Sample Units
The Writing Program offers the following unit assignments to help new and returning composition instructors as you create assignments for the semester. These represent only a few of the unit assignments that past and current instructors have created for their classes. They are meant only as guides; thus, we urge you to revise them to suit your teaching style and the needs of your students.
If you need ideas for daily assignments, please be sure to visit the Writing Program's Activities Page.
UNIT IDEAS:
Writing From the Personal: This unit asks that students create a "timeline" of their lives and write an essay that speaks to some of those personal events. They will also read selections from the Mercury Reader and make connections to one or more essays.
Discovering Topics from the Self: Another version of the personal narrative, that draws from a literacy map. Additionally, it helps students situate their writing in terms of purpose. According to the description: "The purposes in personal narratives such as this one are often more subtle than in other types of essays. While they may revolve around the simple purpose of sharing an experience, they often suggest a lesson or open a topic up for further thought and discussion. In thinking about your own topics, the purpose may not be clear from the beginning; this is okay!"
What Are They Telling Me?: In this unit students explore the topics of forum and rhetorical appeal. Ultimately, they write a paper wherein they deconstruct one or a series of print and/or television ads.
Campus Issues: Students examine a campus issue (tuition costs, parking, textbooks, etc.). For the portfolio, students revise the essay for a suitable audience.
Clarifying Your Position: The object of this unit is to explore a position and to also approach its counter position with equal respect and attention.
The "X" Files (Collaborative): Students explore those creepy-crawly questions that all of us have, but few admit or ask.
Community Issues: (Collaborative): Students collaboratively consider an issue of importance in their community wherein they take a problem-solution approach, which aims to both inform their audience about the issue and persuade them to see their opinion and accept one of their possible solutions. Once students complete this unit, then write individual papers for the next unit.
Marketing a Product: Students create an entire ad campaign for a product of their choice.
What Would It Be Like . . .?: Students interview a person or people to find out what it would be like to be in that person's shoes.
Taking a Stand (With Audience Revisions): Students write a "position" paper for one audience and then revise it for another.
Looking to the Future: For this unit, students contemplate their future by asking what they want to do with their lives or where they might like to spend their lives.
A "Source-Supported" Essay with a Twist. Students write a standard source-supported (research) essay, complete with in-text citations and Works Cited page, but for their portfolio, they revise it for a newspaper.
Movie Madness, Read This, or Listen to the Music: Students write a movie, book or music review