Eng 306 Writing for Teachers
Section 001: M, 5:30-8:15, Wimberly 210
Spring 2008
Instructor: Dr. Virginia
Crank
Office: 431B Wimberly
Hall Office phone:
785-6933
Office hours: MW 2:15-3:15,
TTh 11:30-12:30, or by appointment
E-mail: crank.virg@uwlax.edu or dengin3@charter.net
Website: http://www.uwlax.edu/faculty/crank
Course
Description: This is an
advanced writing course designed especially for students majoring in education.
The course has several goals:
-to give you further practice in
critical reading and writing;
-to give you a clearer understanding
of writing as a process;
-to give you a clearer understanding
of writing-to-learn;
-to guide you in exploring the goals
and values of education;
-to help you improve your writing
style;
-to expose you to writing within and
for your profession as a teacher;
-to give you practice in writing and
grading writing assignments.
Prerequisite: Eng 110 and sophomore standing.
Course
Overview:
The semester will be divided into three units: 1) Exploring the Myths and
Structures of Education, or Education as a Machine; 2) Exploding the Myths and
Structures of Education, or Education as a Process; and 3) Using Writing to
Teach and Learn. Within each unit, you’ll read a variety of texts and complete
a variety of written assignments. Lessons in prose style will be interspersed
within these three overall units.
Required
Texts:
There is no required text for this course. You will access some reading
materials online, and I’ll give you a packet of readings for each unit. These
reading packets ARE your textbook, and I expect you to engage deeply with each
article, highlighting, annotating, and preparing to discuss the materials.
Course
Requirements:
Project Folders (50%): For each of the three
units, you’ll submit a project folder containing both the shorter, more
informal writing assignments in that unit and the more formal essay these
shorter assignments led to. You’ll receive individual grades on the “major”
assignments and an overall folder grade. See the individual unit handouts for
the specific contents of each folder.
Journal Responses (20%): You’ll be writing informal
responses to some of the assigned essays. A journal response is a “safe”
writing space, a chance for you to reflect and explore your ideas about the
text without the constraints of graded writing. Don’t concern yourself with
things like thesis, focus, development, form, and
correctness; concern yourself with reflection, thought, connection, and
response. Use the journal to ponder questions, dilemmas, disagreements, or
revelations prompted by the reading. These journals should be at least one
single-spaced, typed page. Our course schedule will indicate when responses to
the assigned readings are due. Please post the journals to D2L AND bring
a hard copy to class with you.
Short Written Assignments (15%): Within each unit, there
will be some shorter writing assignments leading up to the major essay. These
will be evaluated individually as they are due, and then you’ll include them in
your project folder. You are encouraged to revise these shorter assignments before
submitting them in the project folder, as the revisions may make the entire
folder better.
Revised Folder (15%): Toward the end of the
semester, you’ll choose one of your three project folders to revise. You’ll
work on improving each of the texts within that project folder, considering the
audience and purpose for each text and evaluating how to make each text better
suit the rhetorical situation.
Your final grade, then, will be figured
according to the following point system:
Project Folder 1 100
Project Folder 2 150
Project Folder 3 250
Revised Folder 150
Short Written Assignments 150
Journals 200
The total of 1000 points will then be converted
to a percentage, to which your grade will be assigned according to the
following scale:
A 100-94
A/B 93-90
B 89-84
B/C 83-80
C 79-70
D 69-62
F 61-0
Attendance: Because a writing class is
a community and because this is a discussion-based class which meets only once
per week, I expect you to attend every class meeting. I will take attendance
each day, and I will penalize repeated absences. To be more specific, your
second absence from the class will reduce your final grade in the course by one
letter grade, your third by two letter grades; your fourth absence will earn
you an F in the course.
The
Learning Community: As future teachers, I’m sure you’ve already begun to hear that
phrase, “learning communities.” For me, it means that we are working together,
talking and thinking and writing and reading, to foster personal intellectual
growth. You probably already sense that this growth is fostered more by a
discussion-centered classroom than lecture-centered classroom. Therefore, I
expect that you’ll come to class each week ready to discuss, ready to engage
with the readings and assignments, ready to be an active participant in making
cognitive changes. If you aren’t prepared to do this, please reconsider your
decision to take my course.
Desire2Learn: As a way of maintaining
more sense of community while meeting only once per week, I’ve set up a D2L site
for our course. I’ll be requiring you to post certain assignments there, to
read and respond to each others’ work there, and to join in a few asynchronous
discussions. The so-called “extra” work on D2L will not be extra, as it will be
offset by the times when we end our weekly class meeting early. Any assignments
on D2L are required and scored, just as homework or in-class work would be.
PLEASE see this weekly interaction on D2L as an extension of our face-to-face
class time.
Late
Policy: I will take assignments up
to two days (two 24-hour periods) late, but for each day (24-hour period) that
the assignment is late, I will reduce the final grade on the assignment by 10%.
I will not accept work that is more than 48 hours late. So, for example, if an
assignment is due at class time on Monday, I will accept it only up until class
time on Wednesday.
FYI: Any student with a
documented disability (e.g., physical, learning, psychiatric, vision, or
hearing, etc.) who needs to arrange reasonable accommodations must contact the
instructor and Disability Resource Services, 165 Murphy Library at the
beginning of the semester. Students currently using Disability Resource
Services will have a copy of a contract that verifies they are qualified
students with disabilities who have documentation on file in the Disability
Resource Service office.
GENERAL
Schedule
For each unit, I’ll give you a more detailed
schedule of reading and writing assignments. What follows is a general overview
of the semester (assignments to be graded are italicized):
Week One: Introductions. Diagnostic essay.
Week Two:
Week Three: Education Week journal due.
Week Four: Conferences. Project Folder 1 due.
Week Five:
Week Six: Education Week journal due.
Week Seven: Conferences on course proposal. Prospectus due.
Week Eight:
Spring Break
Week Nine: Working with rough drafts of course proposal.
Week Ten: Project Folder 2 due. Education
Week journal due.
Week Eleven:
Week Twelve:
Week Thirteen:
Week Fourteen:
Week Fifteen: Revision. Conferences.
Final: Revised Folder due.