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Friday Five | 9/13/2024
Making it Flow: How to Write a Transition Sentence
To supplement my students’ instruction, I created mini-lectures called “Friday Fives.” On most Fridays, I would spend the last five minutes of class teaching success and study skills that they would ned to succeed at KU. Friday Five subjects included “How to Read an Academic Article” and “How to Write a Strong Thesis.” After meeting with students for WP1 conferences, I noticed that many had choppy sentences and paragraphs. I created this Friday Five to address that concern. The response was positive and resulted in stronger transition sentences in the final drafts of WP1.
Activity 1: Fairy Tale Remediation
To prepare for the revisions necessary for WP4, I had student remediate fairy tales and popular stories. I gave them a lot of creative freedom. For example, Group 2 had to revise IT (2017) into a story for children. However, I explained to them that they could still keep the horror genre. The question then becomes, how to write a horror story for children? I chose fairy tales and folklore because they are incredibly well-known. From the Brothers Grimm to Walt Disney, they are simple and easy to remember from childhood. A student in Group 3 remarked that he only knew the basics of “Humpty Dumpty:” he was an egg who fell off of a wall. He was shocked after I made him Google search the story and it was less than five lines—he had stated two of the lines. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Students argued with each other over meaning and genre. One student commented, after hearing Group 3 discuss Humpty Dumpty’s shape, “That’s not very body positive.”
Activity 4: Writing the Introduction Paragraph
This activity builds upon the "Is the Wicked Witch of the West a Villain?" Activity. It is structured so that students cannot complete it without completing the other activity first. However, I noticed that students who completed both activities had a better understanding of synthesis in their WP3.
Friday Five | 10/18/2024
How to Evaluate Sources
At this point in the semester, students were preparing to submit WP2. In preparation for WP3: Creating a Public Awareness Campaign, I wanted to make sure that my students could differentiate between acceptable and unacceptable sources. My mini-lecture broke down scholarly vs popular sources; primary vs secondary sources; the difference between fact, opinion, and propaganda; and taught how to evaluate sources and an author’s biography. The response was positive. Students who cited sources for WP3 overwhelmingly cited trustworthy, academic sources.
Activity 2: Writing Thick Descriptions
To help students prepare for writing the thick descriptions necessary for WP2, I created a practice activity. In pairs, students would upload a photo from their phones. Then their partner would describe the photo in at least 10 sentences. For my example, I intentionally showed an embarrassing photo of myself from my high school graduation. This activity builds on students' reading on "Writing Thick Descriptions." After the activity, students commented that they enjoyed learning more about their classmates and having the opportunity to share a small piece of themselves. After implementing the assignment, I made a number of changes. The download below has been edited to reflect these changes.
Activity 3: Is the Wicked Witch of the West a Villain?
Out of all the activities I created for Spring 2025, this was my favorite one. This activity was designed to provide more structure for understanding synthesis. I wanted students to feel grounded in their understanding of synthesis. In this activity, students read through summaries of three films that include the Wicked Witch of the West: The Wizard of Oz (1939), The Wiz (1978), and Wicked (2024). By the end of the activity, students had to form an opinion on whether the Wicked Witch of the West is actually a villain; write a synthesis putting the three sources into conversation with each other; and then create a synthesized thesis statement that stated their opinion and the opinion of the authors they read. This activity can easily be replicated with any text (film/movie/comic) that has multiple versions.
