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Formative Writing Assignments

At the landing page for this section we outlined the broad brush strokes of teaching writing assignments, which lead from reviewing the prompt → to readings and lecture content → to turning content into evidence through questions → to formulating a claim → to drafting → to revision → to reflection.

For each of these steps in the writing process to be meaningful, they need to offer some framing and some opportunities for practice and feedback (à la the Apprenticeship Model). Here below is a small set of exercise types that pattern on to the brush strokes outlined above. Clicking on the exercises will take you to "view only" Google docs or links to resources in the "Giving Feedback to Students" section of the site. You'll notice that the framing moments in the docs and some of the content refer to specific assignments; hopefully, that specificity helps you imagine how the exercise would unfold in an actual course, rather than make it harder to see how you'd use it in your own. All of the exercises are meant to be translatable into other course contexts, and they can all be used as homework, in-class activities, or some combination of the two.

This set of exercises is, of course, far from exhaustive, but it's the basis for most major assignments in most Expos courses, and you can use it as the foundation or starting point for nearly any analytical writing assignment in any course.

Sample Sequence of Formative Assignments for a “Typical” Essay

Where Students Are At Exercises That Work Well
Reviewing the prompt and framing the learning experience→ Assignment prompt decoder for students

Engaging with raw material (readings, lectures, data) →

Summary and Analytical questions
Turning raw material to evidence for analysis (developing a thesis or hypothesis) Analytical questions and Developing a thesis
Lending a form to evidence-based analysis (identifying the best genre to present your argument or findings) → Draft introductions + Evidence/Structure alignment
Realizing a full draft → Models (these will vary by assignment)
Revising →

Cover letters + Peer review + Reverse outlining (Along with Instructor Feedback and/or Draft Conferences and/or In-class workshops)

Reflecting on the learning experience → Instructor Feedback and Cover Letters

Why Each Type of Formative Assignment Is Useful

Review prompt + rubric together

  • Taking time at the start of an assignment (see the Decoders+ tab at the home page or click on any of the Assignment Decoder links throughout the site) to frame its goals and what the process of writing will look like
    • makes the learning experience more purposive for students and
    • allows lesson planning and feedback to be more intentional for instructors
  • See “Creating and Sharing Rubrics” at Gen Ed Writes for more on rubrics

Summary

  • Helps students test—and often improve—their understanding of a text
  • Being able to clearly and accurately capture a writer’s argument is a necessary step toward engaging in analysis of it
  • In classes with a research essay component, it’s good practice for generating annotated bibliographies

Analytical questions (AQs)

  • Gets students the kinds of questions that make class discussion more productive (i.e., if analytical questions are answerable with a thesis claim, then class discussions based on AQs become part of the broader process of writing itself)
  • Identifying questions that emerge from primary and secondary sources produces more engaged reading and more authentic arguments 
  • Asking questions can feel lower-pressure than starting with “So what’s your thesis?” 

Developing thesis claims

  • Giving students practice with their thesis before they head off to write a draft can allow students to iterate without having to produce a full essay
  • Templates can be really useful: lots of theses boil down to something like “By analyzing evidence x we can arrive at conclusion y, which helps us better understand or raises questions about “why this argument matters” z
  • It’s helpful to make sure students know that a provisional thesis isn’t a commitment: it’s a heuristic for framing the early stages of writing and thinking about structure, and/but it’s likely to change as the process of inquiry unfolds and evidence + counterevidence get worked through. That is: throughout the writing process, one’s thesis and one’s evidence/analysis mutually shape each other.

Intros + Evidence/Structure

  • Some students will likely find either drafting their introduction or outlining their argument more useful. In both cases, it’s helpful to stress test the alignment of their thesis and their argument early in the drafting process (and often) 
  • In-class workshops on structure and possible sources can 
    • allow peers to crowdsource ideas for drafting and 
    • help TFs offer feedback before students have gotten too far into the drafting process

Models

  • Especially when students are working in a less familiar genre, models are useful
  • If you’re concerned about students just “copying” a model, try using excerpts from a few examples that illustrate better and less good instances of a particular feature, e.g., thesis or transition or integration of a source

Cover Letters

  • We often wonder what a student’s experience writing an essay was like or why they made certain moves in a draft—and cover letters pasted at the front of an essay can allow students to talk to the reader about exactly those questions
  • Cover letters offer students an opportunity to reflect on process
  • They also allow for self-evaluation and reflection on what they’re learning, which makes instructor feedback part of a shared dialogue about each student’s writing (rather than just a “judgment” of success and/or lack of success) 
  • NB: In their Expos courses, students write a full draft for each writing assignment and have a draft conference with their preceptor before revising and resubmitting. Only the revised draft is graded, which makes “drafts” and “draft conferences” two additional moments of formative feedback in Expos courses.