Title:
My Personal Narrative
Description of the students/course:
This unit will be used in my ENC 90, Foundations of Writing developmental class at Gateway Community and Technical College. The students are between 18 – 60 years of age and have various life and academic experiences that cause writing apprehension and hesitation. The class will consist of one faculty member, one co-teacher, and 20 students and will take place over the course of two weeks.
Concepts addressed:
- Students will be able to (SWBAT) employ simple strategies for planning a personal narrative essay.
- SWBAT address writing to a specific audience for a personal narrative essay.
- SWBAT effectively organize a personal narrative essay.
- SWBAT develop ideas adequately for a personal narrative essay.
- SWBAT write an effective beginning, middle and end for a personal narrative essay.
- SWBAT compose complete, cohesive sentences for a personal narrative essay.
- SWBAT apply methods of revising for a personal narrative essay.
- SWBAT use editorial techniques for a personal narrative essay.
- SWBAT create impromptu creative writing assignments by writing “mini stories” to the video journal prompts provided in class.
Student Learning Outcomes:
- Students will be able to improve their self efficacy and social integration by writing a personal narrative that encompasses the entire writing process and accurately applies the principles of narrative writing (dialogue, story, voice and authenticity).
- Students will be able to engage with their college community by creating a 2 – 3 page “Personal Narrative Writing Guide” insert; this insert will be included in the Orientation to College brochure passed out during new student orientations. (Future classes will revise this insert and changes will be made on a semester basis in the Orientation to College brochure).
- Students will be able to improve their self efficacy and academic integration in writing by improving their impromptu writing skills via daily video journal prompts.
- Students will be able to improve their self efficacy and academic integration in writing by self evaluating and monitoring their own writing in comparison to writing samples within the Writing Workshop.
Description of the assessments and rubrics
Assessment 1 – Impromptu Journal Blogs
Students will receive full credit by completing the daily writing prompt and sharing their journals with their writing workshop group.
Assessment 2 – Personal Narrative
Students will successfully write their Personal Narrative essay by completing all portions of the writing workshop process: Brainstorming, organizing, researching, outlining, rough draft, at least 3 revisions, and the final draft. Please see appendix A for a copy of the college provided writing rubric that must be used to grade this essay.
Assessment 3 – Personal Narrative Brochure
As a class, students will design and create a “Personal Narrative Writing Guide” insert that will include the steps of the writing workshop process and the following narrative elements: description, elements of a story, dialogue, voice and use of emotion.
Assessment 4 - Self Reflective Essay
Upon completion of the unit, students will write a 1 – 2 page essay that answers the following questions. As long as each answer is a college level paragraph in length, students will receive full credit for the completion of the self reflection.
1. What have I learned about personal narrative writing?
2. Now that my entire paper is complete, how do I feel about my essay? How did the Writing Process help me?
3. What was it like to help create the “Personal Narrative Writing Guide?” How do you think it will help future students who enter ENC 90? How did it help you understand the elements of writing a Personal Narrative essay?
4. If you were to mentor an ENC 90 student next semester, what advice would you give him or her?
Use of technology
Technology Component 1 – Video Journal Prompt
Directions – After watching the video, create a 2 – 4 paragraph dialogue between two of the characters in the video. Make sure that your dialogue is realistic and includes tone description.
- Free Hugs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd
- Dancing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY
- Johnny the Bagger: http://www.stservicemovie.com/
- Wedding Dance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-94JhLEiN0
Technology Component 2 – Writing Workshop Revision Worksheets
Directions: Students will be asked to make revisions to a provided personal narrative sample paragraphs. Upon completion, students will share their answers with their writing workshop partners. As a writing workshop team, they will create a “master” revision form. Finally, students will review the revision “key” that will be transmitted via blackboard and the LCD projector. Softchalk will be enabled and all revisions will be posted for future review on blackboard.
References
Deci, E. L. & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. New York: Plenum Press.
Deci, E. L. & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The ‘‘what’’ and ‘‘why’’ of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11, 227–268.
Meyers, C. & Jones, T. (1993). Promoting active learning: Strategies for the college classroom. Jossey - Bass: San Francisco.
Tinto, V. (1975). Dropouts from higher education: A theoretical synthesis of recent
research. Review of Educational Research, 45, 89–125.
Kerri,
ReplyDeleteThe book I chose for this class was about using technology in the classroom. You do a great job by integrating this by having your students use daily video journal prompts. I think this is a great idea as it allows the instructor to relate to a large student body in a quick and easy manner. It also allows them to enrich their writing skills at the same time.
Also, the self-reflection assessment is critical. This is a good way for the students to gain a deeper understanding into the lesson at hand. It also allows the instructor to gain insight toward the students’ learning.
I would suggest that because these students are new to the college that you would have an online tutorial or an in class session on how to use Blackboard. I know starting our program it would have been nice to have some guidance in this topic.
Hello-
ReplyDeleteThe book I am reading is about Strategies that Work. It implies that response journals are a great strategy for all ages. They help us to understand the students thinking. Also, many journal entries later become writing pieces. Great job having students reflect in daily journals.
My only suggestion is to make sure your students know what is expected. I like that there is not a lot of specific requirements for each assignment. Just make it clear that they need to use college level responses. Great Work!
I think your plan is very real world and would be useful for students. In the book I chose for this course, The Boys and Girls Learn Differently Action Guide for Teachers, it says that reading and writing are basic to academic and social success. Your activity will give explicit information to help learn how to write appropriately and effectively. I would just suggest you might provide other helpful writing ideas for high school students and maybe share what your students come up with, with local high schools to prepare them for college. Just a thought.
ReplyDeleteEvaluated by Glenn Gray
ReplyDeleteModule 6: Peer Evaluation of Unit Plan-My Personal Narrative – Keri McKenna
The benefits of this unit are extensive for the students as I will note below. It appears that you are beginning to utilize these resources or have already been doing so. I will reference to Module 5 and its expectations below:
q I can see that you have a specific unit outlined. There appears to be many opportunities for students to be actively engaged in your unit through the variety of activities you have referenced.
q I can definitely see the emphasis on individual learning or more importantly on interactive learning with classmates through blogs and video journals
q I observed that the curriculum is geared at a fast pace
q I observed that you will be referencing a number of websites that you have sited within your unit plan that address the importance of inclusion for technology and content writing techniques within all areas of curriculum
q You definitely had many resources referenced in your unit plan.
Some potential challenges that I observed could be length of time with students. Some suggestions for the unit plan I will mention below. You may have already had these resources on file or in mind but based on Module 5 guide sheet these were a few suggestions that may be useful or even appropriate for your students learning styles.
q Maybe provide a rubric to allow students to see what guidelines they will need to fulfill or be evaluated upon. I referenced one here for you from Module 2 http://screencast.com/t/ZDE4NGRk
q When reflecting on the writing of the author Kaye, Cathryn Berger (1993), I would sense she would be interested in getting students up and moving and learning in a hands on approach; furthermore, I do feel she would want to emphasize the need to have students even at the University level actively engaged in a service learning project of some sort. Other useful resources for future class activities could be referenced from this site provide from Module 4: of this course. https://learnonline.nku.edu/bbcswebdav/xid-415404_2
q I also understand that two weeks is not a significant amount of time to have students begin a service learning project of great depth
q One technology suggestion for the students to discuss what they need or you expect of them in the field is a Wiki. This provides additional technology inclusion and if students are being delegated responsibilities or have suggestions they would like to forward to other in their class they could do so. http://screencast.com/t/NDIyMjVkN
References:
Kaye, Cathryn Berger. (1993) “The Complete Guide to Service Learning.” Free Spirit Publishing Inc. 1993 124-127
Wirtz, P. (2010) Module 4 Video: Co-Teaching.