Orientation Materials

Orientation will cover the basics of Basic Composition (100) and Basic Composition with Reading (100R). Please read through the materials carefully, and feel free to contact the 100/100R Course Coordinator, Carole Marrone, carole.marrone@rutgers.edu, with any questions you may have as the semester goes on.

Texts
Points of Departure, the course textbook, can be bought at the Douglass Co-op, the Livingston Co-op, NJ Books on Somerset, and the Rutgers Bookstore on Albany. They should also purchase the Prentice Hall Reference Guide to Grammar and Usage, 5th edition. Teachers should pick up their desk copies of both texts in the main Writing Program office on College Avenue, Murray 108.

Course Description/Grading Criteria, Helpful Hints, and Packets of Samples
Almost all of the materials listed below will be available at the Orientation. In addition, explore the Writing Program Web Site for more materials. See the Course Description and Grading Criteria for other pieces of information that are Writing Program policy and are therefore required to be on your syllabus.

Some of the information you’ll be given in the Orientation Packet is for your perusal, use, or adaptation: paper assignments, sequences, homework assignments, sample sequences, and sample papers. Some of the information in the packet covers standard policies for the course and for the Writing Program: course description, requirements & policies, and grading criteria. In addition, there are several sites where you can find extremely helpful materials for both assignment writing and for in-class work: Building an Assignment and Finding Focus, for example, are located in Things That Work. The course description, grading criteria, and requirements/policies material is described briefly, below. More specific details can be found at the links noted above.

First Day of Class: Confirming correct placement
Are your students in the right place? Just as in 101, you'll quickly introduce the course, yourself, make sure they are in the right place, etc. Some instructors request student information on note cards in order to determine if they have enrolled in the correct course: most importantly, you want to know if thee have taken any previous Writing Program course. If they have already taken and failed 100, for example, they should be enrolled in a 100R course. If they have taken and passed 098, they should be enrolled in a 100R course. The only students who should be in 100 in the fall and the spring are those who have placed into 100. All other Basic Composition students should be in enrolled in 100R.

If you are teaching a numbered section of 100
Any student who has taken 100 in the past and earned a grade of F or 095P must leave your class and go to Add/Drop to switch to a lettered section (100:RA, RB…). Any student whose most recent Writing Course was 098 or EAD II must also must leave your class and go to Add/Drop to switch to a lettered section of 100. (see Memo from Darcy Gioia attached to your first day roster and writing sample for details about Add/Drop). Some students will have taken a version of 100 during the summer through EOF; if they are in your class, it is likely that their placement is correct.

The First Day Writing Sample
As in 101, your students have 60 minutes to write their sample.

• Please collect the question sheet with each student's response, and make sure the student has filled out the information at the top of the sheet. We need to be able to contact them immediately if they need to change courses: if your class meets only once during the first week, Add/Drop period might be over by the time you see the student again.
  
• Please read their responses carefully and as soon as possible. Consult with a director if you think that the sample indicates a misplacement of the student.
  
• A typical response may not show a strong point but it should show the student's ability to respond to the question asked; the student should use quotations or at least refer directly to the ideas in the text; the sample should be more or less coherent; it should be about one and a half to two standard notebook pages long.
  
• Possible indicators of misplacement might be: complete avoidance of the question asked; lack of engagement even of a superficial kind with the quoted materials on the Writing Sample questions; sentence structure and/or grammatical issues that are not only incorrect but also interfere with meaning; inability to generate text—the student is only able to write half a page. Consult with a director if you think that the sample indicates a misplacement of the student.
  

First Day Assignment

Your students’ assignment for the 2nd class period should be to read the first essay, and perhaps, to complete a writing assignment of your choosing. If there is time after your students have finished their Writing Sample on the First Day, many instructors begin the first essay by reading targeted passages for discussion.

Finally . . .

If during the course of the semester, you have in-class assignments, handouts, paper sequences, or any other teaching materials/ideas you would like to submit for web publication, please do submit them for consideration. In addition, use the listserv as a way of setting up communication between teachers of Basic Composition.

Thank you for teaching Basic Composition—feel free to contact me as the semester goes on. Enjoy!

Carole Marrone
100/100R Course Coordinator
135 George St., Room 102
Douglass Campus
732-932-8856
carole.marrone@rutgers.edu