A "Discovery of Competence" Course - Blog 2

Sketch out a 3-week unit for a Kutz, Groden, and Zamel course that meets 3 time a week for 50 minutes per meeting. You'll want to include pre-reading activities, reading assignments, post-reading activities, brainstorming, drafting, revising, and editing/polishing.

•   day 1: Class welcome – present syllabus. Then, as an introduction to the course and to each other, think of a story you tell often to friends or family. No need to write yet. Get the idea of the story firmly in your head and come prepared to tell your story to the class on Wednesday. Volunteers tell a few stories as time permits at the end of class. 

•   day 2: Finish telling stories. Then ask students how they came up with which story they wanted to tell. Was it easy or hard to get an idea? Did they change their mind at any point about what to tell? What kinds of stories did we hear from the class and what was the intent of the telling (what did we learn about each other)? Following class discussion, give time to write down the story you told. HW: Finish writing the story and bring a draft to class.

•   day 3: Discuss how written stories might be a bit different than the oral versions (you’re using paragraphs now, for one thing). Lesson on paragraph structure and development. What is the purpose of paragraphs and how do they help the reader? Peer review of draft stories. HW: Revise story. Reading about oral storytelling, ask students to underline/highlight some parts they find interesting.

•   day 4: Collect stories. Discuss the reading and the act of annotating. What did you highlight and why? What other kind of markings might be useful to you as you read?

•   day 5: Put students into reading groups based on similarities I’ve found in their stories. As a group, read each other’s stories and talk about when you usually tell the story and how it was different telling it in front of the class compared to its usual context, how it is different written than they way you usually tell it? Come to some group conclusions about oral vs written texts. What are their functions? Present your group hypotheses to the class. Write ideas on board.  HW: Give students 3 circles. In Circle 1:  key points in your oral story, reflections on the story   Circle 2:  favorite lines in your written story, reflections  Circle 3:  note similarities and differences in language and context

•   day 6: Share your circles with your group. Jot down any new ideas that you’ve gotten from seeing what your groupmates wrote. Lesson on essay organization, transitions, etc. Brainstorm ways to organize your ideas.  Give essay prompt.

•   day 7: Bring draft of First Essay to class for Peer Review. Peer review with your group AND with someone not from your group (are your ideas clear to someone not in your discourse community?).  HW:  Revise paper.

•   day 8: Bring revised paper to class. Brief lesson on grammar/editing based on sentence-level errors seen in earlier drafts. Brainstorm different discourse communities students are a part of in preparation for next unit (ethnographic research on transactional/poetic discourse). Reading/example from Fieldwork textbook. Ask students to draw hypotheses about language use in different communities—write ideas on board. HW: choose a community to work with for next unit.

•   day 9: Turn in final draft of 4-page paper. Pre-writing about their discourse community. Assign daily discourse log for their fieldwork.