Texts+-+Course+Description

__Required Textbooks/ Materials:__ Newkirk, Peter and Richard Kent. //Teaching the Neglected R: Rethinking// //Writing Instruction in Secondary Classrooms//. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2007. Ehrenworth, Mary and Vicki Vinton. //The Power of Grammar:// //Unconventional Approaches to the Conventions of Language//, Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2005. Pocket folder for writing assignments **Practicum Hours in English 408** Beginning Fall 2010, English education students (both majors and minors) will complete 10 of the required 40 hours of pre-service teaching as a part of the class requirements for English 408 (Writing for Writing Teachers). The 10 hours will connect to the Writer’s Profile assignment in which 408 students currently correspond with high school students throughout the semester and meet with the students as a whole class (either at EMU or at the high school).

__Course Description:__ In this course you are asked to consider yourself both as a writer and as a teacher and to reflect about how one role affects the other. **As a writer,** you will select your own topics and genres and enjoy the exploration that portfolio assessment allows. You will write both for self-expression and for inquiry, i.e. to learn more about the teaching of writing. Your best writing will be assessed in a culminating portfolio, which means nothing will be graded in the conventional sense until you finally submit it with your portfolio or mini-portfolio. **As a teacher of writers** you will engage in collaborative and interactive inquiry. You will collaborate with others to investigate and report on selected topics in the teaching of writing. To consider **students as writers** you will correspond with a writer from Ypsilanti High School and collect two or three writing samples from him or her. You will practice reading student writing for what it shows, rather than for what it lacks, and write a profile of that student writer.