Overview

This chapter is intended to help instructors decide how they will use this resource.

First-Year Composition was written with flexibility and individuality in mind, while still being aware of common course objectives and the transferability of the course; once you learn more about the students you have in your class, you can feel free to take and adapt the resources found here.

Before you begin: This resource provides instructors with the complete curriculum for CO1. There are three steps you will need to take before assigning this to your class.

1. Decide on your assignment sequence. We have included suggestions below, which you can tailor to your student population.
2. Choose the readings that your students will summarize, respond to, or use for research. We give some suggestions for reading level below.
3. Adjust the due dates for each assignment to fit your semester schedule.

First-Year Composition is under a Creative Commons license that allows edits, so feel free to make any other changes you feel would be beneficial for your students.

Module format

Each module begins with suggestions for how the instructor could pace the assignment and which other assignments would be a good fit to come either before or after to provide scaffolding. The organization of each module is as follows:

1. Assignment overview
2. Course objectives
3. Module objectives
4. Summative assignment sheet
5. Important concepts and prompts
6. Assignment rubric
7. Scheduling and pacing notes
8. Notes on assessing the final assignment

Tailoring your curriculum

We have included a few considerations for choosing assignments and readings; while they are not exhaustive, they can help guide you in choosing which assignments, readings, and activities would be most appropriate for your group.

Beginning the semester by asking students about their high school experience, education in a foreign country, or how long it’s been since they’ve written a paper for school can help inform many of your decisions moving forward. CO1 tends to have students with diverse life experiences, such as ESL students, adult/veteran students, and students with learning disabilities. Each of these comes with their own strengths and challenges.

Students’ familiarity with academic genres: Throughout the semester, the genre of the main assignments will take sometimes subtle and sometimes large shifts from one to the next. Depending on how you structure the assignments, the topics may remain the same from one assignment to the next, ensuring that writers need to carefully consider how and why they would change their strategies when writing about the same topic using a different genre.

Reading level: We recommend easing students into reading scholarly, peer-reviewed sources; there are two research assignments that require students to find their own sources. The emphasis on reading strategies in the first modules can help to mitigate challenges with academic sources that they may not be used to reading. However, we recommend using a resource like Readable.com to verify the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level.

Other considerations include cultural or historical references within chosen readings. If your class has a significant population of ESL/international writers or students who have lacked access to technology in the past, they may not understand the full impact of what they have read. An example we have experienced is references to figures like Rosa Parks, or religious figures. While those can be discussed in class, it’s important to anticipate that not everyone will automatically have access to that cultural knowledge.

Familiarity with finding and reading academic sources: Many CO1 students will be new to reading scholarly or peer-reviewed sources, and have little to no experience using academic databases. A good strategy would be to constrain students’ research to a resource, such as 88 Open Essays or a list of acceptable publications.

Familiarity with attribution, paraphrasing, and citation conventions: Over-reliance on direct quotes can happen because students misunderstand what they’ve read or don’t know how to appropriately summarize. They may also have difficulties with development and substitute direct quotes for more meaningful content, like analysis or evaluation.

Suggested sequences

The assignments in this resource are scaffolded to build on one another. However, there is more material here than could be utilized in a 16-week semester. Some of the assignments focus on reading while others focus on research or a blend of reading and writing. Depending on the population you are teaching, you might choose to use assignments that focus on one of those aspects more than the other. Alternatively, you could choose assignments that balance reading, research, and argumentation.

Below we have included a few different sequences you could use in a 16-week semester where the 16th week is reserved for completing the final assignment and doesn’t include instruction.

Contact the authors

This resource was written by Leslie Davis and Kiley Miller at Colorado State University. It was funded by the state of Colorado via the CSU Morgan Library. We’d like to thank Khaleedah Thomas and Stan Kruse for their assistance with Creative Commons and Pressbooks.

For inquiries, comments, or suggestions, please contact Leslie Davis at Leslie.Davis@colostate.edu