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[Group work] Reflection

English 101: Introduction to College Writing – Spring 2013

[Group work] Reflection: working with, responding to and reflecting on others’ ideas

1.     Create a blog post and title it [Group work] Reflection.

2.     Write one paragraph reflecting on your group work.

a.     Were you working together? Why or why not?

b.     What is difficult about working with others’ ideas?

c.     How might others’ ideas help you with your essay?

3.     Look at the collection of one-pagers. Choose two to focus on and write one-paragraph (for each one-pager) considering for the following questions:

a.     What did this group include that surprised, intrigued, or confused you?

b.     Find their question. Try to answer them.

c.     How do you see their ideas working with your own groups’ ideas?

4.     Reading over all of the one-pagers, what new ideas or concerns do you have about the Stein article?

5.     Finally, write a tentative controlling purpose for your next interpretive essay. (Tentative! I just want you to begin to articulate your thoughts about the article into words.)

Assignment #10

 
English 101: Introduction to College Writing – Spring 2013

Assignment 10: making preliminary observations about an academic essay

Please click here to watch the "1984" Macintosh ad.  

 

1.     Re-read Sarah Stein’s essay. As you read, take notes on a separate sheet of paper, noting what you find surprising, interesting, confusing, difficult, striking or noteworthy. For example, you might note any interesting choices Stein makes regarding genre, style, arrangement, or design. Additionally, you might also note other strategies, key terms, distinctions, or questions you see Stein using or asking. As well as taking notes, mark these places in the text. This will help you participate in class discussions in response to Stein’s essay.

2.     Based on your reading of the essay, your notes, and our class discussion, what questions do you still have about this essay? Create a blog post and title it Assignment 9. Formulate one or two questions for you and your colleagues to pursue in class discussion and post these on your blog.

3.     Next, write a brief summary of Stein’s essay. Your goal is to write a through yet succinct summary of her essay. Imagine an audience who has never read this before: what do they need to know to understand it as you do?

4.     Finally, given your understanding of the text, write a few paragraphs that explore the following questions:

·      Why do you think Stein might have wanted to research and write this essay?

·      What do you think she might have hoped readers would feel, think, or do while and after reading it?

·      What makes you think that? Include the passages from Stein’s essay that inform your answers.

5.     Publish this post. Bring the required course texts to our next class.

Assignment 9

English 101: Introduction to College Writing – Spring 2013

Assignment 9: Reflecting further on your writing—post-conference

 

1.  Please read pages 194-99 in the DK Handbook. These pages include ways writers might understand and connect with audiences. One of the reflective goals states that your final portfolio reflective essay will “account for and evaluate” the choices you made in your interpretive essays by “ describing how the writing works to build productive, ethical relationships with other people and their ideas and writing” (Student Guide 6).

 

2.  Given this course goal, re-read your interpretive essay and the reflective writing you did for assignments. Create a blog post and title it Assignment 9. Write a few paragraphs that explain how your own writing works to build relationships with others. Consider the following questions:

a.  Who are the people that you see yourself engaging with?

b.  Whose ideas and writing are you building relations with?

c.  In what ways does your writing work to make that relationship productive?

d.  How does your work engage in the ethical dimension of communication? (Maybe first describe what the “ethical dimension of communication” means to you.)

 

3.  As you respond to the questions above, be sure to provide specific evidence from your own writing to support your claims.

 

4.  Conclude this writing assignment by identifying ways in which you plan to revise your interpretive essay to better engage with others, their ideas, and their writing.

 

5.  Publish this post on your blog.

Course Goals and Outcomes Interpretation

Below are the course goals and outcomes, interpreted and agreed upon as a class. (Thanks goes to Cody for taking these pictures!)

AMC's New Reality TV Show

Above is the video for AMC's new reality tv show: "Immortalized." It is the first (and most likely only, ever) reality show about taxidermy! Orlean was apparently ahead of the curve.

Draft 2.0: "Lifelike"

English 101: Introduction to College Writing – Spring 2013

Draft 2.0: writing your draft of a critical interpretive essay and getting ready for our conference

1.     Considering previous assignments, in-class writing, and our class discussions, write a critical interpretive essay draft about Susan Orlean’s “Lifelike.” As you work, remember that you’re writing to communicate, and so you should shape your writing to express a specific purpose. This purpose should explain your interpretation of the text while considering Orlean’s context, audience, and purpose. Make sure you are using the text to explain where your ideas came from so that readers can understand them. 

2.     Email your draft to your group members AND me by 7:00 on Sunday night. Failure to do so will result in one (out of the two) absences for the week.  

3.     Print out your partners’ drafts. Comment on them in ways that will help them revise their essays. Below is a checklist of things to look for and comment on if you do not know where to start. These are all potential moments for you to address with a comment. Remember to stay ethical as you comment, and remember that some of the questions in the list below might be addressed by the student over the course of their essay; do not assume that everything can be written with one neat sentence.

a.     Is the student's CP different from Orlean's purpose?

b.     Does their CP have a clear writerly choice?

c.     Does every paragraph relate to this CP? If not, how could the student expand the CP to include that paragraph OR how could the student alter that paragraph to fit with the CP?

d.     Does the student support their ideas with specific moments from the text and include quotes?

e.     Does the student address what Orleans's purpose could be and how they arrived at that interpretation?

f.      Does the student avoid commonplace and cliches? If not, point out these moments.

g.     How is the student's text organized? Is there a fluent organization? Does every paragraph relate in some way to the ones that surround it? Does the organization make sense? Does the student attempt to transition?

h.     Is the student saying something about the text that is different from what is in the text? That is, does the student analyze and interpret rather than state what is happening in the text? Instead of saying "what" is in the text, they should say "how" or "why" Orlean has made the choice to put that in the text as it relates to her purpose and how it caused them to interpret the text?

4.     Bring these essays to your conference time.