Summer LEAP 2008
Sections G&H

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GIS 140: Writing Ready @ Summer Learn + Experience + Achieve Program 2008
Getting a Start on Writing and Critical Thinking in College

Welcome to GIS 140 for Summer LEAP! In this course, you will learn to become critically conscious of your specific relationship to and encounters with writing and reading -- you will be metacognitive about your own academic strengths and difficulties. In other words, through thinking about and reflecting on the writing, reading, and analytical skills you bring to this class, you will learn to assess who you are as a writer, and you will develop your skills to engage with and to perform more effectively in the many courses that will require writing at the University.

This course is divided into four major sequences. The first of the four sequences focuses on the concept of literacy and the nature of learning. You will explore these subjects critically and theoretically by reading essays and narratives about the process of learning to read and write. You will also write your own literacy narrative in which you reflect on your own experiences with reading and writing. Furthermore, we will push the definition of literacy beyond just a knowledge of letters to include multiple literacies and multiple ways of knowing and showing.

The second and third sequences examine the challenges and strategies of active learning and academic inquiry. We will explore the concept of difficulty in reading and learning, conventions of ‘academic discourse’, reasons why students resist facing challenges, and ways for working through difficult learning tasks. At the same time, we will further develop writing habits, reading lenses, and learning practices, including close reading and responding to difficult texts, analyzing texts, working in peer groups, conducting research, and using campus resources.

Finally, the fourth sequence asks you to look back at the quarter and reconsider your literacy narrative in terms of the ways your writing, reading, and learning have changed. You will be asked to put together a portfolio of all of your work and to submit a culminating prospective essay in which you will track your progress as a writer, reader, and scholar. The prospective essay will serve both as a cover letter to your portfolio and as a survey of how you now view yourself as a writer, the challenges you will face in future classes, how you expect to meet these challenges, and how you will further develop your new set of skills, strategies, and theories.

GIS 140 promises a fast-paced, compressed quarter of writing, reading, discussion, research, asking questions, critical thinking, analysis, fun, revision. We will engage texts small and large, everyday and theoretical. To this end, on Fridays, we will head out into the city, into the “field” to do some exploration, observation, and interaction. The “Fridays on Foot” are designed to first, encourage you to become more aware of the campus, the city, and the communities at large, and second, to think about the connections between what we do in class to what you do out of class, between learning and lived experience. By the end of the quarter, the hope of this course is that you realize that learning and knowledge and experience are more than just rubrics, rote, numbers, syllabuses, tests, grades, and graduation requirements -- that learning and knowledge are fundamentally interconnected, intertextual, personal, political, cultural, and mutually enhancing.

For a detailed description of the class take a look at the Course Policies and Syllabus.

GIS 140 Outcomes

1. To develop confidence and fluency as writers, writing daily in a variety of contexts and purposes, personal as well as academic.

2. To understand, develop, and sustain a metacognitive approach to writing.
• to reflect on and make the transition from high school to college-level writing
• to identify writing strengths and how to build on them
• to assess writing difficulties and how to handle them
• to understand the demands and conventions of different writing situations

3. To develop strategies for active learning through writing and close reading.
• to engage in academic inquiry, conversation, and research
• to identify strengths and difficulties when engaging challenging texts
• to use writing to deal with difficulty in college-level readings
• to understand reading as generative as well as supportive of writing and research
• to understand the demands of different reading situations

4. To locate, explore, and use different academic and collegial resources.
• to get the most out of writing centers and other campus resources
• to use the library and library website
• to develop classroom and study habits, including note taking, time management, and peer review strategies.
• to anticipate how current skills and experiences can be transferred to new writing situations