Writing about the Writing in a College Classroom

I am temporarily caught up on my grading for my onground courses.  Of course, that's partly troubling because so many of my students need to turn in work.  They have time, but much less time than they once did.

In my ENGL102 class (a first year class that continues the practice of essay writing along with a study of literature), I created a writing assignment that went spectacularly well.  In some ways I didn't deserve for it to turn out so well.  I created it almost by accident.

I wanted my students to have the chance to do something more creative, but I also wanted them to do some analysis so they didn't just download a picture and call it done.  I also wanted to give them some guidance about what an analytical response would consider.

I was very pleased with the self-analysis that my students did.  I expected that they might write a sentence or two under each heading and call it done.  Instead, they wrote with depth and developed solid analysis.  I was not only pleased, but I was impressed.

This morning, I'm thinking about writing assignments and the skills I would like my students to develop.  Being able to analyze their own writing is a skill worth having.

Here's the assignment:

Module 2 Essay Assignment:  Seasons and Holidays

This Assignment is in Two Parts.  Failure to complete both parts will result in a grade below 65%.

Part One

Create a response to this prompt:  Seasons and Holidays.  It should take you at least 2 hours to create this response.  You will not get full credit if you give me an image of something associated with a holiday that takes you 15 seconds to download and cut and paste.

It’s a broad prompt on purpose.   You can be pro-Season/Holiday or against. 

You could go in either a creative or an analytical direction.  We will be discussing a variety of approaches in class from September 19 through October 5, and you should feel free to adopt one of those approaches or to go out in your own direction.

 Here are some ideas:

 Creative approaches: write a short story or a poem or a series of poems.  Write a recipe.  Create a photo montage, either or your own or others (please give credit when using the work of someone else).  Write an essay that tries to capture the holiday or season by evoking one or more of your senses.  Create a song.  Do creative baking and take a photo of the process.  Make a collage.  Sew some pieces of fabric together in a pattern, one you create or one that someone else has created.

 Analytical approaches:  analyze the effectiveness of one or more of the literature/writing pieces and/or the music and/or the images that we talked about in class.  Talk about what makes good seasonal music—or bad.  Look at a specific piece of the history of the season or the holiday.  Argue that your favorite holiday deserves to be paid time off for everyone.  Write a narrative history that tells about an experience that you had in conjunction with one of the seasons or with a holiday.

Part Two

You will complete a piece of writing (typed) that analyzes your response to Part One.  I will be looking for the following, with headings included in your piece of writing (I’ve underlined the headings that I want you to include; your writing should expand on the prompts I give you below each heading).  Please make sure to address each aspect to some degree.  This piece of writing can be as long as you wish, but at a minimum, most students will need 500 words total to address all of the following aspects:

 Pre-Creating Process

--What was your thought process as you decided what you wanted to do for Part One?  Did you do anything else in addition to thinking?  How did class conversation help?  Was your creative process helped/hurt by other classes, other humans, other events?  

Other Possible Approaches 

--What other approaches did you consider before you proceeded with what you would turn in for Part One?  You should talk about two other approaches.

Analysis of Part One Response 

--What did you try to do?  Where does your response succeed?  What do you wish you could have done better?  What surprised you as you worked on your response?  If you could do it all over again, what would you do?

 Analysis of Educational Value 

--In some ways, this approach is very different than a standard essay composition assignment.  Analyze the usefulness of this essay assignment.  When I teach this class again, should I keep this assignment, and if so, what changes should I make?