Designing Writing Assignments and Class Difficulties

Goals

I learned when reading chapter 4 of The Longman Teaching Assistants Handbook (2008) that there are four main types of goals to keep in mind when developing assignments for students:

1. Helping students learn materials.

2. Helping students learn about themselves;

3. Helping students learn about perspectives and experiences differing from their own;

4. To help student develop particular skills

So far, I've tried to intentionally and creatively vary the format and purpose of assignments each week.

Goal 1:

• A rhetorical analysis essay following a unit on rhetoric allowed students to practice evaluating sources through the lenses of logos, ethos, and pathos and determine intended audience, modes of persuasion, and intent of the writer. (Week 6)

Goal 2:

• I have assigned short journal reflection entries for students to become self-aware of their own strengths and weaknesses when writing, as well as facing their writing insecurities (Weeks 1, 3, and 5).

Goal 3:

• I purposefully asked students to draft a personal narrative essay, share it, and then to intentionally peer review at least three other student essays. I wanted to expose them each to the diversity of others' experiences as well as develop critical (yet compassionate) compositional editing skills (Weeks 6 and 7).

Goal 4:

• In general, all weeks have at least one writing exercise, normally a discussion post forum to contribute to, to keep students practicing their skills.

• For the upcoming unit focusing writing academic papers, assignments will be designed to walk students through the process of researching in databases, introduce students to using proper citations, and then giving them ample practice with the skills of researching and referencing for their own project.

Getting Creative

Many of my students had difficulty getting access to the McGraw Hill textbook. Every single one of them has been fantastic with communicating with me their needs and struggles. For many of them, almost half, their textbook was put onto a backorder list...and then pushed back a second time. Around week 6 of class I ended up mailing the last two non-book having students some of the example hard copies I had been given as a teacher by the book company.

I've had to get creative with alternative avenues of knowledge sharing, such as more youtube videos and external websites that cover composition content. It's been frustrating for students not having the textbook and heartbreaking for me to have had students fearing retribution on my end in the early weeks. I made sure that all of them knew that I was flexible, friendly, and empathetic to the situation. We'd roll with the punches and adapt as frequently as necessary so that they could still learn the concepts and participate in the activities.

Late work impacted by not having the textbook has not been penalized...so long as students communicated ahead of time the situation for the particular assignment. Nearly all of them have caught up on submissions as of writing this. I'm proud of them for working so hard.

Self-Critique

I wish I had been able to engage with the assigned practicum readings on schedule. I landed my dream job two weeks into semester and balancing work responsibilities, teaching, and then practicum homework was extremely difficult. I made the decision to prioritize being present and flexible for my students at the cost of dropping the ball on my practicum readings and blog posting.

I know that I would have better served my students had I been able to read the section of how to design effective assignment sheets. The chapter made clear that I need to hyperfocus on making sure that my instructions are exact and leave no room for differing interpretations which could lead to individual confusion.

I already made the mistake of assuming my students would grasp a concept and apply it. I need to be more aware of the possibilities that what may be obvious to me may not even cross their mind. What happened was for the personal narrative essay, after they had read the assigned chapters and done the activity to determine their personal experience to use as their essay topic, I assumed that students would "get" that narratives need descriptive details and also a beginning, middle, and end for the event being described.

I was incorrect. I've had to gently guide students with supportive feedback to make certain improvements before they submit a new draft for their peers to review.