5.16 Check your email for your grades

5.15 Turning in the final exam - watching for your grade

After you write your final:

• post it to your class portfolio
• paste it in on the "endpoint" page for the College Comp portfolio
• send it to me as an attachment to the class email

So good job and that's it!

Grades:
I will send you your final grade (with the grades for your analysis unit + the final exam) by the beginning of next week.  I will send 2 gradesheets with comments: one for the analysis unit, and one for the grade for the couse.  I will post on the blog that I have sent out the gradesheets - so if by chance you don't get one and the blog says I have sent them - you need to write to me and ask why you didn't get yourse.

Take a look at these gradesheets, and if they add up the way you expect - then we are done.  If not - send me an email pointing out any errors misunderstandings and we will talk about how to resolve our differences.  That way, if I have made a mistake, I can revise the grade without going through the whole grade-change process.

If I do not hear from you within 48 hours of sending the email, I will assume you are OK with your grade.  At that point I will post your grade to Keanwise - and if you have further differences with your grade, you will need to appeal your grade.


You have been a great class and it has been my pleasure to be your teacher.  Thanks for your good work, and I am wishing you the best in your writing for school - and for anything you hope to accomplish in your life.

Prompt for final exam

This semester, we have read the essays by David Zinczenko and Radley Balko. These readings discuss issues associated with obesity,  which institutions or individuals are responsible for the increasing numbers unhealthy "eaters," and what should be done to improve US health related to food choices. Plan and write an essay arguing your position on the(se) issue(s). Support your position fully, drawing on your own experience as well as examples taken from the essays.

5.12 Finishing up analysis unit and preparing for final exam

In class today, we took one more read through the requirements for the analysis unit.  We went through item by item to make sure you posted your work.  If it is not posted - you will not get credit.

Here is the list.  Remember, if you have your work labeled in a way that you are not sure which document corresponds to which assignment - I will have the same problem.  Give your documents titles that will ensure that you get credit.

300 points total

Homework/practice for Rhetorical nalysis essay (50 points) List of zinczenko points 3.31 (10 points)

Group document with Z. analysis + organization (post a link to your group, your name shold be on the group document) (10 points)

Homework analysis of Obama 4.2 (10 points)

Group work for Obama analysis + presentation (10 points)

Map of rhetorical moves + plan for essay on Balko 4.13 (10 points)

Process writing for Rhetorical analysis essay (100 point) Map of rhetorical moves in Warner or Orbach 4.16 (25 points)

4.21 brainstorming  (25 points)

draft analysis 4.23 (25 points)

plan for revision 4.28 (25 points)

Final essays (150 points) Final rhetorical analysis 4.30 (100)

reflective writing on rhetorical analysis essay 4.30 (50 points)

The reason for todays review of what to post for the analysis unit is that lots of you had not posted work which I was pretty sure you had done.  So today is the last chance.  I will be grading the analysis portfolios beginning tomorrow.  Anything posted after today will not receive credit.

Preparing for the in-class final.
During the second part of class we chose the essays for the final exam.  I told you that for your final, you will be required to take a position on the issues raised in two essays from one of the units.  This means you will be writing a persuasive essay.

For a persuasive essay you need to:

• provide the context for the argument (present the They Say)
• take a position
• develop a series of points to persuade readers of the correctness of your position
• use evidence from the readings to support /develop those points
• write a conclusion which sums up the main points of your argument and draws discussion to a close

After reviewing the three units and the essays we read for each unit, you chose the Balko + Zinczenko essays as the two readings you would refer to in your final.

We then discussed a process you might use to prepare to write this in-class essay.  

• review the essays to establish their main focus + supporting points
• make a list of the overall point + supporting arguments from each essay
• make a list of positions you might take with respect to the overall issues raised by the essay
• go back to the readings and find particular sections in the readings relevant to each of the positions you might argue (depending on the prompt)
• map out one or more of the essays you might write

This is a useful process for studying not just for this exam, but for any essay exam you might be required to take.  Anticipate the questions your instructor might ask.  Interrogage (question) the readigs to discover what they have to say about the instructor's question(s).  Think hard about what you might say that takes what has already been discussed in class to the next level.

For next class:

During the first part of next class you will write your exam.  You may use your book.  You may not bring notes outside of whatever marks you have made in your textbook.

During the second part of class you will post any remaining work to your portfolio - and then we are finished.

See you on Thursday!

5.7 Revising refletive essays

At the beginning of class we used the GE writing rubric and the assignment sheet to create a rubric specific to the reflective writing assignment.  Our class notes from this exercise were as follows.

Genre/Audience:  genre= analysis, with some elements from response writing (in that you are presenting your personal perspective/reflections); writing should be in academic language and it chould draw from the TS/IS templates.
The overall form is:
intro

• set up focus
• provide background
• state (generally) the findings of your analysis

body paragraphs should present a point by point (one point per paragrph) development of the findings set up in the intro

thelater body paragrapsh should discuss and conflicts/additional points raised by the line of discussion (for exampol, what still needs to be worked on)

concludion

Focus:  for this assignment the focus is on what you learned/what you need to work on from the components of the class
the focus should be set up in the introduction, and each paragraph should connect to/develop the focus in a slightly different way

Development:  should include evidence from your writing/experience connected to the course.
include examples that are presented and then discussed in terms of how they helped (or not) you with your writing

Organization:  see genre expectations
organized as an analytic essay (similar to rhetorical analysis assignment)

We then applied this rubric to two sample reflective essays.

You spent the remainder of class working on your reflective essay

For next class:  All writing for ythe final reflective essay:
1. brainstorming for reflective essay
2. draft reflective essay
3. plan for revision for reflective essay
4.  final reflective essay


In class you can make any final revisions to your reflective essay and post the final version by the end of class.

We will spend the remaining class time strategizing how to write the endpoint essay, and working on the college comp portfolio.

Have a great weekend!

5.5. Finishing up analysis - writing the reflective essay

Analysis unit
All work for the analysis unit should be posted to your portfolio.
Make sure I have access to all of your work.  At this point in the term, I think it is fair that if I cannot access your work, it will be marked as not turned in.
I will provide feedback/grades for the analysis unit by May 12

Reflective essay evaluating your progress as a writer for this course
The focus of the reflective essay is on what you learned as a writer over the course of the semester.  You will analyze  your experience of the different assignments from the course as a way to provide evidence of what you learned about writing and how you learned it.

process for preparing to write this essat:
do some freewriting about your experience of the course
make a list => write down some of the things =

• that you learned
• that were presented in class and you didn't pay too much attention to 
• that were repeated/ gone over in every unit
• that you felt were not relevant to your writing needs
• that you resisted - but later found usefl
• etc

affter you have a list, do some wrting (short paragraphs) about the points on yur list= how they worked (or not); what they helped (or not) you with in your writing process, etc

Brainstorming - some of the things we did + what you learned for this course

• Reading strategies
• TS/IS  academic language 
• templates = language moves + overall forms for different kinds of essays
• using a rubric to anticipate readers evaluation=> to know what the reader (professor) expects in terms of genre, focus, organization, development and correctness
• summary (summaries are selective!) form (state the overall idea then support with appropriate references to main points; don't get lost in the details, 
• process for writing summaries : read the whole  article; take notes, do some synthesizing (to integrate your ideas) without looking at the text; write main ideas<=>go back to article (this should be a back & forth process => make sure you have enough distance from the article to synthesize/re-group the ideas, but enough closeness to ensure accuracy)
• persuasion: we learned the rhetorical appeals, the importance of AUDIENCE and PURPOSE for your argument, the importance of connecting to your audience's beliefs
• analysis: 
• the puzzle allowed us to identify the analytic moves
• Analyzing M. Obama's speech allowed us to see the rhetorical moves in action, and to name them and descrbie what they did
• the presentations using Obama's moves gave a "feel" for how rhetoric worked
• we then analyzed some more essays together for practice figuring out what to say (identifying a theory for how the essay worked) and deciding on the best organization for writing an analytic essay0
• you worked on practice writing, drafting =>with conferences/feedback + in-class discussions
• what you learned from analysis unit: how to read an essay that you are going to analyzie, how to write/organize an analytic essay, how to use prewriting to write an analytic essay.

During the second part of class we looked at the prompt for the College Composition reflective essay, and you spent the rest of class working on your essays.

Description of the assignment:  your essay should set up a focus on what you learned/struggled with/ still need to learn about writing.  You need to state this focus (in specific terms) in the introduction, and to use the body of the essay to develop a series of points (with support from your writing/experiences from the course) that develop that focus.

For next class:

Write: 1) post the brainstorming for your reflective essay to your portfolio (paste it in to the reflection on course page);  2. post a draft of your reflective essay to your portfolio

In class we will use a rubric to evaluate some sample reflective essays.  Then you will have a peer workshop on your reflective essay draft.