Assignments

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Having varied types of assignments (such as independent writing, group work, presentations, creative projects, class discussions, quizzes, and ticket-ins/tickets-out of class) create a diverse learning environment for different learning types. This is especially important in college courses for future educators because they will need to have different ways of assessment that engages different learning types in order to reach as many students as possible. In addition these assessments will be able to tell the students engagement. Below is the list of assignments/assessments that I suggest for the ENGL 3820 course with the descriptions from the syllabus.

• Daily Participation: Your daily participation points will be divided in to 10 ticket-ins, 5 quizzes, and 5 exit tickets. All will be used to show you are engaging with the reading, so you are prepared for class. These assignments will be worth 10 points each and you will only receive the points if you are in class that day
• Project Proposals: Proposals will be short essays explaining how and why a student wants to write about a specific topic. This short essay will be used to decide if the topic is viable and relevant.
• Writing Developments: Students will practice formal analytical writing techniques in two short assignments based on prompts/specific instructions. These develop discrete skills that will lead to utilizing these approaches in a more independent way for the midterm presentation project.
• Project 1: Midterm Poster and Presentation: In this assignment, you will critical examine a fairytale of your choice and a film adaptation. You will think critically about the differences and similarities of the texts and their media form.  Then create a poster (either physical or digital) on your to present to the class.
• Project 2: Unfamiliar Genre Project:This is the final project. You will choose an unfamiliar genre – we’ll talk in class about what a “genre” is and how to identify it – and create an original work in that genre. The genre and work will need to be related to children’s literature in some way. The proposals turned in will help us both to make sure you are on the write track.

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Adding Ethnic Futurism to the Assignments

Incorporating ethnic futurism to the assignments should be simple when working with the suggested texts. When working in the ethnic futurism texts your quizzes and tickets-ins/ticket-outs will focus on futurism. The quizzes asks questions and require interpretation of the texts that will show that they read and engaged with the text.

The tickets-ins/ticket-outs are usually question or short essay assignments done either before or during class. I think one ticket-out (done during class) when discussion ethnic futurism and discussing games with ethnic futurism can be they will have to come up with the beginning concept for a game including ethnic futurism. They could work in groups and submit an idea as a group and before they leave each group can report out about their game concept.

Another idea would be to have the 2nd writing development focus on ethnic futurism. It can discussing and analyzing how the features of ethnic futurism that are incorporated in to the texts chosen.

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Unfamiliar Genre Project

I’ve come across the idea of an Unfamiliar Genre Project while reading Writing Outside Your Comfort Zone by Sarah Fleischer and Sarah Andrew-Vaughan for a course at WMU. This book introduces a project where students choose a writing genre they are unfamiliar with. Then they must research that genre and create their own sample of the genre as their final project. Now the twist I added to this project for my first version of the course was to make sure it had a connection to children’s literature. Make sure that connection is loose so they can use different genres.

You could alter this project so everyone has to do an ethnic futurism version of the genre but they might be difficult in a couple of ways: 1) It could be to restricting for the point of the project. 2) Students that are not in an ethnic minority may have trouble completing certain genres effective because of the lack of personal experience.

The reason I recommend this project is because it provides a lot of variety and creativity to the students and gives them pushes them to go out of their comfort zone. It provides great insight to future educators on how their students may see projects and gives them an idea for a project at the same time.

Below is a document that has a little more information on the project and is something that can be used to introduce it to students.

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