When researching Indiana University’s FYC program, I found it interesting that students have four different class options: Elementary Composition, Elementary Composition – Basic Writing (for those who need more help), Elementary Composition- Multilingual (for ESOL students), and Projects in Reading and Writing ( more intensive and geared for those pursuing a major in the writing field). While FAU only offers ENC 1102 AND 1102, I found that through group work and peer review sessions, I was attempting to fulfill these categories in my own classroom setting.
I began the semester by getting to know what majors my students were pursuing, and after the second essay I had a pretty good understanding of their individual writing abilities. For group work activities, I would put my ESOL students together, and put the students with similar majors together, or I would put my students that needed extra help together. For peer review I would do the opposite and mix everyone up in order to give my students perspectives outside of their own bubbles.
This strategy seemed to be really effective as the humanities majors forced my engineering students to think of things not discussed in their groups and vice versa. My ESOL students could come up with ideas as a group and have native English speakers help them to articulate their thoughts, and my weak writers had more guidance in their essays when the stronger writers in the class edited their papers.
All in all, I think taking the extra time to create specific groups and pairs for students during these activities is very beneficial.