and how the rhetorical triangle factors into genre conventions.

First hour:

Second hour:

Week 2: Genre

Be aware that your class may go through a lot of shifting this week and last. Some students will drop out, others will add after the first two days. This is a great opportunity to make sure the students make a connection in the class, someone they can reach out to if they have to miss a class. The syllabus annotation is a useful tool for students who were not in the class when you walked through it. We always look at all the syllabus annotations and address any questions or concerns to the full class.

Our classes have six assignments parsed out over two assignment sequences. Our first assignments focus mainly on genre, audience, and message. Since the first paper is due this week, we take time in the first class of Week 2 to talk about the class rubric for grading, how the class is graded (70% for the final portfolio, which means students cannot figure their grade from what’s on Canvas throughout the quarter. It’s worth noting this out loud so they don’t freak out at any point.), and what the most important parts of peer review are.

Day 1 | Reading discussion, Rubric for assignment assessments, Higher and Lower Order concerns, Peer Review

First Hour:

  • After going through Higher and Lower Order Concerns, our rubric, and our peer review worksheet, I have students pair up and discuss two lines they highlighted while reading Anne Lamott’s “Shitty First Drafts.” We discuss why this piece was assigned the night before our first peer review and how their revisions can follow some of Lamott’s techniques.

Second hour:

  • Peer review in pairs. I make this distinction because later in the quarter I do Oral Peer Review in groups of three.
  • Since the first hour of the class was about peer review, I give students 5 minutes before we start to make sure they know their partner and can have a conversation about everything they just heard. Peer review can be terrifying so hopefully a conversation–even if it’s complaining about their paper or my lecture–can diffuse some terror and be helpful.
  • After peer review I revisit some revision techniques and remind students that they should take what they need from the peer review done for them–they’ve been offered suggestions not directions.
  • Their peer reviewed assignment is due in two days, so they have those days to do revisions. A final submission for me contains the revised assignment, writer’s comments, and the peer review worksheet.

Day 2 | Reading discussion, Ethos, Logos, and Pathos, SA2

First hour:

  • Students come into this class after doing three readings on our class subject in the social annotation program Hypothes.is. Today, I lecture on the Rhetorical Appeals, Ethos, Logos, and Pathos. Then I put the lecture into action using the three articles read before class.
  • I break the class into their Hypothesis groups and assign one of the readings to each group. Within the group, they need to determine how the authors use each of the appeals in their article. They start by identifying together where they annotated with an exclamation point–what grabbed them? Did that grabbing connect with their emotions? Their ideas about credibility? Or just the logic of the piece?
  • I have each group identify one thing from the article they’d like more info about and write it on the board. The eight things on the board become the basis for our Lines of Inquiry discussion next week.

Second hour:

  • Part of the second hour is dedicated to the second short assignment (SA2), which is due the day before our next class. I discuss the prompt–I don’t reread it–then give a visual description of the assignment and a lightly acted out version. Presenting the assignment in multiple ways helps students conceive their role in the writing–who are they as the writer? Who is their audience? How should their interaction between the two be constructed in writing?
  • This assignment is the most “difficult” for my students because they are assessing a rhetorical triangle and writing into one. It is challenging and often the one most revised for the portfolio because the work they do throughout the quarter helps them understand this early assignment more.

Week 3: Reading Strategies, Line of Inquiry to Claim

In Week 3, we read our “center of gravity” piece for the quarter. This is the reading “The Tragedy of America’s Rural Schools” and we refer back to it all quarter long; it lays the foundation for our extended inquiry. It gives us the terms and ideas we draw from the readings that follow and really makes clear the class theme/topic. If you have a reading that does this work, we recommend slotting it here and allowing some time for student reaction/discussion that might be slightly less structured.

This week, we provide two methods for conducting discussions around your reading. This might be the first time many of your students are having an extended in-class discussion of a course reading, so it is useful to set some expectations upfront.

Day 1 | Becoming a Strong Reader, Reading discussion with slides

First Hour:

  • Discussion about discussion: I ask students to reflect on past successful discussions and conversations they’ve had (both in and out of class) and have them identify some goals, expectations, and principles that can help guide our discussion. Common / helpful items to list are: engage in good faith, assume good intentions, stick to the assigned readings, be open to disagreement, push yourself to speak up at least once, if you’ve spoken twice leave room for others to speak up.
  • One of the main questions students have (in my experience) is the “why” question. It can be helpful to name the purpose of the discussion as bluntly as “The reason I am having us do this discussion is…” Some reasons for discussion: to come to a collective class understanding of the text; to explore ideas and experiment with applying those ideas to aspects of our world; to model the type of inquiry I’d like you to do in your papers; to practice learning as a collaborative process.

Second hour:

  • Short lecture on Becoming a Strong Reader, then I break students into groups to work on a slide that they will present to the class. The slide asks the group to pull 2-3 quotes from the reading that they found important. It asks for the group to ask a question and identify something from the reading that they found interesting / infuriating / engaging / fascinating.
  • These questions set up the discussion they will be having during Day 2 of this week. Assign center of gravity reading for homework.

Day 2 | Reading discussion, Developing a Thesis from a Line of Inquiry

First hour:

  • Acknowledging that we are about to have a discussion on the reading, I ask students to prep their ideas by freewriting about at least two discussion questions. When the freewriting time is over, I randomly pick a student to start our discussion with one of their responses. My job as a facilitator is to note main insights/themes of the conversation, pose follow up questions, take class notes, and decide when to move onto the next question.

Second hour:

  • In the second hour I lecture briefly on Developing a thesis from a line of inquiry. Before class, I compile all the questions and lines the students have identified as interesting to show what a Line of Inquiry is. I teach the 6-step Line of Inquiry to Thesis Method to give students a tool to use throughout their time at the U when they need to make an intelligent, contained argument.
  • With all their work projected, I link students to an online worksheet, ask them to pick something of interest, and work it into a claim/thesis using the 6-step method.
  • Introduce the first Major Assignment then assign everyone a slide to complete by Sunday night with a brief description of their idea for the MA1, which is a genre translation.
  • Megan’s MA1 looks like this. A version of Megan’s was published by The New York Times in their Learning Network. Have a look. Just fyi, The Learning Network is a great resource for teaching ideas and writing prompts.

Week 4: Prep for MA1, Learning how to use a genre to (re)present an argument

I often use this week to dive deep into my class topic, which is education in the United States. Students come into this week having read op-eds, investigative journalism, newspaper reporting and academic articles, and having listened to news reports and podcasts–in just three weeks we’ve covered a lot of different kinds of issue-oriented writing.

Since my MA1 is an issue-oriented genre translation, I use this week to discuss the range of things we’ve read, identifying issues arising from poor education, and complicating “easy” fixes to public education.

You might also approach this week as a breather–both you and the students are getting into the rhythm of the class, they’re getting a foothold on the class topic and forming some ideas, and you’re figuring out what you need to prepare for each class. This could translate into a collective exhale where you facilitate a class conversation that allows everyone a space for comment and contribution.

Day 1 | Social Determinants of Health, Education and the Pandemic, Peer Discussion for MA1 slides

First hour:

  • We have a discussion in a big circle about everyone’s idea for their MA1. Some ideas have to have a feasibility check, as in, it’s an assignment that needs to be completed in a week, so you can’t write a book or a screenplay or produce a documentary (though I love those impulses!). I lead this into a conversation about the genre of a class assignment, which is always interesting to students.
  • During this “circle time,” we discuss education and the pandemic. Since every student was touched by the pandemic in some way, this is an opportunity for students to voice their story and to hear how the pandemic was for their peers in other states and other countries.

Second hour:

  • I take this hour, sometimes less, to discuss Education as a Social Determinant of Health using infographics from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Kaiser Family Foundation. This allows us to discuss the genre of infographics as well. The discussion uses every white board in the room as we track all the ways an individual’s level of education impacts their lived life.

Day 2 | Volunteering videos, Cubing, Looping, Twenty Questions

First and Second hours:

  • In this class, I focus on writing invention strategies, meaning, what do you do when you’re staring at your screen/blank piece of paper and can’t think of anything to write?
  • We watch two TED Talks about volunteering just to break up our regular intake of readings then I ask students to round up 3-4 lines from the videos and recent readings that grabbed them. These lines become the start point for the invention strategies we work with below. We’ve been going pretty hard for the first half of the quarter. This class is a little less structured and more free flow. It helps set the stage for our class shift: we spent the first half of the quarter discussing problems; we spend the second half discussing solutions.
  • I explain three methods for becoming “unstuck:” a Cubing cube that requires a little crafting with scissors and tape, looping from a center of gravity sentence, and Twenty Questions for Getting Started.

Week 5: Conferences

Conferences are held twice a quarter and you can cancel one two-hour class or two one-hour classes each time you hold conferences. There are many ways you can use conferences (discussed below), but typically conferences consist of 15-minute one-on-one meetings with each student in your class. You can hold these in your office or a public study space on campus like in Suzzallo 102 or the Henry Art cafe.

Some options for conferences are to use them as a way to give feedback on a draft of a Major Paper, hold longer group conferences where students give each other peer feedback (what we model below), or use conferences as a way to brainstorm project ideas at the beginning of a sequence.

Day 1 | Peer Review, Reading discussion

  • This is a short week because of conferences! During the class before conferences it is a good idea to set up expectations for conferences and handle the logistics (where to meet, conference time sign-up, the importance of being on time, etc.).
  • Because our conferences for this class are built around peer review, it takes a little prep work. First, I need to set up the groups. I aim for groups of three, but often need to make one group of four. Conferences are 15 minutes per student so my group conferences are scheduled for 45 minutes. Next, I need to make sure students distribute their MP1 drafts with each other. This is a good thing to have happen in-class so you can troubleshoot any issues. Finally, I assign roles and a peer review worksheet for the students to complete in preparation for the conferences.
  • As an optional (but helpful!) activity, I sometimes leave time in class on this day for students to introduce to their small group their assignment (e.g. what their MP1 issue and genre translation was). They can also use this as a time to request particular forms of feedback.
  • Tip: when students sign up for conferences, make sure to build in bathroom/food breaks. With 23 students you don’t want to end up with nearly 6 hours of uninterrupted conferencing time.

Day 2 | Class canceled for Conferences

  • Please note: you can cancel one 2-hour class period (if teaching two days a week) or two one-hour class periods (if teaching four days)
  • During conferences, I ask that students read and prepare comments beforehand. Each conference goes by fast so it is important to be a good time keeper and make sure you cover what you need to in the allotted time.
  • Conferences feel busy and time-consuming for you, but students will have some extra time this week to work on incorporating yours and their peers’ feedback into their final MP1s.

Week 6: Complex Claims and a UW Library workshop

My second assignment sequence culminates in the MA2, which I’ve designed as the narrative portion of a grant request. Students need to make a complex claim and defend it in their assignment but it goes beyond writing a research paper. They can’t just research, the research has to head in a direction—in this case they are asking Seattle Public Schools’ Department of Education and Early Learning (DEEL) to make an educational intervention. What kind of intervention and how is up to the students to craft.

Day 1 | Complex Claims, Complex Claim exercise, Reading discussions

  • To scaffold the SA4 and MA2, I begin Week Six with a lecture about Complex Claims.
  • After lecturing, I put students in seven groups and ask them to defend claims about the UW. Over years of use, I have found this to be a fun and challenging in-class exercise that can take almost an hour. Students get to learn the nuances of the different components of a complex claim, they get practice assembling one, then we all decide whether or not the claim is ready to go or needs some polishing.
  • Our reading discussion constructs a complex claim backwards: students pick one of our readings, extract the author’s claim, then build the complex claim based on what’s in the article. This preps students for the SA4, which requires them to create their own complex claim for their Grant Request.
  • My SA4 also contains an annotated bibliography that must include a peer reviewed source from a search in UW Libraries, which leads to our next class.
  • To prep for our library workshop, I have students create a Concept Map using these instructions. I also remind them to bring their laptops so they can easily link to do the activities.

Day 2 | Library Workshop

  • As an instructor in a 100-level writing course, I consider it my responsibility to give students fluency in the different parts of the U. During our class they visit one of the writer’s centers, the Henry Gallery, and, today, the library.
  • I use the attached Library Research Workshop to teach source evaluation, determining a scholarly article, doing advanced searches, and using databases as an intro to the UW libraries. The OWRC has 8 packets of different types of articles that are essential to the activities. I coordinate with Kathleen Collins at the library to pick these up before class (kcollins@uw.edu).
  • To reinforce what we do in class, I assign the UW Library Research 101 google module. Following this module using keywords from the concept map they constructed will teach students how to find and cite a scholarly source. Feedback is always that this module is extremely helpful. I have also had students do the module in class–your choice.

Week 7: Working with Sources, Quote sandwich

Quarters are too fast! It is unlikely students will be able to conduct substantial research for a research paper within the space of a quarter among all the other things they need to practice in a composition class. It can be helpful to think about how to scale back a research project in this context. Last week, the work with the UW libraries helped to frame this process, and in this week we’re going to have to jump right into working with sources.

Working with sources is a great way to have discussions about citational politics, how to synthesize information across multiple sources, and integrate evidence into their complex claims.

Day 1| Making connections across sources, Synthesis, and Citations

  • Prior to class I ask students to come prepared with a list of articles they’ve found that interest them or that they want to use for their project.
  • A typical assignment for this week would be an annotated bibliography where they practice building citations and annotating the citation with an explanation of what the source covers, how it relates to their project, and how it relates to the other sources.
  • I like to do an alternative assignment where rather than annotations, students make “groupings” [see attached assignment]. The idea here is that students start thinking about how the sources relate to each other and make groups based on those connections. They then have to write a justification and explanation as to why they grouped them in this way.

Day 2| Quoting and Working with Sources, Quote Sandwich

  • On this day, students have gathered their sources, thought about the relationships between these sources, and are ready to start building paragraphs that synthesize information.
  • Here is a MEAL Plan paragraph framework that I use to teach how to write expository paragraphs. Using “Main Idea” sentences can be a good way to highlight the connections across sources. Then, after walking through the evidence and analysis they have for these connections, they can “Link” those ideas back to their complex claim which they built in week 6. This MEAL plan framework works well for teaching quote sandwiching.
  • I generally find that at this point in the quarter it is helpful to leave some time in class for students to get work done on their paper. I also tend to circulate so I can answer individual questions as they come up.
  • At the end of this week, their bibliographies are due. Here is Megan’s SA4.

Week 8: MA2 prep, scaffolding the production of the research paper

The end is in sight! Also in sight is the fact that you’ve got to grade the MA2 with a quick turnaround so students can consider whether or not they will revise it in their portfolio. Because my SA4 scaffolds the MA2, I’m also aware that it needs quick grading, too. My SA4 is a “nuts and bolts” assignment. By that I mean that it must contain three distinct things: the components of your Complex Claim, an edited Complex Claim, and your annotated bibliography. As such, I grade this one as complete or incomplete and sometimes work back and forth with students through constant revisions to get to completion. I am emphatic with students about not being afraid of an incomplete, which just means they must do more refining and revising, core components of Outcome 4!

Day 1 | SA4 Peer review, What’s in a grant request?

  • Since this is a nuts and bolts assignment, I have my students focus on the individual components of the assignment in peer review. They are asked to attend to each piece in their peer review worksheet, which they complete in pairs.
  • Since my MA2 is a Grant Request, the second part of this class discusses the components of a grant request using these slides.
  • In the final part of this class, I do a “Solution Hunt” using the three articles assigned prior to class. Working in groups, students need to identify and assess the solutions offered in the articles.
  • Finally, I introduce the slides they need to prepare for the next class. Description below.

Day 2 | Grant request slides

  • For this class, I ask each student to prepare a “Bar Stool Pitch” with their idea for the MA2. This is the setting: they’re in a crowded noisy place and the person next to them asks what they are working on. How do you answer amidst all those distractions? Briefly, with some interesting tidbits, and showing your own interest! Students complete a slide with their pitch, practice it in pairs, then we arrange ourselves in a circle and they present to the class.
  • Toward the end of class we discuss the reading from the night prior. I have assigned a pretty weak reading and our work is to identify the holes in its reasoning. My hope in this exercise is to give students methods for questioning their own conclusions and revising or adding research where their rationale feels thin.

Week 9: Final Portfolio

The portfolio is a large assignment with many moving parts. It is also worth 70% of the students’ grades so it is likely to cause some anxiety. It is going to be important to use in-class time for students to be able to figure out which questions they have and to answer them for the whole class so you are not having to answer them 23 separate times.

Things you’ll have to explain that you might consider building activities around are: what are these four course outcomes and what role do they play in the portfolio? How do I select my showcase pieces and what does “substantial revision” look like? What is the “critical reflection” and how should I go about writing it? What are the assignments that make up the compendium and how should they be uploaded / formatted in the portfolio? How is the portfolio going to be graded and how should we interpret the portfolio grading rubric?

Day 1 | Portfolio introduction, Outcome Workshop

  • One thing that is helpful to complete in this time is an activity that helps students make sense of the PWR course outcomes. I often do a two-part outcome activity where I break the class into four groups. First, I assign each group a portion of our quarter (group 1 takes weeks 1-3, group 2 takes 4-6, etc.). I have them go up to the board and list as many readings, assignments, activities, and discussions as they can remember doing during these weeks. This generates an impressive list of things they’ve accomplished (fun for them to behold!). Next, I assign each of the group one outcome and ask them to pair readings, assignments, activities, and discussions to parts of their outcome. For this, I have them work on a Google Doc that is shared with the class. This document becomes a useful resource both for generating ideas for their critical reflection and for helping to make sense of the outcomes.
  • Another important activity is to make sense of the PWR 100-Level Portfolio Rubric in class. This document can be overwhelming and anxiety-inducing (especially because it is the first rubric in the class where students are actually being graded on a 4.0 scale). I have my students read through the rubric and together as a class I have them name “what is required in order for your portfolio to qualify for the highest grade category?” Through this process questions will naturally arise like “what does having your showcase pieces be ‘substantially revised’ actually look like?” This is a change for you to clarify (or for you and the class to come to a collective understanding of) how you are going to grade and gauge things like “substantial revision.”

Day 2 | Class canceled for Conferences

  • If you decide to hold conferences at the start of your portfolio sequence, the main thing you will be doing is helping students visualize the work that is involved in the portfolio and helping them map out what showcase pieces to use, how to discuss them, and what, if anything, they still need to submit in order to have a complete portfolio.

Week 10: Final Portfolio, Henry Gallery visit

The last week of class! It’s busy. You need a second conference–some of us have these in Week 9, others in Week 10; the choice is yours based on how you want to support your students. I always do Week 10 conferences to head off panic about the portfolio. I give students a worksheet prior to our conference so they come with questions that I can hopefully help with.

Day 1 | Portfolio Workshop, Ask Me Anything, and Evaluations

  • I ask students to bring a short assignment that they want to revise for the portfolio to class. In class, we walk through a revision to the Outcome of their choice. A worksheet on the process is attached. In my comments in every paper, I add a section that starts: “If you choose to revise this assignment for the portfolio, you might consider…” This gives students a starting point and a touchstone. If I’ve made similar suggestions on more than two papers, focusing on those issues will make a great revision.
  • Then I allow time for students to quite literally: Ask me anything (within reason) 🙂
  • Before we do course evaluations, I ask students to give some advice to the students taking the class next quarter. They each get a slip of paper with this on it: You’ve read a lot, you’ve written a lot, you’ve learned a lot about education and literacy…So, what advice would you give a student starting this class next quarter? Most often the advice is not to do the readings too far in advance! But these are really useful slips of paper for me (I’ve saved them all) and I share them on the first day of class the following quarter.
  • I end the class with a discussion of evaluations, which opened for them in the morning. Have a look at Stephanie’s newsletter about evals before you walk into class so you’re equipped with how they work. I say a few things about evals, how they can be biased and don’t necessarily assess what’s worth assessing. I also remind them that I am a thinking, feeling human being and whatever words they choose should keep that fact in mind. I ask them to open up their links and do the evaluation. When they’re done, they can leave.

Day 2 | Henry Museum Visit

  • Like the library, the Henry Gallery is an important piece of campus students should not overlook–many will walk past it for four years and never go in! For my last class, I always meet at the Henry to look at a different kind of literacy and another cool part of UW.
  • Our museum visit is optional but it’s always well attended. I start us in the Skyspace and thank them for the quarter then leave them to explore more on their own or with me.

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2024 English 131 Instructors Manual Copyright © 2024 by kersch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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