Texts as Teaching Tools

Using the CWP Student Guide and The Everyday Writer

If you require students to purchase a text, create assignments from the text and cover them in class.

Been There, Done That: Student Essays from the Core Writing Program

All three of the CWP courses are covered.

Format: Instructor’s assignment, the student’s essay, student’s reflection, and contributors’ bios.

The guide will help students:

• Have a clearer picture of the course goals and objectives
• See the challenges that other students have had with the assignments
• Hear some real-world comments about writing and particular assignments
• Read essays that demonstrate fellow students’ mastery of some or all of the objectives for a particular assignment
• See that writing actually is a recursive process that grows and evolves as you progress through the assignment
• Take some of the pain out of completing their assignments and learn to have fun with writing.

Some ways to use the Guide:

• Have students read pages 1-5 during the first week of class to gain an overview of the Core Writing Program.
• Use appropriate assignments as examples for your classes, and have students read them before they start brainstorming for their own essays.
• Discuss in class what makes an assignment successful.
• Discuss what kind of work earns an A or B?
• Break students up into groups to read the essays and provide comments to the class about what makes the essay, or sections of it, successful.

The Everyday Writer

Help students become familiar with this book and rely on it.

Some ways to use The Everyday Writer:

• Assign readings about the topics you will discuss that day.
• Use EW for collaborative assignments during the entire drafting process.

Invention

• Create assignments around the chapters on “Rhetorical Situations” (27) and “Exploring Ideas” (30-34) early in your class

• Get students accustomed to brainstorming and freewriting in class on a regular basis.  Soon they will expect to do some writing in class every day.

• Peter Elbow recommends that students freewrite for at least ten minutes a day to improve their writing (Writing Without Teachers 9).

• Allow students to dedicate a section of their journals to freewriting that you won’t read.

Drafting

• Thesis statement round robin
• Does the TS interest you?
• Is it clear and well focused? How could the author make it clearer?
• Could it be narrowed down? Can the author develop it in a short paper?
• Organization
• Help students create a plan for their paper (37)
• Discuss patterns of development (43-47)

Revising

• Develop in-class workshops on revising for specific areas, i.e., paragraph order, transitions, signal verbs, opening paragraphs and conclusions.
• Have students read each other’s original work and revised paragraphs and provide comments.

Peer Response

• Discuss guidelines (57) and purpose
• Final editing

Grammar Workshops and Games for English 1 and 101

• Grammar stations
• Students work in pairs and become experts on a particular element of grammar—pages 11-24 provide good ideas
• You provide students with a list of questions and sentences to revise.
• Half the students move around the room to visit the stations, revise their sentences, then student switch.
• Save the last fifteen minutes of class to go over the revisions.

• Jeopardy
• Fly swatter game
• Scavenger hunt

Download an RTF version of Using the CWP Student Guide and The Everyday Writer.