reading

“Read, Feed, and Seed”: Fostering Research Writing in Classroom Spaces

Activities, annotated bibliography, collaboration and group work, demystifying writing assignments, documentation, Integrating sources, reading, reading strategies, secondary source research /

Mustafa Masihuddin Siddiqui Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description During my first two terms teaching first-year composition classes at the University of Toronto, I faced multiple problems—my classes were not engaging enough; many of the students’ essays did not showcase deep understanding of the key course readings; some students did not apply the evidence into […]

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Getting Burned or Becoming Toast?: Problem-Exploring the Game “I Am Bread” as a Tool for Teaching Growth Mindset in First Year Writing

Activities, collaboration and group work, critical thought and analysis, prewriting and invention, Process, reading, reading to write, visual/multimodal rhetorics /

Laura E. Decker Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description First-year writers often struggle to take risks on projects, especially as they move from their composition courses to projects within new disciplines and contexts (Robertson et al.). However, taking risks by diving into new discourse communities, as Bartholomae argued, is required to participate effectively in the

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Reading in Conversation: A Student’s Guide to Social Annotation

reading, reading strategies, Volume 5, writing technologies /

Michelle Sprouse Volume 5 Chapter Description Students are often encouraged to annotate while reading. However, annotation is often framed as an individual undertaking, a conversation between a reader and text. This chapter repositions annotation in the writing classroom as a social activity that can support students’ literacy development. Beginning with opportunities for students to reflect

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Lobsters & Second Conversations: Addressing the “So What” in Your Writing

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

Stina Kasik Oakes Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description What’s a lobster? A second conversation? For years I worked to explain to students how to incorporate purpose, depth, and meaning into their writing with the terms “deeper meaning,” or “story under the story,” or “what the essay is really about.” But these phrases didn’t quite

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Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources

reading to write, Volume 2 /

Karen Rosenberg Volume 2 Chapter Description As a writing instructor, you want to help students reflect on and refine reading practices that are so crucial to writing and academic success.  An examination of the elements of a rhetorical reading strategy—conceptualizing reading as part of an academic conversation, reading actively (and what this looks like), figuring

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Punctuation’s Rhetorical Effects

grammar and mechanics, reading to write, Volume 3 /

Kevin Cassell Volume 3 Chapter Description Many students tend to think of punctuation as governed by a set of rules. This chapter encourages them to conceive of punctuation as a system of conventions, which includes standard expectations of correct usage—certain “rules”—but applies them within a broader rhetorical context. After distinguishing between punctuation and grammar (the

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