The following learning artifact is a reflective analysis of a lesson plan that I modified from my first semester to my second semester. I love being able to give this lesson the space it deserves, because I genuinely love the way it not only highlights the importance of the Long Review Assignment in 398A, but it also really works to build the confidence of my students in relation to this seemingly daunting paper. Included below is the formal lesson plan document, examples of long reviews that we discuss in class and my more in depth reflection of this lesson plan and exercise.
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|Lesson Plan|
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|Example Long Reviews|
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|Reflection|
As this is my second semester as a UTA for the course, ENGL398A: Writing for the Arts, I have had to constantly be working to modify and compare work and lessons from my previous semesters as a UTA and as a student in the course. The subject of the following lesson plan comes from one of my favorite assignments from my semester as a student. The Long Review asks students to cultivate an argument surrounding a recent artistic production in the form of a long form cultural review. Since this was a favorite assignment of mine as a student, I was eager not only to base a lesson plan on my own struggles from this assignment, but to continue to develop this lesson plan over my two semesters as a UTA.
This lesson works to differentiate students writing between typical academic writing and the cultural critique that is required in their long review. By defining a cultural critique in this lesson plan, I work to simultaneously redefine what it means to write one’s argument into a paper. For many students, they think that “argumentative papers” fall in line with the typical research academic paper that they have come to know in their academic careers. This assignment upends those preconceived notions for writing long page length papers and challenges students to “just write their opinion,” but with the sort of analytical and critical thinking skills they normally employ in an academic work.
I largely base the structure of my lesson on discussion-based learning, which I think really calls on the students themselves to ask some fundamental questions about their writing. One of the major ways to really challenge students’ ideas regarding the structure and voice of their papers is by asking them “what elements they typically think of when they are asked to write an 8+ page paper or a research term paper.” What is great about this question comes from the fact that students are able to so easily spew off the typical elements of the paper I am referencing. In both of my semesters of teaching this course, this tends to be the most “free-flowing” and organic part of my lesson. Students call out concepts such as “a thesis,” and “a works cited page.” Once we have created a list of these elements, I like being able to dramatically erase and make notes to each point one on the board. What I think this really help to do is to complicate the student’s automatic responses to academic writing and writing more generally.
Compared to the last semester that I gave this lesson, I think that this semester gave me a stronger perspective as a more experienced writer. What I mean by this is that I think that last semester I was almost completely basing this lesson off of my own experience writing the paper, while this semester, I was able to base my points off of more conceptual ideas related to the process of writing. For example, this semester, I was able to give more advice on how to write more “creative” analytically essays, as opposed to my lesson last semester where I largely talked about the ways in which my own paper was a variation of paper and paper-writing experiences I had previously.
The fact that this paper has such a high page limit and that it comes so close to the end of the semester works to induce a lot of fear in students. Academic writing has some fault in this, as it has become very standard and formulaic to many students. What I love so much about this course, and about this assignment, is that it is not like a typical English, Art History, or American Studies course. This course caters to the artist in all of them and demands that they each take a more artistic approach to their writing and to their analysis of artistic productions.
This lesson works to differentiate students writing between typical academic writing and the cultural critique that is required in their long review. By defining a cultural critique in this lesson plan, I work to simultaneously redefine what it means to write one’s argument into a paper. For many students, they think that “argumentative papers” fall in line with the typical research academic paper that they have come to know in their academic careers. This assignment upends those preconceived notions for writing long page length papers and challenges students to “just write their opinion,” but with the sort of analytical and critical thinking skills they normally employ in an academic work.
I largely base the structure of my lesson on discussion-based learning, which I think really calls on the students themselves to ask some fundamental questions about their writing. One of the major ways to really challenge students’ ideas regarding the structure and voice of their papers is by asking them “what elements they typically think of when they are asked to write an 8+ page paper or a research term paper.” What is great about this question comes from the fact that students are able to so easily spew off the typical elements of the paper I am referencing. In both of my semesters of teaching this course, this tends to be the most “free-flowing” and organic part of my lesson. Students call out concepts such as “a thesis,” and “a works cited page.” Once we have created a list of these elements, I like being able to dramatically erase and make notes to each point one on the board. What I think this really help to do is to complicate the student’s automatic responses to academic writing and writing more generally.
Compared to the last semester that I gave this lesson, I think that this semester gave me a stronger perspective as a more experienced writer. What I mean by this is that I think that last semester I was almost completely basing this lesson off of my own experience writing the paper, while this semester, I was able to base my points off of more conceptual ideas related to the process of writing. For example, this semester, I was able to give more advice on how to write more “creative” analytically essays, as opposed to my lesson last semester where I largely talked about the ways in which my own paper was a variation of paper and paper-writing experiences I had previously.
The fact that this paper has such a high page limit and that it comes so close to the end of the semester works to induce a lot of fear in students. Academic writing has some fault in this, as it has become very standard and formulaic to many students. What I love so much about this course, and about this assignment, is that it is not like a typical English, Art History, or American Studies course. This course caters to the artist in all of them and demands that they each take a more artistic approach to their writing and to their analysis of artistic productions.