Overview of Sample Writing Assignments
The following sample community-based writing assignments were developed to build upon one another, each deepening their understanding and exploration of key concepts related to UW-Madison and its surrounding community. These assignments encourage students to engage with the community, explore the significance of local spaces, and make arguments grounded in both personal reflection and extensive research.
Each writing project is designed to build upon the previous one, creating a cohesive learning experience:
- Writing Project 1 introduces students to the Wisconsin Idea, encouraging them to reflect on its significance and how it shapes their university experience.
- Writing Project 2 builds on sequence 2 short assignments and collected sources to synthesize comprehensive and broad perspectives about an issue that affects a local community, with the overall goal of informing, teaching, analyzing, and engaging readers without taking a side or advocating for action.
- Writing Project 3 synthesizes students’ insights from the first two projects into a well-argued essay that narrows the student’s broad understanding of the issue to focus on a local approach, audience, and solution, while also tying the conversation back to the overarching principles of the Wisconsin Idea.
You will note that the structure of assignments in the sample calendar and sample writing assignments begins with shorter, lower stakes assignments that build up to longer writing projects. These shorter assignments are a chance for students to practice important skills that will be incorporated into the longer writing projects and should reflect the particular dimensions of the final project for each unique sequence.
Remember, when you are invested in and excited about a writing assignment, your students can pick up on it and model your enthusiasm. Treat the following assignments as starting points for developing the version that you will distribute to your own students. When considering additions, modifications, and subtractions, be mindful of what you will be emphasizing in your own class, what you will feel comfortable teaching, and how you will make the different assignment options legible to students. Some instructors feel comfortable offering students a range of options; others prefer to focus on a single option to ensure they are able to provide students with clearly articulated expectations.
In drawing from backwards design concepts, always think first about the concepts you ask students to work on in that final writing project of each sequence when developing your shorter assignments and writing goals. Further, this reflects the need for students to be writing often as a means to get ongoing feedback from you and from other members of the class via workshops.
Instructors are welcome to adapt or change the sequence assignments as they wish, as long as they stay within the general parameters of the sequence structure (three sequences, one major writing project per sequence [at least 4 pp], at least one short assignment per sequence [2-3 pp], oral presentation, portfolio assessment system, etc.).
Additional writing assignments, both short and long, along with sample lesson plans are located on the LessonShare Canvas site and the E100 BOX site. You can find the GoogleDrive folder housing the following assignments here. Instructors should add due dates and delete any red text within the assignment descriptions.