Have you ever been
daunted by a stack of student essays, frustrated with assigning grades or
struggled with giving feedback in a way that helps students but doesn’t hurt
your hand? Or have you been disappointed, dejected and disheartened when
students fail to follow what seem like basic directions, miss obvious points
and major arguments, or seem to amble aimlessly from point to point? As RA’s,
TA’s, preceptors and new and aspiring teachers, student writing has often been
at the core of our classroom experience. This spring, the Teaching and Learning
sessions will examine the vital and often underexamined role of writing in
Religion classrooms and beyond in a four-part
series organized together with the Thompson Writing Program. Join us as we
discuss the role of writing in the classroom, crafting writing assignments,
grading and feedback, and the role of the TA.
Session #1 - Writing in the Religion classroom - The Big
Picture (Panel Discussion)
Panel
discussion with GPR faculty and Dr. Cary Moskovitz, director of Duke’s Writing
in the Disciplines program. Panelists will discuss the role student writing
plays in their teaching—its effectiveness for student learning, the goals they
have for students’ writing skills, and the course goals that writing helps students
meet, with a particular emphasis on writing as a pedagogical tool in the
Religion classroom. This session will feature extra time for Q&A and
discussion with and among members of the panel.
Session #2 - Crafting Effective Assignments for Student
Writing (Workshop)
Research
on the teaching of writing has shown that how instructors articulate writing
tasks can have a large impact on what students do and what they learn. Topics
for this session include describing expectations, specifying an audience and
genre, helping students select a meaningful writing project, and staging the
writing process. Syllabi and assignments from Religion courses will be examined
and discussed by the group; contact Julie or Sean if you have a document you’d
like to incorporate into the workshop.
Session #3 - Grading Student Writing/Efficient and
Effective Feedback for Student Writing (Workshop)
Grading
student writing can be a frustrating and time consuming affair. This session
offers advice on approaches to grading and designing context-appropriate
guidelines and rubrics as ways to make giving feedback more efficient for you
and more likely to help students do better writing in the future. Again,
student papers from Duke Religion courses will be used for group examination and
discussion; contact us if you would like to include a student text from one of
your courses.
Session #4 -Student Writing and the Role of the T.A.
(Panel Discussion)
As
RA/TA/Preceptors, we are often asked to grade and provide feedback on writing
assignments that we have never completed ourselves, have not designed, and have
never used in a classroom before. This session will be devoted to navigating
this unique role, including how to clarify expectations and implement best
practices for the Professor/T.A./Student triangle. GPR faculty will share their
perspectives on the purposes and roles served by GPR students in the classroom
with an emphasis on facilitating, grading and providing feedback on student
writing.
