This My Favorite Assignment (MFA) article features 11 teaching innovations first presented at the 2023 Association for Business Communication Annual International Conference held Denver, Colorado, USA. These assignments are designed to boost students' writing, persuasion, crisis management skills, and personal and professional development.

The medium of instruction is English in all universities in Singapore. Typically, in engineering, science, and technology degree programmes, academic writing is taught through one or two distinct or 'stand-alone' modules delivered in the first year of students' undergraduate programmes to help them cope with the writing needs of assignments in…

This article describes an innovative approach to introducing translanguaging in an English for academic purposes (EAP) course at a young Sino-US joint-venture university in China. To promote the use of Chinese students' full linguistic and communicative repertoires in an English-medium-of-instruction university, I intentionally incorporated…

The Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) incorporates challenging literacy standards into middle grades and high school content areas within a variety of academic disciplines, not just English/language arts courses. The Mathematics Design Collaborative (MDC) provides schools with instructional tools needed to help teachers understand and implement…

During what might have in the distant past been called "quiet time" in Arlene Anderson's fourth-grade classroom, many of her students are glued to their netbooks. The intense, enthusiastic focus and the hushed chatter amongst the students are all about high scores and strategy. Students are revising and editing their writing assignments within a…

This paper describes the author's attempt to design assignments that engage preservice elementary teachers in original mathematical thinking. In particular, the choice of integer operations as the focus of a structured writing assignment that takes students two weeks to complete is explained and justified. Exemplary student work is quoted.…

Describes an eight-step writing assignment that is a novel way to test students' writing skills in a way that is intriguing, interactive, and team-oriented, with built-in multiple deadlines requiring quick creativity and cognitive knowledge. Presents a poetry writing exercise in which the student is asked to write a short poem in the voice of…

Discusses the "Report in a Can" research process that focuses on the successful gathering of data, and outlines its four major steps. Argues for engaging primary students in well-planned research assignments. Describes how to create a "Report in a Can." (SG)

A writing teacher who teachers first-year college writing proposes a "different" approach to the teaching of academic discourse. It is an approach that includes the production of academic discourse and rhetorical analysis yet enables students to examine and often resolve their resistance against academic discourse. Through a critical…

Pepperdine University lies between the mountains of the Santa Monica Conservancy and the Pacific Ocean. The hills surrounding the campus are a paradise of native vegetation, much of it under federal protection, where there are many types of wildlife and the air is loud with insects and all sorts of birds. And yet, not only are the vast majority of…

For one instructor of eleventh and twelfth grade English, teaching the short story offers the best opportunity to teach fiction writing to students. It contains all the elements novels contain, but students can read many short stories in the same time they need to read a novel. Students can also write their own short stories. Above all, literature…

Collaborative work fits the cognitive learning style of most college students, and provides opportunities for students to learn how to become responsible and valuable members of groups. A collaborative research paper was used in an undergraduate survey course called Introduction to Drama. In groups of four, students wrote a paper discussing a play…

Assessment provides feedback to teachers so that instruction can be modified. It also provides feedback to students during and after the course. Discusses approaches to assessment in geology courses that relate assessment to instruction. Three student assignments are described: (1) Personal Question Sheets; (2) a report on Personal/Social Issues…

Columbus (Georgia) College's Challenge Squared program consists of three 2-week enrichment day camps for gifted students in grades 5 through 10. In past years, students have worked with an artist to create local history murals and have written and produced video plays in cooperation with a media specialist. Most recently, students were involved in…

The idea behind this project created by two teachers of different age groups was that providing students with penpals would give students a real audience to write to and change their attitudes about writing. Seventh graders and college students exchanged letters and were required to send working drafts of some class assignments to each other to…