Close to the beginning of class I directed your attention to the calendar. We are finishing up working on summaries and moving on to response writing. You will notice on the calendar, that after you finish your response essay, you will be taking stock and calculating a "grade so far".
I will be checking over the summary page of your portfolio so that you can have some feedback on your summaries by next class. As we discussed in class, this page should have the following writing posted as attachements:
- draft King summary
- revised King summary
- revised group summary
- Herbert summary
It should also have your reflective writing where you evaluate your writing process, and explain how you would grade your "best" summary (see the prompt for Reflective Writing on Summaries, posted under Assignments to the right).
For Thursday, I will give you a grade for your best summary and credit for the homework/drafts you wrote for practice. The total points for this part of the course = 50.
Writing response essays.
TS/IS. We reviewed the main points in TS/IS Chapters 5, giving clear "signals" the the 'They Say' and the 'I Say' in your writing, and Chapter 6, a discussion of raising "counterpoints" in you writing. Both of these chapters will be important references for writing your response.
Process for writing a response essay
You then took a look at the brainstorming you wrote for your response essay assignment. You were instructed to identify a focus and look back at the essay to decide on which points you will develop, and how you will be "in conversation" with the text. I clicked through your posts and it looks like most of you have a great start and are writing in the right direction. At the same time, one thing I noticed was that some of set up a bigger focus than it would be possible to cover to this particular assignment.
This raises a third important step in brainstorming the essay : check back to make sure your focus and development is a good match for the audience expectations (in this case, the requirements set forward on the assignment sheet).
So the invention/brainstorming process for developing a response depends on attention to the three bolded points in the last two paragraphs = but often you don't go through the steps in order, or just one time. You might write and re-write a (possible) focus three or four times as you go back to the reading and identify different sections you might write about.
Organizing your response essay: Finally, we talked about planning the overall organization of your essay. This depends on the genre (you are writing a response essay= a short essay that summarizes a text and makes usually just one well developed point about one of the author's major claims.
The overall organization for a response essay is to set up your response in terms of a point made by the text/author you will reply to, and then to develop a critical (meaning well thought out), well developed response to that point. So, overall => there are two parts. The set up, and the response. Usually the response is longer than the set up, and the response makes some specific reply to the particular points mentioned in the set up.
In terms of how to do this with paragraphing, you have a number of options, but as this essay is 11/2 to 2 pages (not very long) it probably shouldn't be more than 6 paragraphs - unless you are using short paragraphs for emphasis or some other rhetorical purpose.
Typical patterns for developing a response essay might be:
2 paragraphs: Setup paragraphs with a transition at the last sentence, followed by a well developed single paragraph response that concludes with a sentence to draw the point it makes to a close.
3 paragraphs: Setup paragraph followed by two paragraphs to develop your reply. The seconde paragraph would focus on developing your reply, and the third paragraph would emphasize what the two points say to one another, and draw the discussion to a close or resolution.
4 paragraphs. A setup paragraph, with three paragraphs for developing the discusion. Ususally the second paragraph would elaborate your response, and the 3rd paragraph might consider a counterargument or deepen your analysis, and the last paragraph would draw the essay to a close.
You spent the rest of class working on your draft response essays.
For next class:
Read; nothing.
Write: 1) make sure all assignments are posted to the summary page; 2) finish your draft response essay.
In class on Thursday you will participate in peer review of your response essay, so you will need to make sure that a copy of your work will be available to your classmates to read. Bring two print copies, since we will be working in the non-computer classroom.
I know it is scary to have classmates read your work. We (as a class) will negotiate clear boundaries for how to give feedback BEFORE you begin to offer your comments. Coments/feedback is meant to give you information about how your readers understand what you have written.
Asking students to give each other feedback is especially important since sometimes you can say what needs working on in a way that is more understandable to your classmates than the way I would say it.
So bring your writing, and we will find a way to make this into a helpful experience.
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