TOTP Thinking•Reading•Writing Workshops
We offer a range of workshops and services for educators:
TOTP 101: Using Thinking on the Page in the classroom
In this hands-on workshop, we teach educators how to put Thinking on the Page to work in the classroom and how to effectively integrate our techniques into any writing-intensive course. This workshop covers
Making English class more inclusive and effective: using visual techniques to help students become more confident writers and readers
What is an essay? Introducing analytical thinking and using visual metaphors to engage students in essay writing
Building an essay: Basic techniques for essay writing, from reading to polishing
Educators will:
Learn new practices and approaches for working with visual and numeric thinkers
Practice hands-on techniques for engaging with all aspects of process-oriented writing and reading
Learn hands-on techniques for classroom and self-guided work
Develop prompts that incorporate process work
In-depth workshops:
All workshops are customized for your school or program, instructors, and curricular needs. Workshops may be offered as stand-alone units or combined in 1-day, 2-day, or 3-day sequences and can be offered live, online, or as hybrids. Workshops are appropriate for instructors in English departments and those teaching writing-intensive courses in a wide range of disciplines, from history to science and engineering.
Reading, Writing, Drafting
This one-day workshop expands the offerings of the introductory workshop, taking instructors through each step of essay writing. We focus in particular on reading-to-write techniques, question-asking methodologies, and initial drafting stages.
From Reading to Revision
This two-day workshop takes instructors through the full writing process outlined in Thinking on the Page, from reading for summary through drafting, revision and polishing. Instructors will practice hands-on skills and approaches, engage with and role play classroom teaching techniques for each stage of the process, and work to develop take-home and peer review assignments.
Thinking on the Page and the Common Core
Thinking on the Page is an excellent match for new Common Core requirements: it focuses on critical-thinking skills, close reading, and critical and analytical writing.
This workshop gives teachers a range of methods that help students read analytically by focusing on questions and problems in language, argument and narrative in both fiction and nonfiction texts. The workshops will provide hands-on methods that show students how to collect and analyze evidence, come to reasoned conclusions from that analysis, and create essays that offer clear, cogent narratives and arguments. We demonstrate how to analyze and evaluate arguments in nonfiction texts, how to put texts into conversation with each other, and how to draw strong, analytical conclusions. In this workshop, tailored to your program, we address specific strategies and approaches for productive fulfillment of Common Core goals.
This workshop can be tailored for instructors in any discipline or department. Length varies.
Thinking on the Page and Writing Across the Curriculum/ Writing in the Disciplines
This workshop focuses on reading, writing, and speaking pedagogies outside the English classroom. Customized to your disciplinary focus, the workshops address the specific needs of a given discipline, and show instructors how to productively integrate hands-on writing methods into their classrooms—without displacing content. Length varies.
Writing as Process
This workshop delves into the question of process vs product, beginning with the common student assumption that process and product are the same—that is, that the most important thing is the final, stapled product, and that it is produced in one sitting. This assumption often underlies students’ paralysis and their perception of themselves as “bad writers.” In this workshop, we move through productive stages of essay writing, address student reluctance regarding process writing, and engage instructors in hands-on methods for students and classroom strategies for teaching process writing.
Reading to Write, Writing to Read: Summary, Analysis, and Close Reading
In this two-day workshop, we begin with a simple premise: reading to write is different than other kinds of reading, and students—even college students—need to learn how to do it. In the first section of this long workshop, we cover a range of reading-to-write techniques, including annotation and summary methodologies, analytical note-taking techniques, and methods for choosing and exploring key questions.
Close reading is the practice at the heart of meaningful reading, writing and critical analysis, but it is often the most confounding practice for students. In Part Two of this workshop, we take on the common student assumption that a text “says what it means”—that is, that there is nothing for them to say to a text, that their job is to report what they’ve read. In this hands-on workshop, participants learn methods for identifying “strange” phenomena in a text or passage, asking questions about a specific phenomenon, exploring it through the text itself, and coming to analytical arguments about textual phenomena. The workshop also takes up the moves from close reading to creating arguments.
Participants use practice and role play to explore a range of teaching and learning techniques for each step in the reading-to-write process. This workshop focuses primarily on literary texts, but also addresses close reading practices in work with nonfiction texts and images.
What’s A Claim, Exactly? Getting to Meaningful Arguments
This day-long workshop addresses perhaps the most difficult question for student writers: what is a claim (or thesis, or argument), and how do I create one? Student writers often make the mistake of starting with the claim and then writing the paper to fit it, instead of investigating a text or phenomenon, asking questions, examining textual evidence, making discoveries, and finding a claim through this analytical process. In this workshop, we offer methods for taking on the difficult issue of the claim in the classroom and engage participants in teaching practice through role play and discussion.
Participants learn and try out a range of hands-on techniques for each step in the claim-building process; we also address self-evaluation, incorporating claims and mini-claims into the essay and moving from claim to conclusion. This workshop is appropriate for teachers in all disciplines, departments and fields.
Turning Away from the Screen: Hands-On Drafting
A common stumbling block for student writers is the notion that all writing and revision must be done on screen—an idea that can get in the way of holistic approaches to the essay, self-evaluation, building connections between ideas, and understanding structure. In this four-hour workshop, we address a range of hands-on, visually oriented methods for productive essay creation off-screen—in class, at home and with peers.
Essay Building Blocks
This half-day workshop addresses essay structure and effective methods for building the essay. Students often think that essays are written by beginning at the beginning and stopping at the end, but this method of writing erases the possibilities posed by discoveries, dead ends, new questions, and knotty problems—and often leads to overly simplified essays. In this workshop, we teach a building-block method for essay writing, and offer a range of strategies for creating the pieces of an essay and knitting them together effectively. This workshop pairs well with the Reading to Write or What Is a Claim, Exactly? workshops.
Working with Research
This half-day workshop offers instructors a range of methods for teaching good student research practices. We address understanding what research does and what it’s for, finding questions for research, choosing and assessing sources, engaging with source material, and integrating research into the essay. We take up different types of research and different goals in research writing, and address strategies for a range of disciplines and assignment types. We focus in particular on avoiding the traps of “going to the library to find an essay,” using weak sources, inadvertent plagiarism, and poor source integration.
Drafting A to Z
This day-long workshop takes participants through the process of drafting, from discovery drafts through claim and research drafts to final drafts and polishing. We address common problems for different types of writers, with a particular focus on effective self-assessment and peer assessment practices and planning for revision. Workshop participants practice a range of methods for drafting and revising at each stage of the writing process, and explore instructor-led and peer-to-peer methods of learning to draft and revise.
Technical Writing, Writing for Science Courses
This day-long workshop focuses on writing pedagogy for the sciences, addressing writing not only as a product (lab reports, proposals) but also as a useful process for thinking through scientific and technical practice. We offer a range of classroom practices for productive writing in the lab and the technical classroom. We focus in particular on writing in groups, on writing as exploratory process, and on teaching the key components of scientific writing: clarity, precision and concision. Participants engage in a range of hands-on writing practices, discuss goals for writing, and take up questions of disciplinary expectations in talking about writing.
Professional Writing, Resume Writing, Application Writing
In this short workshop (2 hours to half day), we address effective methods for a range of professional writing activities for student writers, including resumes and cvs, cover letters, job and internship applications, and college, graduate school and professional school applications. We show teachers (and guidance counselors!) how to help students apply our key methodologies to this distinctive form of writing, how to focus on key points, and how to craft effective, argument-driven letters and applications.
Presentations
This short workshop (2 hours to half day) addresses all aspects of classroom presentations, from choosing a topic through writing and preparation to effective presentation techniques. Participants learn process writing techniques and documentation methods best suited to presentations, and engage in practice and role play with presentation methods, including breath, voice, and projection, controlling anxiety, and engaging peers. We also address classroom issues around presentations.
Other services for schools, colleges and universities:
Curriculum consultation
Implementation and program support: writing programs, writing centers, WAC/WID
Instructor mentoring
Classroom workshops
Student support and tutoring: individual and small group