Practicing Ethopoeia with Jordan Loveridge

Follow the link below to see a slideshow of Jordan’s class:

Practicing Ethopoeia with Jordan Loveridge VITA 2014-10-31

VITA Video Project Part 2 Page Count Requirements and Multimedia Projects

In this second vignette from the ASU VITA Video project, we watch as Kayla Bruce’s class struggles to figure out how page count requirements work when students are faced with the prospect of creating multimedia projects.

ASU VITA Video: Kayla Bruce on Classroom Constraints

Love Your Body: Event by Annie Souza and Tina Jones (Jordan Loveridge)

Working in Groups with Susan Naomi Bernstein

ViTA Stories: Individual face time key for ENG 301 and 302 students

By RaNeeka J. Witty

Faculty Associate, ASU Writing Programs

 

Discussing the contents of a thank-you note in front of other classmates isn’t so bad. But discussing and highlighting the qualities one brings to the table for an employer in a resume and letter of application can be a completely different story.

Arizona State University Writing Programs’ Associate Director Adelheid Thieme said that the key to assisting students in ENG 301: Writing for the Professions and ENG 302: Business Writing with one of their major course projects, the Employment Packet, is meeting with them individually.

“I serve as their sounding board,” Thieme said. She plays the role of a potential interviewer in the one-on-one meetings with her students so that they can avoid “writing themselves out of a job.” With some students’ tendency to downplay their skills and sound less than self-confident, Thieme adds that she “notes the tone. … I tell them how they come across.”

Doing this with her students takes time, Thieme said. “I spend many hours here in my office with my students one-on-one,” she said. “The letter of application has to be absolutely error free. …I spend 30 minutes with each student going over every sentence. Being meticulous is absolutely necessary.”

With an ASU-reported student body of more than 55,000 on the Tempe campus alone, Thieme’s students display that they appreciate this individualized attention.

“They willingly come not once, but three, four times,” she said.

In addition to her one-on-ones, Thieme said she practices more traditional in-classroom teaching methods, such as the use of brief lectures supported by PowerPoint or Prezi, and invention work that allows students to analyze job advertisements together.

After teaching a variety of English courses for more than 18 years, Thieme said that her classroom methods work. But one of her major challenges in teaching these courses is the varying levels of English proficiencies among her students. Between the nearly 20 percent of multilingual students and the majority of native English-speaking students, Thieme said she has discovered that quite a few of her students simply are not prepared for the level of work required in ENG 301 and ENG 302. So, a further challenge becomes ensuring that she is making the course manageable for the multilingual writers as well.

For other ASU Writing Programs teachers who will or have likely had similar experiences with ENG 301 and 302 students, Thieme suggests the following:

• Have a varied set of teaching strategies so that every student will get from the lessons what he or she needs (lectures, visual materials, peer review workshops).
• Talk to other instructors who teach the same course, and share and compare assignments, instead of solely relying on the course textbook.
• Attend the ASU English Composition Conference each year to learn new strategies from colleagues.
• Begin to see students as not only students, but as whole people…understanding that “life happens in between” class meetings.

Moving forward in teaching ENG 301 and 302, Thieme said she plans to continue to “thrive on challenges” faced in her courses.

Presenting Annotated Bibliographies with Katherine Daily O’Meara

Follow the link below to see a slideshow of Kat’s class:

Presenting Annotated Bibliographies

Peer Review of Thesis Statements with Valerie Finn

Follow Link Below to View Slideshow:

Peer Review of Thesis Statements with Valerie Finn

ViTA Stories: Media, student-focus impact ENG 107 multilingual writers

By RaNeeka J. Witty, MFA

Faculty Associate, ASU Writing Programs
In order for students in ENG 107 – First Year Composition (For Multilingual Writers) to transform their thoughts into an idea, a focus on student values and the use of media has proven most successful for one Arizona State University Writing Programs faculty member.

Dan Bommarito, a fourth-year student in the Doctor of Philosophy in English (Rhetoric, Composition, and Linguistics) program at ASU, stands by this idea from experience. After teaching ENG 107 for the first time during the Fall semester, he found himself doing things a bit differently in the classroom than he ever had before.

“I make PowerPoints every day. I attempt to deliver course content in a different format. I’m trying, with the multilingual writers, to incorporate media as much as possible. Some will be able to hear what I say, (while some are) more proficient readers and writers than listeners.”

According to Bommarito, the use of media doesn’t just stop there, though.

“I also use TED videos on creativity…where ideas come from…on identity, as a general attempt to spur conversation, (since the class’) first assignment was on identity construction as it relates to their group affiliation.”

Since ENG 107 students’ group affiliation can span the globe, teaching on a course of this kind for the first time is no easy feat. Bommarito, like other Writing Programs faculty members at ASU, is required to take ENG 594, Practicum in Teaching Multilingual Composition, while concurrently teaching the course.

“We are sharing grading rubrics. It has been informative to see how other teachers are assessing students’ writing. (I’m also learning) how to describe students who are eligible for ENG 107 and 108. That has helped me (to understand) who these students are, (and) what they need. It has been really great once a week to know a group of teachers (who are) making the transition from mainstream Composition to multilingual,” Bommarito said.

Over time, Bommarito found that what he is actually doing with his class is Collective Knowledge Building and Dynamic Criteria Mapping – where he gets away from rubrics, incorporates students’ value in writing and, instead, relies upon language from the class to create the course’s evaluation tool.

Through these practices, Bommarito has discovered his own way of slicing through the varying degrees of English proficiency in his course, and impacting students in a worthwhile manner.

“That’s really what I’m after as a teacher and a learner,” he said.

Working with Digication with Dan Bommarito

Dan is the first of a new experiment in ViTA: adding audio to our photos! Follow the link below to hear Dan talk about his class:

Dan Bommarito ENG 107