Resources for Teachers

This page will always be under development as we discover new resources for faculty, education students, and anyone else interested in teaching and learning writing.

General Online Writing Helps

• Purdue University Online Writing Lab
  Comp teachers everywhere (at least everywhere Gilmour’s been) use this site–the Boilermakers have given all of us a great resource for college writing.  Inside are sections on generating ideas for writing assignments, style guides for documentation, tutorials for mechanics, and all sorts of fun things.  (They’re fun for English teachers.  I promise.)

Assignment Design Resources

• Authentic Assessment Toolbox: Authentic Tasks
  Jon Mueller goes over some of the basic philosophy of creating assignments to assess student learning.
• Classroom Assessment Technique Examples from University of Hawaii
  Work low-intensity, low-grading-load written exercises into your classroom practice.
• Composing a Writing Assignment (.docx)
  Emmanuel College’s English department put together this guide to making writing assignments clear.
• Designing Effective Writing Assignments
  The University of Maryland writing center offers some useful questions to pose as you go.   This handy set of pages is in the third division in the central column.
• Sequenced Microthemes
  One teacher shares a plan for writing assignments, a strategy that requires minimal grading time.

Assessment and Response Resources

• Authentic Assessment Toolbox: Rubrics
  For those who need a bit of review, this site gives nice, brief definitions of analytic and holistic rubrics, what might go into decisions to use one or the other, and other such pointers for constructing grading rubrics.
• Diagnosing and Responding to Student Writing
  Dartmouth’s writing center provides a brief and helpful reminder essay about the process of responding to students’ papers rooted in your experience as a reader.
• Responding Effectively to Student Papers Across the Disciplines: An Interactive Approach
• Rubistar
  This online tool will help you generate rubrics quickly for a range of assignments.
• Sample Rubrics from Winona State University
  The manager of this page has compiled rubrics from schools all over the country and across disciplines ranging from Art History to Web Design.  (No Zoology yet, or I could be more clever with the A to Z bit.)  Mostly analytical rubrics, but some holistic ones get in there as well.
• “The Genre of the End Comment” by Summer Smith
  This study examines the conventions that govern end-of-paper commentary and offers some helpful advice for letting students know that you’ve actually and thoughtfully considered the text before you instead of treating it as just another chore.

Revision Resources

• Revision Exercises from FSU
  These are clearly geared towards a writing class specifically, but they might inspire your own practices.
• Revision Exercises from UNR
  Not every exercise is as helpful as the others, but there are some good ideas here for in-class and out-of-class revision sessions.

Documentation Resources

• The APA Interactive Tutorial
  The introductory sequence is fun enough to be worth the price of admission.
• The Basics of APA Style
  This one is actually from the APA official site.
• MLA Citation Style from Cornell University Library
  Cornell provides a nice, compact reference page.
• Style Guides from UGA Libraries
  Why, yes, the Composition Culture director did go to grad school at UGA.  Why do you ask?

Discipline-Specific Resources

• Business and Economics
  • Classroom Writing versus Business Writing
  • Guidelines for Economics Papers
    One particular assignment in one particular class provided occasion for these tips, but they’re good tips.
  • Incorporating Writing into an Introductory Business and Economics Statistics Course
    A click on the “download” link gets to the .pdf of this article.
  • Paradox in the Business Writing Classroom: Teaching Nonacademic Writing in the Academic Setting
    Traci Gardner explores some ways to move students towards competence as business communicators.
• Christian Ministries
  • Reading and Writing Well
    Dr. Niel Nielson, president of Covenant College, discusses the close relationships between reading, translation, and writing.
  • Why Johnny Can’t Preach (podcast)
    The Reformed Forum crew interviews T. David Gordon on his recent book dealing with liberal education, preaching, and how teachers can improve both.  (Gilmour has a copy of this book and would be glad to let a colleague borrow it.)
  • Writing in Theology Courses from Marquette University
  • Writing about the Bible at Community College
    No, we’re not a community college.  But the article is interesting enough.
• Mathematics
  • Creating Successful Calculus Writing Assignments
    This scholarly article proposes a focus on purpose and audience in writing for mathematics classes.
  • Writing in Math Classes
    The graph-paper background is pretty well toxic, but the resources seem handy enough.
• Music
  • Writing About Music (Calgary)
    The University of Calgary’s brief guide might be a handy resource for students apprehensive about writing a music paper.
  • Writing About Music (Iowa)
    The University of Iowa’s resource is mainly for students, but it does provide some helpful reminders.
  • Writing in Music
    This resource page from Queens College has a corresponding student resources page.
  • Writing the Music Paper
    Dartmouth University provides a nice guide for student writers in music classes, complete with sample papers.
• Sciences
  • The Scientific Paper
    This page provides a summary of the parts of a biology paper.
  • Science Writing: Revision Exercises
    Perhaps I should have put this under revision, but since it’s geared to science writing, here it is!
  • Writing in the Sciences
    A nice, brief treatment of some science-specific writing conventions awaits.
  • Bibliography on Writing in the Science Classroom