Stevenson 96, theory and Practice of Peer guided Learning, Writing emphasis
Session Planning and Implementation Assignment
Fall, 2015
During class we have discussed a number of different writing tutoring strategies. As part of the second
class, we specifically focused on a handout describing possible interactive learning approaches wherein
the tutor and the student engage together in one or more aspects of the writing process focusing on
either planning, drafting, or revising and editing. It is both challenging and educationally essential that
you in your role as a tutor engage your student actively in the thinking/writing process during your
sessions. It is often true that the student is hoping that you will “fix” the paper, but you know that you
need to guide the student to initiate and implement the improvements to his/her piece of writing.
The purpose of this assignment is to provide you with the opportunity to develop and use lesson
planning and implementation strategies that will improve your experiences as a writing tutor and your
student’s ability to successfully engage in adapting the writing process to successfully complete varied
university-level paper assignments.
In order to complete this assignment you will need the handouts from the Writing emphasis Stevenson
96 class, particularly the ones referring to specific tutoring strategies. Additionally, you will need your
own experience as a successful academic writer, your creative thinking skills, and your willingness to
anticipate the stresses, insecurities, challenges, and goals that university student academic writers often
faced when approaching a teacher-created writing prompt with serious course-grade ramifications.
Let us assume that you are likely to tutor a number of students, some of whom come to you regularly
and some who you see infrequently. Let us also assume that you are likely to encounter writers needing
assistance in varied stages of the writing process: planning a paper based on a professor-generated
prompt and set of expectations, preparing a draft for submission, or revising a draft based on feedback
from a Teaching Assistant or a professor.
As a writing tutor, you often do not know what your student may bring to your session. You may see the
same student each week, or you may frequently see students only once or intermittently. Therefore, it
may help you to produce some generic lesson plans: one focused on developing a thesis and planning a
paper, another on reviewing a rough draft and making content-based, organizational, and editorial
improvements, and another focused on interpreting comments made by the course instructor or
teaching assistant and revising the paper.
The purpose of this assignment is to challenge you to engage students in interactive thinking/writing
learning activities as they plan, draft, and revise papers during your tutoring sessions.
In advance, please decide on the student learning outcomes that you hope to enable your students to
achieve.
Steps to follow to complete this assignment:
Choose two of the three general paper-writing activities that often occur during tutoring sessions:
developing a thesis and planning a a paper, assisting a student to revise a paper draft before it is
submitted for instructor or Teaching Assistant evaluation, or Assisting a student to revise a paper that
has received feedback.
2. Develop a detailed generic lesson plan that engages the student in interactive learning activities as
the two of you work through the appropriate thinking/writing process.
3. Use this generic lesson plan as a guide as you engage your student in an interactive planning or
revising process during a tutoring session.
4. Prepare a detailed written description of this activity including your generic lesson plan, a detailed
description of the dialogue that occurred as you and the student engaged in the thinking/writing
process, and the writing that emerged during the session. Be sure to share the details of the interactive
learning dialogue that resulted in the writing that was completed.
5. Prepare to present a discussion of your session in class. Discuss your lesson plan, the session
activities, the strengths of the session, and changes that you might make in the future.
Your written description of the session planning, implementation, and evaluation should include
answers to each of the following questions. Please be both descriptive and analytic. Your reader needs
to experience the session as you did, understand your plan and your implementation strategies, your
students’ learning, and the evidence you present supporting the strengths and possible improvements
to this session.
1.
Which of the three writing session plans did you decide to use?
2. Why did you choose this plan?
3. Explain any adaptations that you made to the general plan based on such variables as the
student’s specific assignment, the student’s readiness for the session, and cognitive and
affective strengths and needs that the student seemed to demonstrate
4. Describe the techniques that you used to implement the strategy, engage the student in the
session, monitor the learning process, assist as needed, etc.?
5. What learning outcomes did you hope that the students would achieve?
6. Describe your sense of how well you feel that the session benefitted the student and what
he/she learned?
You will have approximately five minutes to discuss your session during class. After the individual
presentations, we will have a class discussion of the use of interactive thinking/writing strategies within
writing tutoring sessions.
Assignment Due Date: Consult the Course Syllabus