For use in planning your course, here is a WRI 1000 Syllabus Template.
This template is bare bones. It needs to be adapted to fit the needs of your course. There are a number of areas in it highlighted in green. Those are the places that need your personal touch: the course description, the calendar, the assignments. These areas are where you can create excitement for writing and excitement for the course. These areas are where you can establish not only the problem your course will be addressing but also the urgency of that problem—what’s at stake, why we should care about it. While different instructors may cover different types of content, the primary focus of the course is the students’ own writing. This template can serve as a starting point for what that might look like.
All sections of 1000 follow the same general template, with papers due weeks 4 and 8 of the course and a portfolio due finals week. What happens the other weeks is up to the individual professor teaching the course. All courses adhere to the same outcomes and standards, but course themes and readings vary. The schedule may look something like the following:
Week 1 Introduction to rhetoric and argument
Week 2 Introduction to academic writing and reading; draft of Paper 1 due
Week 3 Working with sources; reading rhetorically
Week 4 Revision of Paper 1 due
Week 5 Situating an argument and Developing Claims
Week 6 Draft of Paper 2 due
Week 7 Thesis statements
Week 8 Introductions and Conclusions; Revision of Paper 2 due
Week 9 Writing with Style
Week 10 Revisions for Portfolio
Finals Final portfolio due
For reference, here are a few sample syllabuses.
Recent Samples
WRI 1000, as taught by Dr. Jennifer McFarlane-Harris, studying the ongoing impact of slavery in American culture.
WRI 1000, as taught by Professor Jeffrey Overstreet, studying criticism and writing about the arts.
WRI 1000, as taught by Dr. Sam Hushagen, studying the nature of work as it relates to students’ motivations and goals for their own college education.
WRI 1000, as taught by Professor Kirsten Lunstrum, studying changes in education.
Older Samples
WRI 1000, as taught by Dr. Yelena Bailey, studying representations of race and gender in popular culture.
WRI 1000, as taught by Dr. Traynor Hansen, studying mass incarceration.
WRI 1000, as taught by Dr. Jennifer Maier, studying communities, both on-line and face-to-face.
WRI 1000, as taught by Dr. Peter Wayne Moe, studying issues in higher ed.