English 201 / For Instructors
Developing Your Syllabus
One of the challenges new 201 instructors face is in creating a course or syllabus of their own design. Where do you start? How do you begin to figure out what to do on which day? The resources you'll find here offer guidelines to help you think about your class and its structure.
Check out the sample syllabi from past sections of English 201.
Course Grids (for calendar building)
Theory of Course Forumulation
Alternative Guidelines
Creating Writing Assignments
Teaching Writing
Teaching with Technology
Course Grids
Download these course grids to help you build your course calendar.
Theory of Course Formulation
What do you want the students to write?
In English 201 we want the students to do a lot of writing and to talk about that writing in depth with each other and with you, so the first place to begin to think about as you develop your course is how much writing you want your students to do and what you want them to learn from it. Once you've answered these questions, its much easier to think about how many drafts of each thing, how many peer workshops, and how many presentations. It is also easier to fit the reading in around the writing than vice versa. Another question to consider here is how you plan to evaluate that writing. The answer to that question often influences the type of writing and the amount of class time you devote to it.
How do your assignments fit into the natural flow of writing?
The next task is to figure out how many days you are going to allot to developing ideas, workshoping, and publication (if you choose to publish the writing?). All writing has a flow to - thinking, writing, revising, sharing, revising. Try to plan your class so that your tasks coincide with that rhythm. Other things to consider are which drafts you will look at and which drafts you will leave in the groups' capable hands. For instance, it defeats the purpose of the workshop group if you also comment on a draft that they read; the sense of agency the group has can be undermined by just the writer just waiting to see what you said. Some instructors have a set schedule where they do the same activities each day of every week. For example, workshop on Monday, discussion on Wednesday, student presentations on Friday. This sort of consistency may appeal to you and make it easier to build a schedule.
What do you want your students to read to supplement their success with the previous two questions?
Only once you know what you are going to have the students write and how writing is going to proceed should you think about the reading. In short, it is better to read only a few short pieces and discuss them deeply than to read a lot of material superficially. An additional hazard of too much reading is that the class may spend an inordinate amount of time talking about the reading or the issue at hand rather than how that reading informs them about writing in general and their writing in specific. Just remember that less is more!
Alternative Guidelines
Goals for my writing class:
What activities could allow students to experience these goals, as opposed
to me just telling them that these are the goals?
The sequence for writing assignments in my class:
This sequence reveals several assumptions on my part:
The sequence will include the following:
How will this sequence allow me to accomplish my goals?
I recognize that my goals reveal that I am situated in a particular epistemology.
What is it?
Assignment Building/Creating
Designing Effective Assignments
Advice and guidelines from UW-Madison's Writing Across the Curriculum Program.
"Designing Assignments to Discourage Plagiarism"
by Alice RobisonCollaborative Writing Examples
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Professor Michael Bernard-Donals - Chair
Professor Jane Zuengler - Associate Chair
Professor Jacques Lezra - Director of Graduate
Studies
Professor Sherry Reames - Undergraduate Director
