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Introductory Writing Course

Mind mapping paper 3

Students brainstorm and outline an persuasive essay using free online mind mapping tools.

Mapping a Controversy (Literally)

Students create Google maps to contextualize events and locations related to their controversies.

Speed Dating with Thesis Statements

Meet a room full of thesis statements that want to meet YOU!

Identifying Reasons and Evidence with Friends

This lesson uses the popular sitcom Friends and the classic public debate of "Faith Vs. Reason" to create a fun, accessible way of understanding the relationship between claims, reasons, and evidence.

Exercises in Style

Image by Claude Strassart-Springer, from the book "Alphabet" by Raymond Queneau

Teach revisions and the infinite possibilities of rewriting the same paragraph with this exercise, adopted from Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style

Bridging Summary and Analysis with Standup Clips

Aziz Ansari Comedy Poster

This assignment uses clips from standup comedy specials to hone student skills of summary and synethesis, for the controversy map essay assignment.

Bridging Summary and Analysis with Standup Clips

Aziz Ansari Comedy Poster

This assignment uses clips from standup comedy specials to hone student skills of summary and synethesis, for the controversy map essay assignment.

Concession, Refutation and Rebuttal Through Amazon Reviews

In this activity, students will use Amazon reviews of the Women's Sexy PhD Halloween costume to identify places where the authors concede, refute and rebut the idea behind the costume. They will then come up with their own Amazon reviews for a product, real or imagined, of their choice.

Digital/Physical Library Scavenger Hunt

Library bookshelves

For the first time in my admittedly short teaching career, I created and oversaw a library scavenger hunt for my class this semester. As critics of the activity have argued, the library scavenger hunt is at risk of purposelessness, particularly if it’s not designed with clear pedagogical or research goals in mind.

Peer-to-Peer Review

red pen and paper

When revising a paper, a second pair of eyes is always useful. But who says those have to be human eyes? By utilizing a range of peer review technologies, your students get to play teacher for each other — and for themselves.

Enthy/memes: Making Memes to Teach Logos

To pratice creating and breaking down enthymemes, I had students create memes (about anything), break down the stated and unstated premises and ultimately, come to a conclusion as to the meme's argument.

Building Word Clouds to Generate Search Terms

Voyant Word Cloud for Marijuana Legalization Corpus

Help your students get an overview of their topic and a leg up on their research by creating word cloud visualizations of their topics.

Introducing Rhetorical Analysis with the 1491s

The 1491s Logo

This lesson plan uses the 1491s' youtube videos "I'm an Indian Too" and "Lincoln Was a Douche" to introduce students to rhetorical analysis.

Introducing Rhetorical Analysis with Contemporary Advertisements

The aim of this lesson is to provide students with an accessible and engaging introduction to rhetorical analysis. Students will view four brief texts—three thirty-second videos and one print advertisement—and try to identify the audience, the speaker, and the argument contained in each.

Using Prezi for Outlining Papers

Students will synthesize their own rhetorical analysis with background research on their selected controversies using the visual-spatial format mimicked by Prezi's software.

Fostering a Feminist Classroom Climate

Whiteboard with brainstormed text about what makes a class successful

In this icebreaking activity, students think-pair-share on the question "What makes a class a success?" This gives them the opportunity to meet a new classmate and contribute to setting the classroom tone for the semester ahead.

Advertising Agency

Agency

Help your students realize when they're being advertised to by helping them turn the tables on the Don Drapers of the Internet.

Teaching Credibility with Twitter

Introducing the concept of credibility by analyzing tweets.

Annotated Bibliographies with Canvas Discussion Board

Discussion Thread

This assignment introduces annotated bibliographies to the students as preparation for a longer homework assignment, and their first paper. In using a public forum, students will see that even annotated bibliographies containing the same sources are flexible products influenced by individual projects.

Contextualizing Web Research

US Map of Shootings by Police

Research in composition courses is often taught in a vacuum—a set of skills that can be used to write a college paper, but irrelevant to the “real world” outside.

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