12.11 Review for endpoint essay

Today's class was about preparing to write the endpoint essay.  The prompt for the endpoint essay is standard for all of the college composition classes, except that each class is expected to choose the particular essays (from course readings) that students will write about.

After discussing the units and the essays in the units, our class chose to write about the fast food unit, using the essays by Michele Obama and Will Haygood.

We did a rhetorical analysis of the audience, purpose, and form of essay exams as a way to prepare for this exam (and to use as a model for thinking about essay exams for other courses).

Audience and Purpose: to write an essay to demonstrate knowledge of course material.  This is the overall purpose and it means both that you will need to make specific references to course readings and that the focus of your essay exam needs to be grounded in the ideas from the readings.

Demonstrating mastery of course material means that you can:
accurately summarize/re-state the readings' content = what they say
generalize the principles or ideas from the readings
synthesize/apply these ideas by re-combining them and thinking about them in new ways and extending them to new contexts

Because you to synthesize/apply these ideas, your essay will need to "argue" for your synthesis (your new idea or way of thinking about what the course material says). So => essay exams (including this one) are usually persuasive writing which is based in an analysis of the course readings.

Obama:
history of audience
accomplishments of NAACP
relats focus to NAACP- dentified obesity as a problem for children in general & black children in particular
emphasize the power of the group
inform people about what they eat
relates obesity to how they used to eat (used to exercise more)
talks about cultural changes
Let's move
1. healthier foods in schools
2. get information about healthy eating to parents
3. work with doctors to make sure children are screened
4. food options in community

Let's cook
1. provide affordable recipes/ingredient lists
2. video series
3. breast feeding
WIC

main point: to inform audience about federal government's role in dealing with obesity, and to persuade them (the NAACP) to support those programs

Haygood
relates personally to his audience
uses narrative form throughout the essay to expose people of the town
doesn't blam people blames food industry
find more affordable ways for people to eat healthy
points out that there is no YMCA in the town
tells the story of one particular family, the Robinsons
don't have family cooking in the restaurants, mostly fast foods
makes note of Obama's speech and says it is as if she is talking about Manchester
points out Jill Day's research study of the town = findings: estimated that 1/3 of kids in Manchester would be overweight or obsese; correlated activity with with weight
related environment to how it affects the way children eat: she points out that no parks, all eating options are fast food (cheapest)
mayor - knows little about the literature of eating
mdeical community =  people don't go to doctors = too expensive

We spent the last part of class posing thesis statements that would set you up to write an essay where you took a position regarding an issue or feature relevant to these two essays.

For next class:
Write/identify several thesis statements you might use to write a persuasive essay on fast food.  Remember that you will need to refer to Obama and Haygood to develop this essay.

Identify  points from Obama and Haygood that would would need to connect to in order to develop your argument.

Come to class prepared to write the endpoint essay during the first half of class.
We will spend the second half of class making sure you are well prepared to finish the portfolio.