Rhetorical Appeals With a Side of Fries
Purpose: Through comedy and recognizable references to fast food restaurants, students will see how hyperbole and drama are used for...
Talking About Genre By Mapping Texts in Composition Courses
Purpose: I’ve used versions of this lesson in the various composition courses I’ve taught. It has quite a few access points for linking...
Dinner Party Prewriting
Purpose: To help students use research in their essays and begin organizing their information, specifically in terms of synthesizing...
Dialogic Conference
Purpose: This is an activity meant to be done in preparation for one-on-one conferences with students. It's meant to keep the dialogue of...
Exploring Plagiarism through Pop Culture Scenarios
Description and Purpose: This is intended to be a pop culture variant of an existing plagiarism exercise where students analyze scenarios...
Exposing the Iceberg: An Exercise in Description and Style
Purpose: This exercise focuses on two skills: writing detailed descriptions and practicing different genres/styles. In most cases, it is...
How to Eat a Poem
Purpose: When reading poetry, students so often feel pressure to find the “deeper” or “underlying” meaning. This exercise is meant to...
Sofa to 5k: Active Reading
Purpose: This exercise demonstrates the relationship between active-reading and efficient-reading. Students should learn that attentive...
Finding the Commonalities: Investing Organizational Structures and Formatting of Academic Articles
Purpose: Helping students develop knowledge about organizational structures and formatting common to academic articles, so that can use ...
Appealing to an Audience: How Publications Set a Tone with Content, Structure and Design
Purpose: Understanding how journals and newspapers set a particular tone for their audiences and how writing style changes across...