Are you looking for effective ways to integrate writing instruction into your courses? Curious about assigning blogging, for instance, but uncertain where to begin? Looking for ways to make the most out of student peer reviews, or individual reflective writing assignments? Hoping to use writing to foster student learning in a discipline where they might not expect it? In this guest blog, Shelley Manis, a faculty member at U-M's Gayle Morris Sweetland Center for Writing, highlights new online resources that can help you achieve any and all of those goals.

• Using Blogs in the Classroom
• Motivating Students to Read and Write in all Disciplines 
• Cultivating Reflection to Help Students Become Self-Directed Learners

Each of these resources includes an overview of the teaching challenge(s) the resource addresses, some general considerations, several specific classroom strategies, a reading list for further exploration, and supplemental handouts. 

 

For example, in the “Cultivating Reflection” guide...

You’ll find that one of the secrets to effective student reflection is varying the forms it takes. Rather than simply asking for self-reflective letters at the end of an assignment, for instance, you might ask students to create video logs, contribute to a course blog designed for troubleshooting problems in-process, or simply talk through their writing process with you and/or their peers. 

 

We also discuss the following considerations for teachers incorporating reflective writing assignments:

• students need explicit training in metacognition and reflection (for which we provide strategies)
• effective reflection is problem-based
• reflection should happen at three distinct stages of the writing process:  planning, monitoring (in-process), and evaluating.

To support teachers in incorporating these insights in their teaching, the guide offers an array of in-class and outside assignments and practices: these include pre-writing exercises, peer review follow-up prompts, and project post-writes meant to guide instructors’ feedback and help students think about how to transfer what they’ve learned to the next project.

 

All of these resources—and the array of other resources—offer practical tips for a range of writing exercises that you could use at any one point in your course or as extended (even course-long) modules. Pick and choose, mix and match, and bring writing into your courses in productive new ways! 

Your students may also benefit from Sweetland’s Writing Guides page, with student-friendly handouts on such topics as “How Do I Decide What I Should Argue?” “How Do I Incorporate Quotes?” and many more!

Shelley Manis
Sweetland Center for Writing