critical thought and analysis

Map-Making and Storytelling

Activities, Anti-Racist Pedagogy, critical thought and analysis, cultural awareness, identity, linguistic difference, linguistic diversity, Place-based Writing, prewriting and invention, Translation, translingualism, visual/multimodal rhetorics /

Gitte Frandsen Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description Transnational, multilingual students have extensive experiences negotiating language difference by translating, translanguaging, and drawing from their literacy and rhetorical resources (Canagarajah). Further, by traversing physical and digital borders, these students habitually engage in the transnational flow of ideas and information, which gives them access to a wealth […]

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Intersectional Identity Photo Essay

Critical Language Awareness, critical thought and analysis, cultural awareness, demystifying writing assignments, digital literacy, identity, linguistic difference, narrative and storytelling, visual/multimodal rhetorics /

Jackie Mohan Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description In this assignment, students craft a photo essay about their identity, through which they hone basic writing skills, understand genre, and develop an understanding of voice, tone, and style. Intersectionality refers to how we can better understand each person’s lived experiences in the world by examining how

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Building Inclusive Classrooms: Equipping Educators with an Introductory Social Justice Lesson Plan

Activities, Anti-Racist Pedagogy, Critical Language Awareness, critical thought and analysis, cultural awareness, identity, language bias, linguistic difference /

Bethany Meadows and Kimberly Groves Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description Many scholars have called for the necessity of social justice frameworks within K-16 classrooms for decades (e.g., Friere; hooks; Walton et al.; Muhammad). Specifically, in the first-year writing classroom, we know that neither writing nor our writing classrooms are neutral, apolitical spaces, but instead

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Collaborative Problem-Solving: Deliberative Discourse toward Group Consensus

Activities, collaboration and group work, critical thought and analysis, research, rhetoric, rhetorical situation /

Sarah Moon Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description This activity is inspired by work done at the Parrhesia Program for Public Discourse Faculty Seminar and the National Issues Forum approach to deliberative discourse. The activity goal is to provide opportunities to channel research and rhetorical education toward live, extemporaneous speech, not in a debate format

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“So What?” Speed Dating: Articulating an Argument’s Significance

Activities, critical thought and analysis, drafting and revising, Feedback, reflection, rhetorical appeals and argument /

Shannon Mooney Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description This activity is intended to help students practice articulating the larger stakes, or the “so what,” of an argumentative or analytical assignment. The activity works best after students have developed complete drafts, and it can be easily adapted for any paper that requires students to present and

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Literary Analysis via Songs

Activities, critical thought and analysis, reading, reading strategies, reading to write /

Sean Oros Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description The purpose of this lesson is to provide students a pathway for applying literary analysis skills to modern songs of their own choosing. The rationale for this is twofold: first, it is partially a response to avoiding copied responses from Spark Notes or Lit Notes and the

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The Grammar of Text Messaging: Analyzing Non-Standard English to Develop Genre Awareness

Critical Language Awareness, critical thought and analysis, digital literacy, grammar and mechanics, language bias, linguistic difference, linguistic diversity /

Kristen Vogel Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description In every course I teach, I work to instill in students the understanding that Standard English is merely one variety among many, rather than a superior form. In this assignment, students are asked to write an essay that analyzes the “grammar” of their own writing in a

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Large Language Models and Chain Stories: An Exploration of Creativity and Artificial Intelligence

Activities, collaboration and group work, critical thought and analysis, digital literacy, genAI, narrative and storytelling, writing technologies /

Chris Mayer Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description This lesson develops students’ awareness of the synergistic and disruptive potential of Large Language Models (LLMs) in storytelling. Designed for a first-year writing class, the lesson explores the interplay between creativity and AI by examining LLMs’ storytelling capabilities. Students will collaboratively create a chain story, then use

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Putting Ourselves in the Company of Writers: Overcoming Obstacles to Creating Successful Collaborations

Assignments, collaboration and group work, critical thought and analysis, identity, metacognition, reflection /

Samantha NeCamp & Connie Kendall Theado Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description “Don’t wait for the muse. As I’ve said, he’s a hardheaded guy who’s not susceptible to a lot of creative fluttering. This isn’t the Ouija board or the spirit-world we’re talking about here, but just another job like laying pipe or driving long-haul

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Engaging Audiences Beyond the University: Writing in and Reflecting on Non-Academic Rhetorical Situations

Assignments, critical thought and analysis, drafting and revising, Public Writing, research, rhetoric, rhetorical situation, secondary source research /

Rebecca Chenoweth Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description This assignment invites students to identify academic knowledge that they value, and to share this knowledge with a new audience that is impacted by and/or can impact the topic. They are then tasked with analyzing their own writing in this “non-academic” rhetorical situation. Both components of this

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