Orientation Lesson Plan

This is first day plan to introduce the course and to break the ice. Students will also form peer review/writing groups that they will work with throughout the rest of the course.

Target

Upon completing this lesson, students will…

understand the expectations of the course

get to know each other and the instructor

have formed their peer review/writing groups

Materials

The following slide presentation can be used to help facilitate this lesson: Day 1 Slides

Warm up

Time: ~10 minutes

Welcome students and introduce yourself. Circulate sign-in sheet/call role. Handout index cards and ask students to provide the following information: name, class time, address, phone, other courses currently taking, current employment, work schedule, things I should know to better help the you during the semester, what brought you to this course, what you hope to get out of the course.

Small Group Icebreaker

The following activity will help students get to know each other, will allow them to form working bonds with their small groups, and will orient students to the course and the syllabus.

Time: 20~40 minues

Activity Steps:

Have students form groups of three (four at most)

Ask students to complete the following tasks: 1) introduce selves to others in group and then look into their purses, wallets, book bags, etc. to find one item that is significant to them; each student explains to the group why the object is significant; 2) everyone in the group works to find one thing that they all have in common.

Go around the room and have each person introduce another person from their group, telling something they learned about that person. Plus have each group share what they all have in common. (Alternatively, just go around quickly with individual intros to save ~ 20 min.)

Syllabus Team Activity

Time: ~25 minutes total

Activity Steps:

Have each group generate a list of 5 to 8 questions that they have about the class. (~5 minutes)

The instructor then hands out the syllabus and the groups go over it together to answer their questions. (~10 minutes)

The class then reconvenes and the groups ask any questions that were not answered by the syllabus. (~10 minutes)

Set the Tone

Time: ~5 minutes

Make the following points (or those appropriate to the given course) to set the tone for the course and to give students an idea of your philosophy for teaching the course.

Talking points:

This course is about ways of reading and ways of writing

I will not tell you or prescribe for you a single “right” way to do either of these things

Instead, I will invite you to a conversation that has been going on long before this class ever convened; I will invite you to participate as both reader and writer

I will encourage you to read this text as a text, that is as something which represents something else—something that contains meaning; I will encourage you to see it as representing a point of view, to argue with it, to take it as prompting to respond to it in a voice of your own.

I will not require that you accept it as gospel

Rather, I will ask you to read with the grain and against the grain: with it by participating in this text and its form of instruction with an open mind; against it, by seeing its bias and limitations with a critical mind.

The readings of this course and the writing you will be doing in this course do not lend themselves to easy answers, and that’s a good thing.

In fact, it is my hope that you leave this course with more questions than answers—for it is the complexity of the question that is at the heart of learning, not the simplicity of an answer.

Assignment Options

Time: ~ 5 minutes

Hand out one of the following or another assignment depending on the course: Introductions by Way of Word and Image or You as a Reader and a Writer

Explain the assignment

Remind students to read through the syllabus carefully as there might be a quiz the next class