Ideas and Elements for an IRW Course

I would want my IRW unit plan to focus on community building, identity and culture.   I would also like to introduce students to pre-writing, pre-reading and active reading activities in this unit.  These are of course just ideas and elements and I would remain flexible in removing or adding different elements.

The first day of class would begin with a student meet and greet activity like Bonding Bingo so they begin to get to know each other and get comfortable with their future reading audience.  I would assign students to begin a blog and their first assignment would be to reflect on how they feel about reading and writing.  The next class there would be a discussion on reading and writing. What students like to read and what types of reading they do.  I would also ask the students who likes to write in their free time or for classes. 

Next I would assign a literacy narrative on the blog. I would want there to be lots of discussion in this unit so I would let the students share some of their literacy experiences the next day in class.  I would begin to facilitate my students in pre-writing activities by having them practice heuristics like brainstorming, freewriting, looping, and clustering/webbing. 

The next blog prompt would be for students to write an autobiography using a few of the heuristics to get them started.  Then I would put students in groups of two and have them interview their partner and write a two to three page biography about the person they interviewed on the blog. 

I would then begin to introduce pre-reading activities such as reading the title of an essay, the author’s biography and the first and last paragraphs to help students choose what essays or articles they wish to read.  I would then give the students a choice among several identity/cultural essays like Judith Ortiz Cofer’s The Myth of a Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria or Leslie Marmon Silko’s Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit. The next class would involve group and whole class discussions about the essays they just read and then I would assign a low stakes freewriting activity based on their chosen reading.  A blog post would be due about which pre-writing heuristic worked best for them. 

Next I would have lessons on annotating a text and creating a thesis statement.  They would then be assigned to begin working on a rough draft for a short essay on the cultural essay they had chosen.  The students would then be assigned to read a play and we would have discussions and readings of it in class.  I would do a lecture on structuring their essay and the students would then bring in copies of their chosen identity/cultural essays and have peer reviews.  I would give a lesson on adding sources and ask them to incorporate one or two sources and revise their drafts.

  At this point the students should be getting an idea of how they write and what works and doesn’t work for them so I would do an in class activity where students draw their process.  This will help the students visualize what they do when they write.  They would then hand in their drafts and have a student teacher conference where they would get more suggestions on revision. I would give a lesson on writing a works citied page and their first paper would be due at the next class meeting. 

The students would then go and see the play they read about in class and begin writing a paper about it.  Again they would bring in rough drafts for peer editing and revise those.  Then once again have a student teacher conference and revise again.  I would then allow my students to choose between the two essays they had written and revise it again being sure to  include good structure, a thesis, two sources and a works cited page. 

The last assignment would be a blog reflecting on all the reading and writing they did in the unit. The students could compare it to their initial thoughts and feels about writing in their first reflection blog.  They could explain how they have grown as readers and writers and what they think will work well for them going forward in regards to having to write papers in other classes.