Course Design and Instructional Planning

 Syllabi or Outlines in Secondary or Post-Secondary Courses

I remember the general outline of syllabi provided during college. The most important part of it was the parts concerning projects, quizzes, exams, calendar, and total points available for the course. I used all of these things, but mainly the calendar, as a guide of what I’m expected to know and have complete by a certain date. If I know what I must complete within a certain time frame then I’m able to use my agenda to plan out what to do for each day in order to have an assignment or reading completed on the day that it’s due. For the most part I use syllabi as a means of assignment completion, what book I should purchase for the class, and email and office hours if I need them.

Students’ Sociocultural and Educational Needs

On page 152 Ferris and Hedgcock (2014) list several literacy tasks relevant to academic and preacademic L2 writers. A few of these tasks include writing brief academic texts such as journal entries or reading responses, listening to academic lectures and taking notes, and writing under timed conditions. In these activities L2 students can provide personal analysis, refer to other academic texts, or demonstrate how they’re able to form ideas and cohesive essays under a time constraint. In addition to these tasks meeting students’ sociocultural and educational needs through kinds of texts selected through writing, a course plan should reflect an educational institution’s requirements and philosophy. An educator is able to reflect the philosophy and requirements through identifying and addressing gaps in student learning and structuring class discussions or assignments in a way that allows for critical thinking and student participation.

Literacy Courses vs. Content Courses

Literacy or composition courses are more application intensive than other courses such as physics, history, sociology, art, or literature. There aren’t any formulas, theories, dates, painting styles, or reading between the lines in a literacy course. Of course all of these things can be included when writing; however the main focus of a composition or literacy course is to focus on the thought process, familiarity, and formation of sentences and their structure to create essays and reports in content courses.

Essential Components of a Successful Lesson

I feel that a lesson is successful when I have a feeling of being challenged, The classes that I enjoyed the most, regardless of the discipline, challenged me in some way. They didn’t challenge me to the point where I felt frustrated just thinking about the class, but enough of a challenge to where I felt like I was becoming a better student and learning. It didn’t matter if I was being tasked with greater critical thinking or attempting to become a better writer through essay exams. I welcomed each opportunity to think outside of myself and to break limitations I put on myself.

A few activities or tasks that could expose students to critical thinking could be writing narrative, descriptive, expository, and persuasive essays. A way to approach exposure to each type of essay is to present examples of each type of writing and discussing it as a class. Then the students would write their own essays showing each type. These would be addressed to the class in order of increased difficulty. It’s better to start off with something that most students are familiar with and then work our way towards more difficult essays where they may have to use a combination of essay types.

Productive Classroom Instruction

The best hallmarks of productive planning and delivery are when educators are prepared, organized, and show ease of simplifying topics. When a teacher is prepared with handouts, notes, and what they’re going to lecture about the class has direction and seems purposeful. Usually with preparation comes organization and a plan for how the class is supposed to flow for that day. When the teacher is prepared and has read or reread notes for the lecture they’re better able to better explain and simplify something a student came across in the reading that wasn’t easily understood.

In addition to proper preparation, course expectations are an element of effective classroom management. I’ve had professors that were strict about student punctuality and would lock the door or turn students around if they attempted to enter the room outside of an established time frame; some that strictly stuck to the course outline; some only wanted papers turned in APA style formatting. Almost every experience I’ve had with educators, including in primary and secondary education, had expectations for the class that every student was expected to follow. 

References

Ferris, Dana R. and John S. Hedgcock. Teaching L2 Composition: Purpose, Process,        

     and Practice. New York: Routledge, 2014. Print