Last day of vacation

I am aware that students will not start showing up until Thursday, but I have to get up early and take the kids to school tomorrow morning, so for all intents and purposes, my vacation is over.

Overall, it has been a nice break, but, wow, I have had way too much family togetherness. Todd's truck broke down on Christmas Eve. The transmission went out (again-- happily it was under warranty). So we have had, in essence, one vehicle for most of the break. Hence, too much togetherness.

I think that I have put together a cool assignment for Comp II. The assignment is to find a Wikipedia stub and expand it into an article. Co-opting the evil of Wikipedia for good. I was going to hit the ground running with this assignment, but MLK Day falls where I would want to have a library intro... and heaven knows students can't make it to the library after a holiday. Although, I could go ahead and work on summary and response first. Actually, we should probably work through active reading, annotation, and summary first. Okay, decision made.

Now I just need other writing assignments. Because, of course, we have to put these jewels in our teaching portfolios that we turn in this spring. This means that I have two audiences: my students who have to figure out what I want them to do and my colleagues who are performing assessment.

Teaching composition

It is hard to find a balance between teaching content and skills in first year writing. Part of me is really reluctant to require content memorization (via testing) in a writing class, but part of me is really noticing that workshopping does not fill all the time I need to fill. I am planning to try some different ideas for groupwork, but I guess the best way to start is with forms for students doing peer work (http://www.mwp.hawaii.edu/resources/wm7.htm). I have always given students questions to answer, but this year I think I will type them out as a worksheet.

I am not comfortable lecturing. Not at all. I much prefer to lead discussion. I am more of a facilitator than a lecturer. I am sure that comes from my background in literature.