While the writing and analytical opportunities I present to students in each class are unique for that particular group of individuals and semester, here are some major projects from my literature and composition courses.
Literature Assignments
Multimodal Final Project Instructions and Final Project Step By Step Guide
Scholars and teachers who study literature write in a variety of ways, utilizing numerous approaches and multiple types of writing. This project asks students to choose a certain kind of real world writing about literature, purposefully and thoughtfully utilizing models to create a work that demonstrates understanding of the unique ways that people think about literary texts.
Multimodal Final Project- Proposal and Rationale Instructions
Before students begin their project, they complete a proposal that describes the research they’ve conducted to learn more about their book or topic as well as the models they have looked at that will be the basis of their own creative and analytical choices. Then, after the project is complete, students create a follow up document submitted with the final project to show how this research and close examination of models has influenced their project choices. This rationale explains and defends how their project meets objectives using examples from the project itself.
Final Multimodal Project Sample Research Questions and Recommended Project Genres
Although having choices can lead to creativity, some students struggle in deciding what kind of topic to pursue or what kind of project to create. These documents model styles of research question that offer sufficient depth and specificity and highlight several key genres (or types of projects students can create) students have had success working with in the past. It can be difficult to anticipate what types of projects are realistic to tackle successfully given the time and experience constraints of class, and thus this document offers recommended genres that have more specific conventions students can learn about by studying more accessible examples.
Children’s Literature Read Aloud Assignment and In-Person/Online Hybrid Read Aloud Instructions
Picturebooks are a medium often designed and created with a particular reading experience in mind: an adult reading a book to a child. This experience is more than simply articulating the words on a page, but creating a moment and often a memory with a child that can have a profound impact. With this context in mind, students choose a day from the sign up sheet, selecting the book they wish to share with the class. Reading aloud involves both creative expression and critical analysis; teachers, parents, and other adults mediate an experience in which a child can come to understand a book’s meaning. This assignment simulates this experience and gives students opportunities to not only analyze these texts, but consider how they might discuss their findings with young readers.
Film Interpretation Term Handout Instructions
Adolescent Literature Article Handout Instructions and Multipurpose Critical Text Handout Instructions
The critical text handout assignments offer a chance for students to delve into critical discourse related to class materials and share what they discover with their peers. Students select and read a critical article/text/term, then synthesize the main ideas into a visually appealing one page handout that focuses on identifying key quotes, defining related terms, and making connections to other scholarship.
Midterm Teaching Guide Instructions
This project offers students a chance to practice MDE teacher-preparation standards by creating a guide that would aide teachers in developing standards-based curriculum focused on textual analysis. In addition to creating a visually dynamic guide to a specific children’s book, students will also reflect on how it demonstrates their learning as future educators in a meta-analytical rationale.
Students engage in a realistic simulation of an academic conference by each presenting a 3-5 minute paper based around an original thesis and argument related to a piece of children’s or adolescent literature they have selected. Students form panels based on similar topics and after sharing their papers, discuss commonalities through a question and answer session, followed by individual meetings with the instructor to discuss their ideas more fully.
In Person Participation Opportunities and Hybrid Class Participation Opportunities
Online Discussion Questions and Discussion Board Instructions
Building an academic community is crucial to engage fully with critical ideas. This is an important goal of this course, so that together, we might explore new ideas and perspectives in response to a deepening understanding of theory. Thus, active and daily participation is necessary for class success. Students have multiple opportunities to share their ideas and knowledge throughout the semester, and to demonstrate the value placed on these contributions, they earn class points for this participation.
The line of inquiry assignment asks students to choose one or more pieces of assigned class reading and/or theoretical concepts discussed in class and develop a research project that would explore this/these ideas and texts in more depth. The goal of the assignment is to envision a larger project analyzing a book or applying a theory and do some preliminary work to both make observations about primary texts and seek research that would inform and bolster such study. While students need not draw firm conclusions for this assignment, they will develop several specific and robust research questions, pairing these with secondary-source research.
Opening Writing Instructions & Closing Writing Instructions
In this writing sequence, students framed the semester with two analytical writing assignments that allowed us to discuss trends in the field, with particular regard to visual representations in film.
Visual Analysis Essay Instruction & Final Project
In courses with a range of students (at undergraduate and graduate levels), this midterm and final project sequence allows students to pursue their own research goals and interests, including preparation for WMU’s comprehensive doctoral exam.
To give students an opportunity to further their ideas in ways similar to the review process for academic publication, I also offered the chance for students to revise and resubmit their analytical writing.
Writing Development Sequences with Two Assignments or Four Components
To develop their analytical writing, students work on several short writing assignments throughout the semester in order to develop their ability to write analytically. Each of these essays builds on the one before as students choose specific elements of their work to improve, directing their attention on elements of thesis development, organization and use of evidence, substantive conclusions and depth of analysis, etc. They articulate what they will focus on in each essay toward improvement and work to develop their writing throughout the term.
Critical Thinking in Action Project
This project asks students to choose their own approach to writing about literature, purposefully and thoughtfully selecting or creating a genre (any type of real world writing or communication) that will exhibit critical thinking and demonstrate their understanding of the unique ways that scholars and teachers think about literary texts.
The daybook is a place to collect, organize, reflect on and explore thoughts, ideas, musings, and connections you make in your daily life as a critical thinker. Students will use the daybook throughout the semester, then collect evidence of the work they’ve done by selecting and photocopying entries that demonstrate their growth as a questioner, a creative thinker, an analytic thinker, a connection-maker, and a reviser.
Literary Activity Portfolio Assignment
The purpose of the portfolio and report is to interrogate the activities of those who engage literature in a variety of situations, examining a range of literary practices and approaches to literature to replicate this kind of thinking and transfer this critical consciousness to new situations. Students produce a variety of written/spoken genres and comment on these texts, attempting to articulate what are the similarities and differences in the ways that people think about literature.
IDS 121 Literary Activity Assignment
This assignment is a variation on the literary research assignment suited especially to general education students studying adapted texts.
Annotated Bibliography Assignment
Students will compile a group of review style annotations of texts related to a particular theme or concept, then note the implications of this research by describing several considerations relevant to texts in this grouping.
Composition and Writing Studies Projects
Consumer to Producer Literate Activity Project
By turning their perspective from a user to a producer of a particular kind of writing, students will focus their investigation on the various factors that impact writers who produce this text and the system in which they do so.
Genre Portfolio Assignment: Professional Language and Culture Exploration
Students consider a particular discipline by analyzing and researching the ways individuals in that field communicate with one another in a variety of ways. The focus here is on identifying the genres of writing and speech that exist in a particular workplace, then consider carefully how these types of communication affect culture in that community in ways similar and different from other careers/fields/disciplines.
Entering Disciplinary Discourse Assignment
Students will again analyze the features, conventions, and expectations inherent to genre published in their particular field, whether academic, creative, or commercially oriented, then produce a text that demonstrates their understanding of the system in which such a text is embedded.
Field Specific Poster Presentation Assignment
This assignment asks students to great a professional visual text that provides viewer/audience an overview of the information gained about genre from both previous projects by synthesizing information and
preparing to speak to colleagues about what they have discovered.
Multimodal Genre Research Project
Students research a self-selected topic of personal and social significance, then explore the parameters of either an established informational genre or one of their own creation, using this format to present information they have collected and documented through sophisticated research techniques.
Narrative Juxtaposition Project
In an effort to deconstruct the idea of genre, students will maintain narrative elements of a story from their life or a known literary work, then placing the story within a new genre to demonstrate their understanding of a genre’s parameters, conventions, and expectations.
Students will analyze a specific genre of spoken rhetoric, then mimic the genre by using their knowledge of its conventions to create a new, original text to deliver a message of personal importance in a new context, presenting this to the class either in live form or via a multimedia presentation.
Students have the opportunity in this assignment to compose their own scholarly article to submit to the Grassroots Writing Research Journal. After creating a report detailing the conventions and expectations of the GWRJ, they create a 10-15 page article and work with classmates to revise and prepare their work for potential publication.
Second Star to the Right 