Catching up/getting on the same page. For those of you who have been turned in the assignments as they were posted, please have patience; and for those of you who came to the course late or ran into other obstacles, hang in there, and we will hopefully all be on the same page by Thursday.
As I said in class, I generally grade work in "batches" - so that I get a feel not just for how individual students are doing on a particular assignment - but also how the "class" is doing. This gives me information about issues where I was unclear & places where what I assumed (mistakenly) that you knew or understood something that you did not => it directs my teaching. At the same time, all the research on teaching says students need IMMEDIATE (or as close to immediate as you can get) feedback on their work to benefit from teacher input. So I am working on that. And hopefully, once the portfolios are set up and we are all more used to our communication systems - all your papers will come in during the class when they are due - and my feedback to you will come back during the next class or maybe even IN the class when they are due.
So far you should have:
written the baseline essay and attached it to the Baseline page in your portfolio
revised the baseline essay and attached it to the Baseline page in your portfolio
created your course portfolio (see sample portfolio to the right)
scored your baseline essay using the GE Writing Rubric and pasted your scores in on the Baseline page of your portfolio
written a short reflection on how well you thought you did on the baseline, what you need to work on, and what grade you'd give yourself
And you should have read:
Introduction to TS/IS (p. 1)
Chapter one of TS/IS: "They Say" (p.19)
Kevin Carey's piece on "Why do you think they're called for-profit colleges?" (p.215)
Assignments do for next class are due at the end of this post.
Strategies for writing a summary: Using writing to discover your ideas and your voice
We spent the next part of class working on PROCESS for writing a summary.
The first and most important work you need to do in order to write a strong summary = is to make sure you understand the main ideas in the reading. This seems so obvious you might wonder why we bothered to say it - but really - this is the most common stumbling block for students. We all want to skim through once (= we 'read' it) and then get straight to writing the assignment. This is generally a bad idea. The more time you spend with the reading, the less painful the writing assignment will be. DO NOT HURRY THROUGH THIS STEP.
We used several strategies to discover the main idea of Carey's piece as we worked on it in class.
1. We thought about the title in order to figure out his focus. If you know the focus of a piece (or at least have an idea what it is) you can be a more effective reader. You will know what is important + how each points fits with the focus.
2. We skimmed the intro (and should have skimmed the conclusion) to confirm, develop, get a more detailed idea of what the focus was.
3. We skimmed topic sentences (or heading is an article has them) for some information about the sequence of his points.
4. We made sure we understood unfamiliar terms + ideas (for-profit colleges v. non-for-profit colleges, entreprenuer, etc).
This is like - pre-reading. It sets you up to read effectively & focus on the main points.
Using writing to read. Next (in theory) you read the piece carefully: taking notes; asking yourself what point each paragraph made and how each point connected to the focus. You might do this as you read, or on your "second read" where you go back through to make sure you know what the author wrote.
On the second read, you pay attention to where the author made his different points (i.e. Carey begins by "bashing" for-profit schools, and then says what's good about them = what does this organization contribute to the "meaning" readers take away from his piece? What might it imply about what "side" he is on?) and how he makes his points ( i.e. Carey does a lot of letting the story tell itself, or quoting ideas + "facts" supplied by others - how does this affect the credibility of his argument? How does it shape the emotional tone?) During this read you write down your observations + questions about the piece => we did some of this work in class.
Free-writing. After you had a good hand on what the essay was about, you did some free-writing to find your voice - the way you would re-state these ideas in your own language. Free-writing is both about turning off your editor and giving yourself permission to explore what you think about the essay without writing perfect/correct sentences; and it is about just getting your words out there in the language you would use to talk about the reading. It sets you up to write your essay even if you don't look at what you wrote. It is like priming the pump. While the first activities are done with the book open - freewriting is done with the book closed.
Planning. Thinking about how we might write about this essay. At this point, we went back to the templates to think about the audience expectations (the kind of language your teachers are going to be looking for in your writing). You looked at the second half of Chapter 1 (They Say) and noted the different moves the authors suggest for writing the 'They Say ' (summary) of different kinds of arguments (pieces of writing that set forward a point). You chose the last one - the one for an issue with more than one side. YES! That is definitely what we are dealing with.
At that point we also talked about some of the other conventions expected for academic writing: refer to the author by first and last name at the first mention, and by last name only for all other mentions; set up your summary by naming the author, the essay, and the overall focus of the essay; use "academic" verbs to report what the author's point=>the author discusses, explores, writes, states, argues, etc = not "talks about" "says". Also, academic readings (unless they are fiction) are generally referred to as articles or essays => not stories. The term story is reserved for literary works or anecdotes; scholarly or journalistic work is generally not referred to as a "story."
Writing a one sentence statement of focus
Next, you wrote a one sentence overview of the focus. Don't be married to this statment - you can change it as you go along - but it is a good idea to start with a "focus" for what you think the essay is about - and to put that focus in writing, so you can refer to it while you work on your summary.
Then you may want to list the points you think you should cover.
THEN (finally) you start drafting the summary itself. Remember, this is a draft.
You worked in groups to write summaries for Carey. Your groups were:
Group 1; Samir, Jasmin, Diego, Selena
Group 2: Aguida, Tajanik, Darian, Isaiah
Group 3: Mohamed, Yun, Bryan, Erica
Group 4: Haley, Ashton, Esther, Steven
If you were not in class, send me an email, and I will check with the groups and try to find you a place.
For next class:
We will continue to work on writing summaries. We will create and use a rubric for summaries to evaluate your group summaries. And you will write through the pre-writing process to work on a summary for your next reading in the "Cost of Education" group of readings.
Read: Chapter 2 in TS/IS "Her point is" (p. 30); and "The New Liberal Arts" by Sanford J. Ungar (p. 190)
Write: finish your group summaries and post them to your drive document;
Also - for yourself: Use writing to help you figure out what Ungar's overall focus is, and what are his supporting points. Make notes! These are for you.
Great class today! I feel like we made some real progress. Keep on it - and see you Thursday.
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