Thank you for welcoming me into your classroom today. I was talking with some college freshmen, and they wanted to know what it was like to be a 7th grade student today. So, they came up with five questions, and I told them that you all would help them out. I will get you in to groups of three or four, then you will get a notecard with one question written on it. One person can be the designated "notetaker," writing on the back of the notecard all of the ideas that your group comes up with for this question.
Just think: What's so cool about being about a 7th grade student now? Probably a lot!!
English 101: Fun with Words
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Monday, April 30, 2012
Monday, April 30
We began our English 101 Assessment today in class, which will continue through Friday. Make sure that you are saving your work in the correct folders in the STV 250 folders. See the post below this for more information regarding the procedure.
Friday, April 27, 2012
Friday, April 27
Today in class we finished up the learning blog presentations and begin to go over the information needed for next week, deemed "Assessment Week." Read through the rest of this blog post, highlighting the assessment and what is expected of you for this weekend. The two posts below this, regarding STV folders and the actual instrument used for assessment, will elaborate on this overview. If you have questions, please let me know. If not, we'll also have a chance to work through some of these things together.
The Illinois State University Writing Program Assessment
Spring 2012
The
Assessment Goals: The Assessment instrument includes 8
items – which the students will be asked to respond to in a “report”
format. These items are closely related
to our program learning outcomes. They encourage students to reflect on their
composition practices, and to use their class productions to analyze and
demonstrate their learning. With this assessment we are trying to get a sense
of “what learning looks like” in a genre studies based writing course. We will be analyzing (rather than evaluating)
students’ answers to see how they use terms and concepts and how they use
examples from their own writing to illustrate their understanding of these
terms and concepts. We will not be
assessing “writing mastery” in the student texts, nor will we be assessing
teacher efficacy. Hopefully, our analysis will also uncover examples that
we can use to extend our understanding of how our learning outcomes are being
taken up and used by students.. It may
also help us consider changes to our learning outcomes, and serve as a baseline
for future assessments.
This Assessment is
worth: 15 points (along with the various participation points)
When: You’ll get
started on organizing and writing stuff. Then, we’ll have Monday-Friday of next
week to get everything in order (although we may be finishing up blog
presentations on Monday, as well)
What To Do (Some
procedures to make our lives/class easier…):
·
This
weekend: Gather up your work/main projects from this semester. Don’t forget
about some selections from your learning blogs. This will be uploaded onto the
STV folder (see page regarding access to STV folder at home) and is your
student portfolio. Either:
o
Save them to your student folder (“your
name”<Portfolios<Writing Program Assessment<Nicole Osolin) on your
home computer. See the next sheet detailing how to get to these folders from
hom
o
Or: Save them all onto a thumb drive, bring them
to class, and upload them onto the STV folders from here
o
In the least: Have all this work collected
·
Also this
weekend: Begin working on the 8
questions for assessment, making sure to look over each one and see what types
of work/examples you need to fully answer the question. I will look over your
work in Monday’s class. You will have thru next Friday to finish this up. Keep
in mind, your writing is not being graded, so it doesn’t have to be perfect,
just readable
o
These documents/answers will then be uploaded to
“your name”<Assessments<Writing Program Assessment<Nicole Osolin.”
o
This questions are the last two sheets of this
document..
Assessment Instrument
Writing Program Assessment Spring 2012
The Assessment Instrument
The assessment instrument will be presented
to the students as a series of questions, which they’ll address using a
report-style structure. At least one of
the questions calls for student to create maps that illustrate their
activities.
Question 1: Identifying Genre
The
response to this question should contain two parts:
Part
One: Using specific
examples from class discussions about genre, explain your understanding of how
genres are identified, constructed, produced.
Part
Two: Then, select one of
your major compositions you did for your class this semester. Describe how you
understand the specific elements of the “genre” (or genres) for that
writing. How was the content you created
shaped by the boundaries and features of the genre? Be sure to provide specific examples from the
text to illustrate your points and makes sure to thoroughly describe the
choices you made regarding complying (or not) with the genre in your
writing. (For example, were there things
you couldn’t say about your topic because it didn’t fit with the genre? How did
the genre affect the research you included?)
Question 2: Organizing Information in Multiple Genres
The response to this question should
contain two parts:
Part
One: Select
any one genre that you worked on during the class and discuss how the
organizational features of that genre work to shape the content.
Part
Two: Select a different
genre (from the first one) and discuss/analyze how the features and
requirements of the new genre might shape the content differently. If your class has done this kind of “genre
juxtaposition” (moving content from one genre to another) you can use examples
of that work for this response.
Otherwise, you can choose any other genre you think would be interesting
to discuss.
|
Question 3: Technology/Media
Respond
to one of the following writing situations by describing the decisions you
might need to make regarding technology or media – What tools would you use to
create and distribute the text? Keep in
mind that tools/media/technology can include any material object you use to
produce or distribute the text. What
“things” would you use to create the text, and what (perhaps unconventional)
tools/or venues might you use to distribute it?
Also consider how these technology/media choices impact the text you
create.
To
do this, imagine you need to produce a text about one of the following topics
(choose only one):
|
Question 4: The Trajectories of Literate Activity
We’d like you to create a visual map
of one your major textual productions from this semester (could be a production
that you did outside of ENG 101) and discuss the text’s trajectory. Consider these three elements: 1) everything
that went into to making the text, from your previous knowledge to the
resources you used, and even what was necessary to create those resources, 1)
what genres is your text connected to or derived from and how might you map
these genres in connection to your text, and 2) what are some of the future
interactions that individuals might have with your text. Keep in mind a person need not physically see
your project to interact with it. Think
about the following:
·
How
did the text begin and how did it move out into the world?
·
What
other genres (generally) or specific examples of genres did you use to
inform/understand your production?
·
Who
read it?
·
Who
do you anticipate might read it in the future?
·
What
might those readers do with the text?
·
How
might the text be stored, or disseminated to others?
·
What
new kinds of texts (if any) could the ideas in the text be used to create?
·
What
cultural institutions or organizations (if any) does the text help to support
or challenge?
Your visual map can be done digitally
or in some kind of “print-based” form.
Instructors and students can (and should) discuss how you want to
approach this mapping process. Be sure
to include some kind of key and/or a written discussion of your mapping
process.
Question Five: Flexible Research Skills
Imagine that you plan to do research
on a more specific variant of one of the following topics, but not as an
assignment for school. Discuss where you
would go (physically and digitally) and what you would do to find the
information you need.
|
In
your response to this question, try to describe (in as much detail as possible)
some (or all) of the following issues:
·
What kinds of technologies or media
might you make use of in your search?
·
Who are some of the people you might
gather information from (either as informants or as experts)?
·
How would you decide what kind of
information is applicable to your project?
·
What criteria would you use to make
decisions about the types of information that would be useful or valid for this
project?
·
Using the possible texts for this
topic discuss some examples of sources that might or might not be credible to
use for this project.
·
What
might you do with this information? Why and how?
Question Six: Using Citation Formats/Citing Source Material
in Multiple Genres
Explore
how citation functions within one of your projects from this semester. What citation format did you use, and how did
it work within your text? Why was this
source cited in this way? Then, discuss
the purpose of citation methods in general.
You may want consider how your evaluation of sources affects the purpose
of citation.
Question Seven: Grammatical Usage and Sentence Structure
Discuss a particular issue/concept or “rule”
of style or punctuation that you learned about during ENG 101? Try to provide examples of how you worked
with these concepts in specific projects or writing activities during the
semester (both in 101 and perhaps in other classes). Explain specifically the
rule of this convention as if you were going to teach it to someone. Consider how you came to this knowledge.
Question Eight: The issue of Transfer
Take
a few moments to consider the kinds of genres you use to write outside of
school. What kinds of skills have you
developed to help you use those genres?
Now take a moment to consider the kinds of genres you’ve used to write
in ENG 101. What kinds of skills have
you developed to help you use those genres?
In what ways are the skills you use to write outside of school similar
to or different from the skills you use to write in school? Please use examples
from your writing to illustrate your discussion.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Uploading Assessment/Portfolio Stuff from Your Home Computer
Using the STV250
folder system from outside the lab
Go to https://webvpn.ilstu.edu.
Log in using your ULID and password. In the top right of the page you will see
a text box; enter “\\datastore\stv250”
and click browse. The contents of the STV250 folder will appear.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Monday, April 23
Today in class, we turned in our final projects for Unit 3. On Wednesday, you have your final learning blogs due and will take a few minutes to briefly present about your learning blogs, how far you've come in this class regarding writing, what you still have to learn, etc, If you have questions regarding this presentation, please see a subsequent blog post detailing these requirements.
Monday, April 16, 2012
Monday, April 16
Today, we had our final peer review session of the semester--on our rough drafts for the grassroots article. Hopefully this session was helpful to all. On Wednesday and Friday, we will hold our individual writing conferences with me, so remember to meet with me on your designated date/time. I will post/email you all those times soon.
Happy Writing!
Nicole
Happy Writing!
Nicole
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