These resources present informal or non-graded writing activities you can use in your course that use writing as a tool for learning.
Writing Activities to Get Students Thinking and Learning (e-handout)
Mānoa Writing Program, University of Hawai’i
http://www.mwp.hawaii.edu/resources/thinking-learning.htm
A list of informal writing-to-learn activities that can be interated with traditional formal writing assignments like essays or stand alone. For example, informal writing activities presented that can be coupled with a formal essay assignment include having students write a paraphrase of an assignment’s requirements before they start the assignment to having students write a response memo after receiving comments and a grade on that assignment. The page also offers 11 stand-alone writing-to-learn activities.
What is Writing to Learn? (tutorial)
The WAC Clearinghouse
http://wac.colostate.edu/intro/pop2d.cfm
This well thought-out and well designed online tutorial from The WAC (Writing Across the Curriculum) Clearinghouse explains and demonstrates writing-to-learn activies: short and informal activies you can use in small seminars or large lecture courses to help students experience how writing is a tool for understanding ideas and concepts. The tutorials includes extensive explanations of the following writing-to-learn activities: reading journal, generic and focused summaries, annotations, response papers, synthesis papers, discussion starter, focusing a discussion, learning log, analyzing the process, problem statement, solving real problems, pre-test warm-ups, using cases, letters, what counts as a fact? believing and doubting game, analysis of events, project notebooks, and writing journal.
Writing-to-Learn Activities (e-handout)
Writing Across the Curriculum Program, University of Richmond
http://writing2.richmond.edu/wac/wtl.html
This resources is a collection of classic writing-to-learn activies with ideas on how to use these activities in different disciplines and types of courses. Specific writing-to-learn activities covered include: Freewriting & Focused Freewriting, Entry Slips/Exit Slips, Reader-Response Writing, The Sentence/Passage Springboard, Writing Definitions to Empower the Student, Student-Formulated Questions, The Short Summary, Group Writing Activities, Dialectical/Double Entry Notebooks, Microthemes, Answer the Question!, and Clarification/Review Letters.
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Filed under: Writing-to-learn
