One-credit summer classes

The Red River Valley Writing Project is pleased to offer the following one-credit classes this summer. These classes are available for either UND or NDSU credit and for letter grades or S/U grading. ALL educators are welcome to enroll in these classes.

Sentence Sense, T&L 900

Topics: Language Arts & Instructional Strategies
Audience: K-12
Dates: June 16-17 in Fargo and June 23-24 in Grand Forks
Instructors: Nancy Devine and Pam Fisher

Learn how to write more effectively through generating quality sentences. In this class, participants will explore various sentence writing strategies, analyze models for sentence generation, examine sentence-level syntax, learn to manipulate syntax to create varying effects for readers, and explore how sentences relate to each other. Participants will generate their own sentences, analyze them, revise them, and discuss the strategies used. They will also consider how sentence strategies can be used to scaffold students K-12.

Click here for the registration link.

Build Your Argument Toolkit: Rhetoric in the K12 Classroom, T&L 900

Topics: Language Arts & Instructional Strategies
Audience: K-12
Dates: August 4-5 in Grand Forks
Instructor: Dr. Kim Donehower

This mini-institute is designed to give K-12 teachers an introductory course in classical to contemporary rhetoric, so that we might select useful ideas, terms, and techniques for our students and our teaching. The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts place tremendous emphasis on the "evidence-based argument," but there's a more important word buried (and sometimes misdefined) in the standards: "rhetoric." "Rhetoric," in the classic sense, is the study of persuasion, and it's difficult to teach students to read or write arguments without it. It encompasses everything from coming up with sound claims to the selection of evidence to audience analysis to persuasive techniques to word choice.

Participants in this mini-institute will:

• understand and apply the concepts of rhetorical situation, Aristotelian appeals, and Toulmin terminology for analyzing arguments;

• identify current beliefs and practices which may be limiting students' learning of argumentation;

• transform some current classroom practices into ones which provide richer, more informed learning situations for students.

Follow this link to register.