Book: Dynamic Activities for First-Year Composition

Book Editors

Michal Reznizki (University of California, Berkeley)

David T. Coad (Santa Clara University)

Publisher: National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)

Second Call (Due Monday, August 30, 2021)

DEADLINE EXTENDED: Tuesday, September 7, 2021

What We're Looking For:

This is a second call for activities - for more information about the objective of the book see below. We received many effective activities in the first call and are looking for more activities to make sure the book is very comprehensive. We seek activities that would work/fit in every composition classroom and would address common ideas and elements that we all teach and address. We encourage submissions of activities that use current FYC pedagogies and active learning strategies to engage students.

In this second call, we are looking for any active learning activity aimed at FYC, but we are especially looking for activities that do one or more of the following.

1. Address issues of social justice and anti-racism that could fit into one of the sections described below.

2. Work well for fully online classes and fit into one of the sections described below.

3. Include a group activity where students are active and interact with their peers ideally during one class session.

Activities that students do individually or across the entire semester would not be a good fit for the collection. Note: We are allowing up to two submissions per contributor.

The book is divided into five sections, where each section focuses on a different aspect of the composition classroom:

• Rhetoric

  • rhetorical analysis, the rhetorical situation, the rhetorical triangle

• Genre

  • genre analysis, writing in various genres

• Visual Literacy and Social Media

  • using social media and online tools to expose students to different rhetorical/composition elements

• Research

  • how to conduct research/find sources

• Grammar and Language

  • rhetorical grammar, citations, language variety

The Objective of the Book

This book is what every college composition instructor needs: a resource full of classroom activities to engage students. It is designed to help first-year composition instructors plan and teach their writing classes in a way that engages students and fosters active learning. There is currently no such book that includes a comprehensive collection of practical learning activities to teach specific writing elements for first-year composition. The book, then, would be a major resource that writing instructors, writing professors, and graduate students from different backgrounds could use. All of us want students to be engaged in the learning process, and this book will help us achieve that goal.

Why Active Learning?

These dynamic classroom activities will meet our students’ learning needs. We perceive learning as an activity where students are engaged participants in their own knowledge production. Students learn by doing and by taking part in activities because “learning is not an automatic consequence of pouring information into a student’s head. It requires the learner's own mental involvement and doing” (Silberman ix). Meaning, students should take part in their own learning. The proposed collection supports the fact that students need to be active, involved, and engaged in order to learn.

We view the teaching of writing as an area that consists of many different elements, including but not limited to critical thinking, rhetorical knowledge, and knowledge of conventions (The Council of Writing Program Administrators); revision, writing with technology, style, and research skills (Roen et al.); but also invention, arrangement and form, memory, and delivery (Murray), to name a few. We also perceive writing instruction from a holistic viewpoint, teaching many things such as concepts about rhetoric and writing (Adler-Kassner and Wardle), skills-based learning, teaching for transfer (Ebest; Yancey, Robertson, and Taczak) and many other skills and concepts students need to be successful in the complex 21st-century world of writing.

Ideas and Areas of Interest May Include (but are not limited to)

• Activities that engage students in face-to-face, online synchronous, and online asynchronous courses

• Activities that align with the WPA Outcomes for First-Year Composition, including:

  • Rhetorical Knowledge

  • Critical Thinking, Reading, and Composing

  • Processes

  • Knowledge of Conventions

• Activities inspired by the Writing About Writing approach to FYC that may incorporate texts of concepts about writing

• Activities based on readings from open-source textbooks, such as Bad Ideas About Writing (Ball and Loewe) and the Writing Spaces series (Driscoll et al.; Lowe et al.).

Deadline for Submissions: Monday August 30th, 2021

DEADLINE EXTENDED: Tuesday, September 7, 2021

How to Submit Your Proposal

Send your submission (following this format) as a Word document attachment or Google doc link to this email address: DynamicActivitiesFYC@gmail.com. In the body of the email please include your full name, academic affiliation, and contact information. Please do not include any identifying information in the document. We will acknowledge receipt within 3 business days.

Thank you for your interest, and we look forward to receiving your submission!

Michal Reznizki (UC Berkeley) and David T. Coad (Santa Clara University), Editors

Email: DynamicActivitiesFYC@gmail.com

Works Cited

Adler-Kassner, Linda, and Elizabeth Wardle, editors. Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies. University Press of Colorado, 2015.

Ball, Cheryl E., and Drew M. Loewe, editors. Bad Ideas About Writing. West Virginia University Libraries Digital Publishing Institute, 2017.

Ebest, Sally Barr. Changing the Way We Teach: Writing and Resistance in the Training of Teaching Assistants. SIU Press, 2005.

Driscoll, Dana, Mary Stewart and Matthew Vetter, editors. Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Vol 3. Parlor Press. Anderson, SC. 2020.

Lowe, Charles and Pavel Zemliansky, editors. Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Vols 1-2. Parlor Press. Anderson, SC. 2011.

Murray, Donald M. ​A Writer Teaches Writing​. Thomson Heinle, 2004.

Roen, D., Pantoja, V., Yena, L., Miller, S. K., & Waggoner, E., editors. Strategies for Teaching First-Year Composition. Urbana: NCTE, 2002.

Silberman, M. ​Active Learning: 101 Strategies To Teach Any Subject.​ Allyn & Bacon, 1996.

The Council of Writing Program Administrators. "WPA Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition." The Council of Writing Program Administrators, 17 July 2014, http://wpacouncil.org/aws/CWPA/asset_manager/get_file/350909?ver=3890.

Yancey, Kathleen, Liane Robertson, and Kara Taczak. Writing Across Contexts: Transfer, Composition, and Sites of Writing. University Press of Colorado, 2014.