End of the Semester Questionnaire

Directions: Copy and paste this questionnaire into a new Word document or blog post.  Please answer the following questions as honestly and in as much detail as possible.  Your thoughts and suggestions will aid me as I revise the course to teach it again.

1)      What was your favorite project?  Explain why.

2)      What was your least favorite project?  Explain why.

3)      Do you have any suggestions regarding peer response?  Would you change anything about peer response?

4)      Do you feel like you were given too much time to work on projects?  Too little time? Explain your answer.

5)      What are your thoughts about breaking each project up into multiple drafts or phases?  Did it help to have drafts or would you just have preferred to turn in one draft – the final-for-now?

6)      What are your thoughts about the pacing of the semester?  Were there any projects that felt too short?  Too long?

7)      Do you think you were given enough time to work on your final portfolio? Explain.

8)      Do you feel like I provided too many comments on drafts or not enough comments?   Were my comments helpful? Why or why not?

9)      What about the course would you change?  Do you have any suggestions for change as I revise the course to teach it again?

10)    Do you feel like this class helped you to be better able to read and compose texts, both in college and in the real world? Explain your answer.

11)   Please offer some advice or helpful hints for students taking this course in the future.

 

I often use writing samples from past students as models in my classroom.  Please check one of the boxes and type in your name and today’s date below:

__ I give you permission to use writing samples from my English 101 portfolio

__  I do not give you permission to use writing samples from my English 101 portfolio

Print Name:­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­                                                                                                                       Date:

Signature:

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Pedagogy of the Oppressed Teaching Assignment Response

Paulo Freire, ruminating on today's teaching in Eng. 101

I want to start by saying that, as a group, today’s class session far exceeded my expectations for this part of the project. I understood that the limitations imposed on each group were strict and imposing (10 min. to teach 20-35 pages of challenging material). On Thursday, I panicked somewhat after the workshop because I felt like I did not encourage enough experimentation or risk-taking in the group projects (which is something I value in this class), although I felt like Thursday’s workshop was helpful in getting some ideas out for what we all valued in teaching (from a student-centered perspective).

And I felt like the presentations today delivered on the assignment. The presentations blended delivering the material from the chapters each group was responsible for with interactive, multisensory activities that encouraged us to do some reflective thinking to make connections between Freire’s theoretical ideas and real situations.

Now that you’ve completed this part of the project, I would like you to do two things:

Summarize (y)our “reading” of the book in a blog post (200-300 words). In other words, what will you take away from Paulo Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed from today’s activities?

In a second blog post, respond to the different acts of teaching this assignment required, considering any of the following or going in your own direction:

• What do you value as a teacher? (Think about last Thursday’s workshop discussion.)
• Were you able to stay true to what you value in this project and still cover the material? If yes, how? If no, what parts of the assignment impeded your ability to teach how you would like (the difficulty of the material, taking a section of the book out of context, the group dynamic, time constraints, etc.)?
• What did other groups do in their presentation, positive or negative, that stood out? Did you have any “a-ha moments” where another group did something you wish you would have thought of? In what ways could groups have improved? Did you have enough to base your “reading” of the book on?
• Would you ever consider doing a read-group-share assignment like this one in your classes? Compare and contrast collaborative reading with your experience of reading texts independently.

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Project Three Analysis Prompt

Please respond to any or all of the following on your blog or write your own response to project three:

• What do you think are the greatest strengths of the project?
• What are its weaknesses?
• If you had more time, how would you change your project?
• What did you learn about analyzing texts?
• What did you learn about reading visual texts?
• Did you learn anything new about the process of composing and revising texts? What did you learn?
• Do you think this project will be helpful or valuable to you in the future? Why and how?

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Project One Critical Analysis Prompts

These are some questions pertaining to project one. They are in random order. Answer as many as you wish or go in your own direction:

• Do you think completing this project will be useful to you in the future? Why or why not?
• Are you satisfied with your final-for-now document? Explain.
• What was the most difficult aspect of completing project one (please use a specific example)?
• If you had more time to work on this project, would you change anything? What would you change?
• Did class activities (workshops, discussions, peer response sessions, blogging) help you complete this project or were they distracting? Please explain your answer.
• Did this project challenge you? How?

Feel free to add additional comments or relevant tangents as you see fit.

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Two Questions for Response

How has your writing been graded in the past and what was your reaction to that system of grading?

If you were a teacher, how would you grade student writing?

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Writer’s Inventory

The Writer’s Inventory is a brief series of questions that can help you track what you already know and think about composing texts and language. This is not a graded assignment and there are no wrong answers. Please be honest about what you think and know. Post this to your blog.

1.  Finish this statement: Good writing is…

2. Does the way you speak influence the way you write? Explain your answer.

3. Is it more important to you that writing (yours and others) is grammatically and stylistically correct or that it communicate relevant and insightful content?

4. Discuss this statement: There is one true, correct, standard version of written American English.

5. Can writing be taught? Explain your answer.

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