critical thought and analysis

Acting Bias: Staging Media Analysis in First-Year Writing

Assignments, critical thought and analysis, information literacy, news, observation, reading strategies, research, rhetorical appeals and argument, rhetorical situation, secondary source research, visual/multimodal rhetorics /

Freddie (Fiona) Harris Ramsby Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description In first-year writing classrooms, embodied teaching methods, such as Kathryn Dawson and Bridget Kiger Lee’s drama-based pedagogy (DBP), “[provide] an innovative means to stimulate students’ creativity…to foster learning that sticks, cultivating brains that retain information” (Harris Ramsby 1). Combining Newman P. Birk and Genevieve B. […]

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Reading Against the Machine

Activities, critical thought and analysis, digital literacy, genAI, metacognition, reading, reading strategies /

Scott DeLoach Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description In this activity, students practice using generative AI tools as reading partners while strengthening their metacognitive awareness through the Reading Apprenticeship framework. Reading Apprenticeship is a framework that supports students in developing expert reading habits by making thinking processes visible and shared. It integrates four key dimensions

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Can ChatGPT Make the Right Moves? A Comparative Rhetorical Analysis of Human-Authored and AI-Generated Texts

Assignments, critical thought and analysis, digital literacy, genAI, Process, rhetorical situation, writing technologies /

Michelle Cook, Gaby Meindl, and Angela Laflen Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description Helping students develop rhetorical knowledge acts as a bridge between understanding GenAI tools on a functional level and being a critical reader of texts generated by AI. Because we are preparing students to enter academic and professional spaces that have been, and

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Who Tells My Writing Story Better? Exploring Genre, Voice, and AI “Silences”

Activities, critical thought and analysis, genAI, genre and discourse community, narrative and storytelling, rhetorical situation /

Tara Al-Hadithy Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description This activity invites students in a ‘Writing for University and Beyond’ undergraduate-level writing course to critically analyze and reflect on generative AI use while fostering rhetorical awareness. Students revisit their already written “My Writing Story” essay through the lens of rhetorical moves and compare their writing to

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Map-Making and Storytelling

Activities, Anti-Racist Pedagogy, critical thought and analysis, cultural awareness, identity, linguistic difference, linguistic diversity, Place-based Writing, prewriting and invention, Translation, translingualism, visual/multimodal rhetorics /

Gitte Frandsen Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description Transnational, multilingual students have extensive experiences negotiating language difference by translating, translanguaging, and drawing from their literacy and rhetorical resources (Canagarajah). Further, by traversing physical and digital borders, these students habitually engage in the transnational flow of ideas and information, which gives them access to a wealth

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Intersectional Identity Photo Essay

Critical Language Awareness, critical thought and analysis, cultural awareness, demystifying writing assignments, digital literacy, identity, linguistic difference, narrative and storytelling, visual/multimodal rhetorics /

Jackie Mohan Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description In this assignment, students craft a photo essay about their identity, through which they hone basic writing skills, understand genre, and develop an understanding of voice, tone, and style. Intersectionality refers to how we can better understand each person’s lived experiences in the world by examining how

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Building Inclusive Classrooms: Equipping Educators with an Introductory Social Justice Lesson Plan

Activities, Anti-Racist Pedagogy, Critical Language Awareness, critical thought and analysis, cultural awareness, identity, language bias, linguistic difference /

Bethany Meadows and Kimberly Groves Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description Many scholars have called for the necessity of social justice frameworks within K-16 classrooms for decades (e.g., Friere; hooks; Walton et al.; Muhammad). Specifically, in the first-year writing classroom, we know that neither writing nor our writing classrooms are neutral, apolitical spaces, but instead

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Collaborative Problem-Solving: Deliberative Discourse toward Group Consensus

Activities, collaboration and group work, critical thought and analysis, research, rhetoric, rhetorical situation /

Sarah Moon Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description This activity is inspired by work done at the Parrhesia Program for Public Discourse Faculty Seminar and the National Issues Forum approach to deliberative discourse. The activity goal is to provide opportunities to channel research and rhetorical education toward live, extemporaneous speech, not in a debate format

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“So What?” Speed Dating: Articulating an Argument’s Significance

Activities, critical thought and analysis, drafting and revising, Feedback, reflection, rhetorical appeals and argument /

Shannon Mooney Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description This activity is intended to help students practice articulating the larger stakes, or the “so what,” of an argumentative or analytical assignment. The activity works best after students have developed complete drafts, and it can be easily adapted for any paper that requires students to present and

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Literary Analysis via Songs

Activities, critical thought and analysis, reading, reading strategies, reading to write /

Sean Oros Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description The purpose of this lesson is to provide students a pathway for applying literary analysis skills to modern songs of their own choosing. The rationale for this is twofold: first, it is partially a response to avoiding copied responses from Spark Notes or Lit Notes and the

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