UIL Ready Writing Workshop

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UIL Ready Writing Workshop

• Workshops for Ready Writing Coaches
• Dr. Thomas Barker, TTU UIL RW Contest Director
• Dr. Rich Rice , TTU Assistant Professor
• Technical Communication

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Training Exercises for Ready Writers

• Lay the groundwork
• Teach the nature of exposition Exercise
• Focus on prewriting and organizing strategies
  Exercise
• Use winning ready writing essays

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Responding to Ready Writers

• This workshop segment is an activity.
• Read the sample essay
• Respond using the rubric
• Compare responses with others
• Compare responses to suggestions

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Recruiting Ready Writers

• Select the best Ready Writing candidates
• Highly intelligent
• Well read
• Distinctive writing style
• Involvement in other extracurricular activities
• Love of challenge and competition
• Reliability
• Limit writers to 6 per year
• Build subject-area files sociology,
  education, the nation, family and
  lifestyle, science and the environment

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Teaching Elements of Exposition

• Have students write a thesis
• Exchange and critique
• How would you revise the thesis to make it
  clearer?
• Where do you expect the essay to go after
  reading this thesis?
• What words seem strong or weak in the thesis?
• Exercise
• What questions would you ask about the outline,
  the development the language
• Training Exercises for Ready Writers

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Prompt for the Day

• An Athenian citizen does not put his private
  affairs before the affairs of the state even our
  merchants and businessmen know something about
  politics. We alone believe that a man who takes
  no interest in public affairs is more than
  harmlesshe is useless.
• Pericles Funeral Oration Athens, 5th century BC
• Shaping an Essay
• Training Exercises for Ready Writers

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Shaping an Essay

• What three or four ideas do you see associated
  with the prompt?
• How do the ideas relate to one another?
• Whats the progression from one to another?
• What shaping strategies might apply? growth of a
  plant, climbing a mountain, spreading of a
  disease, downhill slide, gathering storm, quest
  for a holy grail, sin/redemption, lost/found,
  tension/release? Other?
• Prompt for the Day
• Training Exercises for Ready Writers