By: Sheila Hopkins-Barken

In my OUSA 115 class I set high yet not unreasonable expectations for my students. The focus of my class is further development and enhancement of my students’ English composition skills. In addition, I reinforce their grammar skills through individualized, task specific grammar units, reviewing what the students know and strengthening what they know but still have some degree of difficulty utilizing in their expositions.

My class and I meet Monday through Thursday for approximately two hours each day. Quite early in the course we develop a good sense of rapport and mutual trust. We work hard, but we laugh too.

My students write formally each week and informally every day; too, on a weekly basis they practice Test of Written English prompts and summarize an article from a current periodical.

A typical Monday for my class is the reading aloud, at the podium or in a circle, of the Writing Assignment for the week. (I call the major weekly writings Writing Assignments-WA’s—in lieu of paragraphs or essays, so as to give my students more latitude regarding length. My focus is strength, while adhering to the basic expository outline of: I. Introduction-Tell us what you’re going to say. II. Body—Say it. III. Conclusion—Tell us what you said.) The major weekly WA consists of at least one rough draft which is peer evaluated either by using a Peer Review Checklist tailored to the mode or strategy of writing for the week, or something exciting for our class and excellently executed by e-mail. I assign the peer teams on a weekly basis. When using e-mail, I put my e-mail address my students’ cc line, so I have an electronic copy and a printout of what they have done.

A typical Thursday for my class is peer evaluation via Checklist or e-mail of the rough draft for the following Monday’s WA. I pair or team the students, they exchange rough drafts, and seriously evaluate one another’s drafts. While my students are engaged in peer evaluation, I check their English Notebooks for their personal reflections, plus the entries I have assigned. Tuesdays and Wednesdays my students typically work in one or both texts, or work with supplemental materials. Both individual and group work occur daily.

So far this semester my students have written six major WA’s, (Each WA consists of: 1) at least one peer-evaluated rough draft and one typed, double-spaced final copy and 2) sharing the WA aloud) ranging from the Sample Paper to Narration, Description, Example, Comparison/Contrast; we’re moving on to Classification, Process, Cause/Effect, Argumentation, and a Book Report. To finish off our semester, we’ll view a movie of suitable substance and do a Movie Write (fun) and take the Final-Part A- a TWE and Part B-a summary of a relevant article (not so fun but necessary).