WR 112

Facilitating Discussions

Each Flipped Learning Module (FLM) is a set of short videos and online activities that can be used (in whole or in part) to free up class time from content delivery for greater student interaction. At the end of the module, students are asked to fill out a brief survey, in which we adopt the […]

Student Presentations and Strategies for Audience Engagement

WR 111, WR 112, WR 120, and WR 151 all require oral presentations for students and value these opportunities for students to speak to their peers. However, instructors sometimes struggle to sustain engagement on the part of the rest of the class during presentations. The following list provides some strategies to motivate audience members to […]

Place-Based Possibilities: Experiential Learning Ideas for WR Courses

This guide helps instructors connect place-based experiences and experiential learning to different courses in the WR sequence. Guiding Questions for Adventures Outside of the Classroom How can students engage deeply and safely with a place/event and its community/ies? What clear ground rules can you create to protect students while giving them freedom to explore? How wide […]

Self-Assessment

In this activity, best assigned within the first 2-3 days of the semester, students think about their past writing experiences and set goals for themselves for the coming semester. Instructors should think of this assignment as setting the tone for a semester of active metacognition, and as a precursor to the final portfolio or final reflective […]

WR 112 Discussion Leader Presentations

For this assignment, students in WR 112 work in teams to explore a short assigned course reading in greater depth and practice their oral presentation skills at the same time. Note that this assignment, which should occur somewhere between the third week of the semester and the eleventh week (that is, when reading and analyzing texts from […]

Synthesis Paper in WR 112

At the end of WR 112, students will write a formal, argument-driven synthesis essay on the longer work in combination with two of the short, anthologized essays that have been assigned. (Consult the sidebar here for notes on the essays and a list of the longer works currently used in WR 112.) Scaffold the assignment […]

Argument-Driven Paper in WR 112

At the beginning of WR 112, students need to write a formal, argument-driven academic essay on one of the short, anthologized essays that have been assigned. (Consult the sidebar here for notes on the essays currently used in WR 112.) Scaffold the assignment with a series of reading journals, summaries, claim-writing workshops, and other pre-writing […]

Summary, Paraphrase, and Outlines in WR 111

One of the important tasks of WR 111 is to teach students to craft strong, clear basic summaries of texts. Paraphrasing and outlining are of course related, though distinct, skills. The resources on this page may help instructors scaffold this assignment for students. For the first summary assignment in the course, spend additional time on […]

Writing Program Shared Vocabulary

This list represents some of the core shared vocabulary of the CAS Writing Program’s curriculum. Using these terms with students helps foster a common language across course sections and levels. Rhetorical Situation Audience Purpose Context Genre Mode (more applicable in WR 151/152) Argument Claim Reasons Evidence Acknowledgment and response Introductions Current situation/[common ground]/[background] Research question/[problem statement] […]