Today’s Plan:
- Free write and discussion
- Discussing the readings
- Teaching: Williams on Actions
- Syllabus review and maintenance
- A word about linking up students / classes and medium.com
- Wed Sept 6th
- Friday Sept 8th
- Monday Sept 11th
- Setting Up Teaching Evaluations
- Homework
A word about linking up students / classes and medium.com
I’m holding off on having my students work in medium.com until next week (Thursday) in the class before the first piece needs to be posted. Right now I want them to spend time *reading* and writing.
Next week, I will edit our Google Doc so that students can insert links to their first medium.com articles after they have posted. I will then spend time having them read articles from your classes.
Wednesday September 6th
I think there’s three objectives for tomorrow’s class. First, get them started on their first piece for medium.com. Let’s look back at the syllabus:
During weeks 4-13 you will draft, revise, and publish 4 pieces on medium.com. Each piece is expected to be XXX to YYY words and reference 2-5 (depending on depth) other perspectives on a single issue. At least XXX of these words should be a direct response to someone else in the community, quoting and hyperlinking to an other published piece.
Some students will have given you a clear idea what they will be writing about this week in their proposals. Others will not have been as successful at this. I am going to take 10-15 minutes today and ask each of them to identify what they will write about for this first week (trying to get them to be as specific as possible).
Here is how I described their medium posts in an email I sent out before the proposals were due:
Third, the final section is where you give me a sense of two articles that you want to write. For some this might be easy–if you are writing about sports, for instance, you can give me a list of 4 recent articles on Colin Kaepernick’s protest, with short descriptions of each, and then some sense of how you plan to respond. If you are writing about politics this might be trickier, since you can’t necessarily plan if something insane will happen that you will want to respond to. But you can still give me an idea like the one above–maybe four articles on Trump’s response to the hurricane, or 4 articles on perceptions of BLM, or four articles on whether Congress will raise the debt ceiling (or defend DACA).
What we really have to stress to them here is that their medium posts are 75% summarizing and comparing what other people have said and 25% arguing for their own position. A stock blueprint:
- First paragraph points the reader to something that just happened or is about to happen
- Second paragraph offers one perspective on it
- Third paragraph compares that perspective to another that basically agrees with it (but maybe points out minor differences)
- Fourth paragraph contrasts those perspectives to a really different perspective
- Fifth paragraph offers and even different perspective, or someone who brings a new question to the issue/event/object/etc
- Sixth paragraph argues which person they think is the most right and why
- Seventh paragraph shows how they would argue against the person they think is the most wrong
- Eighth paragraph concludes without getting all wishy washy and saying “well, that’s my opinion but there’s a lot of opinions, what’s yours?”
Second, I will spend next class (Tuesday for me, Wednesday for you) giving feedback to the proposals. I’m going to talk about smaller issues (titles, first sentences). Then I’ll look at some sentence-level logical development stuff. Finally, I have a global comment about their overall effort on the project and inability to follow some pretty clear directions.
Third, I will spend time on doing a lesson from Williams and Bizup on active verbs. You might not have time for this today–but that’s ok! You can always slip it in on another day. It really depends on a) how much time you want to dedicate to reviewing the proposals and b) how much time you want to give them to write while in the computer lab.
Friday September 8th
If you look at our syllabus, this is pretty much an open day. There’s several things you can do. First, you can workshop drafts. This is my plan. At the end of class on Tuesday/Wednesday I will ask for 3 volunteers. I will ask those people to email out drafts of their papers to me on Thursday. I will make photocopies and distribute them on Thursday/Friday. I will read the essays out loud in the class, asking them to make some notes and comment on the papers as I read. Then we will talk about them. Normally, I would ask for volunteers on a Monday and distribute papers so that they could be read before class, but I don’t think we have time for that this week (and I’m on the T/R schedule…).
If you don’t want to workshop drafts, then you can spend class time revising material from the proposals. If you are in a computer lab, you can make this a Canvas quiz. Show them an issue, talk about it, have them rewrite it, and then compare rewrites. As I’ve said before, this is an opportunity to transform your grading into class prep.
If you want them to practice writing summaries, then you could assign a short essay for homework on Wednesday and then redo the Pokemon activity on Friday.
Monday September 11th
It is time to talk plagiarism. I’ve put a few examples that I want to work with in my feedback document.
Where are we on updating the PowerPoint? Scott, have you put together an activity?
In the 594 workspace, there’s my material on crafting signals. Who is going to write a summary and response to a contemporary example?
Setting Up Teaching Evaluations
I started a section for this in the 594 workspace.
Homework
Readings:
- Neubert and McNelis, “Peer Response: Teaching Specific Revision Suggestions”
- Baker, “Peer review as a strategy for improving students’ writing process”
- Selection from Creative writing pedagogies for the twenty-first century
