The WSU Teaching Blog will be on hiatus until the start of the Fall Semester in September 2012. In the meantime, catch up on any of the over five dozen posts you may have missed this year by visiting our archives for 2011 and 2012.
I usually march into my composition class with a general outline, a handful of illustrative examples, and a dry erase marker – all aimed at solving a problem or completing a task associated with the latest project I’ve assigned. My students seem to prefer this method: splitting the project into a series of scaffolded steps … Continue reading
Many pedagogical texts point out the importance of listening to our students. They tell us that we should not make assumptions about their interests or their views, but rather let them tell us what excites them or confuses them. We should answer their questions rather than try to stuff knowledge into them. One problem, however, … Continue reading
Dear WSU Teaching, What can you do when you are behind on returning work, and you have students asking you every class when they will receive their grades? Is there anything more helpful than saying “soon,” or reminding them that you’ve put grading paper X on the back burner so they can get feedback on … Continue reading
Imagine that one of your students submits an essay that begins like this: By means of the clack of a mouse, any person can right of entry an hard to believe affluence of in sequence on topics ranging from aardvarks to zygotes. We employ desktops, laptops, palmtops, and cellular telephones to attach through telephone appearance, … Continue reading
[note: in this blog post Ian Kennedy is a response to the program's February 2012 workshop on “Designing Effective Revision and Peer Review Workshops." Full video of that workshop is available here.] Something that came up in the recent workshop on peer revision and review was the issue of letting students leave for the … Continue reading
As a student and a type-A nerd, I have always been hesitant to break the rules. My cohort can attest to this. However, as a teacher I wanted to create a classroom ethos which was empathetic and friendly. My teaching style is mostly informal, so I assert my authority primarily by wearing dress clothes and … Continue reading
It was one of those weekends that befall every composition instructor. A weekend of grading final drafts. Maybe you have a settling in routine—or maybe you don’t. Sometimes I fluff and rearrange pillows and grade in bed, or grab a blanket and read at my dinner table. Perhaps you’re a coffee house grader, or a … Continue reading
This is my second semester teaching a pilot section of Eng 3010, but my first teaching the newly designed reflective component of this course. For those of you that are less familiar with the pilot project, there are six instructors involved in the study. The instructors are split into pairs to test the value of … Continue reading
Quiz time: which of the following is the single hardest question for an ENG 1020 student to answer? * How is ethos different from logos? * What strategies does this author use to persuade her reader? * What do you hope to accomplish by writing this paper? The correct choice is – none of the … Continue reading
