This page contains two sets of example curriculum for teaching freshman composition. The first set was created jointly by myself and Anne Beaufort for use by new teaching assistants during the Fall 2005 semester while they were taking the mentoring course. This curriculum was used by approximately 30 TAs during that semester. Along with the development of the curriculum itself, we also created a massive teacher resource library. Many of my contributions to that library can be found in the "handouts" and "activites" sections of this site.
The second set of curriculum was curriculum I designed to fit the "Real Texts/Rhetorical Situations" syllabus approach for first-year writing at Purdue University. This curriculum was first used in Spring 2006.
All links below are in PDF format.
All activites are in PDF format.
Teaching Paper Organization: A murder-mystery exercise for teaching organization.
Demonstrating the Writing Process: An in-class exercise that spans several days that allows you to demonstrate the writing process in a student-centered, creative way.
Teaching Observation: Ways to teach observation during a unit focused on Ethnography or some other primary research.
Jeopardy Game: A game to play to assess both student retention of knowledge and to review what has been covered in the course so far.
Tips for Teaching Revision: A series of techniqes I have developed to teach revision to my writing students.
All handouts are in PDF format.
Primary Research Handout: A handout that gives basics of primary research.
Ethnographic Research: An overview of ethnographic research--ethics, observation, data collection, and data analysis.
Synthesis of Data: For use in an ethnography unit--this in-class exercise has students synthesizing raw data into a written format.
From Data to Draft: An in-class exercise that has students transition from raw observational data to a written format.
Analyzing a Discourse Community- A handout that gives an overviw for students of how to analyze a discourse community.
Example Discourse Community Map
On Visual Argumentation: An in-class activitiy that uses magazine advertisments and argumentative materials.
Evaluating Sources: A handout that discusses library sources vs. web sources. It includes how to analyze and evaluate them also.
Works Cited Formulas: A sheet that simplifies works cited entries.
Discourse community map (sample) in JPG format.
