The Norton Flock: A Composition Community

Getting Started with Resources for The Norton Field Guide to Writing, Sixth Edition

Norton composition specialist Elizabeth Pieslor will host an overview of the new and expanded resources available with The Norton Field Guide to Writing. Join us to get a jump start on preparing for Fall courses with the resources for the new edition. Elizabeth will share best practices for assigning adaptive activities in InQuizitive for Writers, fostering active reading in the interactive ebook, and incorporating the new Norton Teaching Tools instructor website. Feel free to bring questions to ask the Norton team.

Practical Strategies for Teaching Peer Review and Peer-Reviewed Articles: Incorporating Meta-Meetings and Students’ Expertise

Assigning peer review and peer-reviewed articles in first-year writing? Join this workshop for practical strategies you can use to promote a more effective and equitable exchange of peer feedback, foster academic literacy, and encourage students to see a future for themselves in scholarship. In this collaborative one-hour session, you will hear from:

• Brian Gogan, who will share a research-backed, equity-minded approach to peer review through the “Feedback Meta-Meeting” model. With examples and case studies from his department, Brian will outline the three-part structure of the model and provide concrete ways instructors can improve the effectiveness and equitability of peer review practice.

• Marianne Kunkel, who will then discuss how she helps students see the connections between sharing their writing with each other and the “peer-reviewed” box they check when searching library databases. In her hands-on activity, students write as experts on a chosen subject—from horror films to anime to making ramen—and then act out the roles that are part of the scholarly peer review process.

Engage, Energize, and Experiment: Writing Activities that Foster Belonging in the Composition Classroom

If you’re experiencing a sense of disconnection this semester—as an instructor from students, and students from each other—you’re not alone. Join instructors Deb Bertsch and Harun Karim Thomas as they share what they’ve recently been experimenting with in their first-year writing courses—and how they’ve used these activities to introduce students to personal writing, encourage discussion, and foster a sense of belonging. From “unlikely love letters” to self-written letters of recommendation and more, these class-ready ideas can easily be adapted for any course or modality.

And come celebrate your own experimentation! We encourage you to bring your favorite teaching ideas and activities to share in small-group breakouts at the end, before everyone returns for a final collaborative conversation moderated by Deb and Harun.

Writing & Research in an Age of Misinformation: An Online Lecture and Q&A with Andrea Lunsford (Stanford University)

In this virtual guest lecture for both students and instructors, Andrea Lunsford offers practical advice on how to identify misinformation and lies, how to examine and to understand personal biases as well as those of others, and how to engage respectfully with people who may hold views very different from our own—essential strategies for students of writing and rhetoric today.

Celebrating Student Voice: A Conversation and Q&A with the Judges of The Norton Writer’s Prize

Hosted by Melissa Goldthwaite (Saint Joseph's University), Africa Fine (Palm Beach State College), and Paul Butler (University of Houston)

How do you empower students as writers? How do you identify and celebrate outstanding writing by college writers? And what makes writing outstanding, anyway? Join us for an insider's look at how the judges of the Norton Writer’s Prize evaluate hundreds of nominations from instructors at two- year and four-year schools, and for a discussion more broadly about national trends in student writing and assignment design.