Final Exam

May 8, 12:30-2:30

At the final exam you will be asked to do some exploratory writing—including on some materials that I will give you. Then you will use this writing to compose a short essay. Your final exam grade will be based on your ability to turn the exploratory writing into a conventional academic essay:

• Organize information into at least three body paragraphs,
• Focus all paragraphs on a thesis.
• Develop each body paragraph with supporting details,
• Organize the paragraphs logically into a conventional essay structure, including an introduction and conclusion.

The essay can be incomplete, but it should provide enough to demonstrate the above. For example, you might not complete all of the body paragraphs, but you can provide all of the topic sentences, and you can be sure to develop at least two of them completely. The introduction and conclusion can be very basic.

May 1

May 1 is the last day of class. I will discuss the final, return your "Hush" essays, and present awards for the "Words to Live By" essay.

1. If you are revising your "Words to Live By" essay, it is due by the end of the day. To have your paper re-graded, you should have made substantial revision to the content of the essay (not just grammar corrections). You should have addressed all of the comments I made on the graded draft. Turn in the graded draft and the marked rubric with the revision.
2. I highly recommend that you have drafted completely the portion of your final essay--the reflection on what you have learned about writing--in which you discuss the writing of the "Hush" essay. It will be beneficial to have done this before you receive my feedback.

April 26

1. Read the essays from the Words to Live By assignment and be prepared to discuss with your group what essays should receive awards. (You can pick up the book of essays from my office.) Your class suggested the following awards:
   • Most Touching*
   • Most interesting*

   • Best introduction*

   • Funniest*

   • Most inspiring*

The 8:00 class made the following list:

• Most memorable*
• Best Details
• Best Thesis and Topic Sentences*
• Best Essay*
• Most inspirational*
• Most interesting Introduction
• Most interesting conclusion

 

I will merge these two into one set of awards, but consider them all as you read through the essays.

In addition, I distributed the assignment sheet and rubric for the third essay assignment, which will be due at the final exam. You can get a copy of the assignment with rubric from me. Click here to read the assignment.

April 24

The essay will be due at the end of the day Tuesday (7:00). I highly recommend completing at least two more drafts:

1. Revise your essay using the feedback from the peer review and from me.
2. Write a reflection that describes how you applied the feedback from peer review in revising. Describe the best change you made in that draft because of the feedback you received.
3. Evaluate that draft and decide the area that still needs the most work, and then complete the most relevant of the following revision strategies: 14.5, 14.9, 14.15, 14.16, or 14.17. (Only one strategy is required.)
4. Write a reflection that describes this second revision, explaining why you made the choice of strategies you did, and describing how it did or did not improve the essay.
   

April 19

Click here for the outline I had on the smartboard of a section of the Wilcox chapter.

1. Revise your essay in preparation for peer review. Bring enough copies for the members of your group. (I will combine groups if only a couple of people show up in some groups, so prepare for 3 others.)
2. Write for 10-15 minutes reflecting on your revision. Write specifically.
3. By 4:00 Wednesday, April 18, you should have sent me an email with a copy of your first essay attached. I have sent you an email that you can reply to. The e-mail has instructions for attaching a file.

In addition to sending me a copy of your first essay, you should also be sure that you have taken care of all of your other requirements for correcting/revising essay one: 1) if you missed your meeting with me, you can reschedule for next Wednesday or Thursday. I will have a schedule in class on Tuesday. 2) If you didn't have your folder/table of contents or your grammar corrections complete at our meeting, you need to show me these by next Wednesday. (Bring them by during office hours. 3) If you haven't scheduled a meeting with me (and received a C, D, or E, you must schedule a meeting for next Wednesday or Thursday. I will have a schedule in class on Tuesday. You need to do all of these things if you expect Essay 1 to be regraded.

I recommend reviewing some of Chapter 1 in The Curious Writer if you want to refocus on some key writing ideas:

• If you don't really understand the reflective writing, read the section "Thinking about Your Process" starting on page 25.
• If you are thinking that you can't write because your not sure of what to say, read "Suspend Judgment" starting on page 14, especially the paragraph that begins at the bottom of page 14.
• If you are having trouble with your thesis, read pages 31 and 32, starting at "So What?"

April 17

1. Read the chapter I gave you from Why Buffy Matters. I have put copies of the chapter in a folder on my door. Remember to read like successful readers do--focus on your reading goal. (You should have solid ideas of your own for your essay before you read this chapter.)
2. Complete Draft #3 of your essay about "Hush." Follow the revision steps on the assignment handout. Include information from Why Buffy Matters where it is relevant.
3. Write for 10 to 15 minutes reflecting on your revision. Write specifically.
4. Bring your handbook to class next week.

April 12

1. Complete Draft #3 of your essay about "Hush." Follow the revision steps on the assignment handout.
2. Write for 10 to 15 minutes reflecting on your revision. Write specifically.
3. Read pages 37-43 in The Curious Writer. Complete Exercise 2.1, Steps 1-3, and answer the following two questions:
   • According to Ballenger, what does “reading with the spirit of inquiry” mean? How do you read with the spirit of inquiry?
   • What did a study find that successful readers do?

If you missed class on Tuesday, click here for the exercise we began class with.

April 10

If you missed class Thursday, click here for the reflective writing we did. Do the first three in sequence and then complete the fourth after you have picked up your graded essay. I will be in my office from 1-3 on Monday, April 9.

1. Complete the second draft of your essay on "Hush." In addition to the focus you wrote about in your reflection in class, give attention to dialogue in the episode. Use the transcript; click here for a link to the transcript. Also, spend some time to "complicate" your draft--write about a paragraph from an opposing point of view. Remember to follow the revision steps on the assignment handout. Click here for the handout.
2. Begin to work on the grammar corrections on Essay #1. Make note of any problems or questions you have.
3. Consider if you would like to participate in one of the projects I proposed and how. I will ask you for feedback in class. Click here for the handout.

April 5

1. Complete a first draft of an essay about "Hush."
   • The essay can focus on any idea as long as it is supported by information from the episode (words, actions, images, sounds).
   • Your draft doesn't have to have a complete introduction, but it should have a thesis.
   • You should have a short concluding paragraph. Write it when your draft is done. In a couple of sentences, sum up for yourself what you have said in your draft.
2. Bring your handbook to class.

April 3

1. Revise your reflective paragraphs—analyze the experiences you wrote about. Identify the draft when you first thought the essay was done—mark that draft on your table of contents and discuss include some thoughts about it in your revised paragraph. If you missed class, click here for the in-class writing we did that you need to revise.
2. Add to your exploratory writing on “Hush”: write more analytically about at least one scene or character that you have described.

3. Cut out the best/most interesting passages from your exploratory writing—choose no more than a third of your total writing. Cut chunks that include supporting detail. Don’t just snip out sentences or parts of sentences—although you may want to do that a couple of times.

4. Then paste these passages back together in a logical order: organize the passages by sequence and by group. Leave space between passages. Leave larger space between groups, and mark these divisions with a row of symbols of some kind.

5. Consider this cut and paste exercise a combination swimming/mountain climbing.
   

March 29

1. Click here for the assignment.

March 27

1. Complete the exploratory writing on "Hush." Click here for the handout.

If you were not in class to watch the video, you have a couple of options:

• You might find a copy of the show to rent or borrow. It's from Season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
• I have heard that it is available in parts on You Tube.

 

If you are interested in referring to a transcript of the show to read the dialogue, click here.

2. You might work on gathering your drafts, notes, reflections, etc. and organizing your folder for this essay. You will be turning it in at the end of the week after spring break. I will give complete instructions in class Tuesday, March 27.

March 15

1. Work on getting your essay ready to turn in to be graded by Friday (March 16). Use the links below to get copies of the handouts from Tuesday's class.

Editing Workshop

Assignment 1 description

Rubric for Assignment 1

March 13

1. Revise your essay using the feedback from me and your peers. Bring an essay ready to turn in.
2. Reflect on the peer review for 10-15 minutes. Use the questions on page 679, but write about them; don’t just answer with a word.
   

March 8

1. Write a short reflection on your group’s work. You can use the questions on page 679, but I want you to write for 5-10 minutes about what was helpful and what was not.
2. Revise your essay in preparation for peer review. Bring a copy of the essay for each member of your group.

3. Read the hand out I gave you (pages 192-3 from A Community of Writers).

4. Read pages 669-672 and 675-678 in The Curious Writer. Complete Exercise 15.1.
   

March 6

1. Complete Revision Strategy 14.14 on pages 652-654 of The Curious Writer.
2. Revise your essay: Make the changes that revising your thesis and writing your topic sentences showed you needed to be made.
3. Read the Grade Contract handout. Click here for a copy of the handout.

March 1

1. Revise your essay using the feedback I gave you on your two paragraphs and the understanding you gained about support and focus from Tuesday's group exercise. If you are behind on this assignment, put in about two hours on your revision. If you have been keeping up well, write for about an hour.
2. When you complete the revision, write for about 15 minutes, reflecting on the revision: what did you do and how did your essay improve.
3. Complete the evaluation of your group's efforn on page 679 of your text. Complete it as if the essay you discussed were your own.

February 27

1. Revise your essay:
   • Word process in Word and save it.
   • State a thesis before any body paragraphs. (You don't have to have an introductory paragraph yet.)
   • Make sure every body paragraph makes a clear point that you can state in one sentence that shows the point’s connection to the rest of the essay (especially the thesis). Write these topic sentences on your web.
   • Improve the paragraphs to live up to those topic sentences.

2. Read the item at the top of page 7 of the syllabus.
3. Read and follow from now on the format requirements posted on this website. The link is to the right. Print them if you need to.
4. If you have skipped drafts/revisions or other steps, start catching up now. (Read the 2nd to the last item on page 6 of the syllabus). You will find the assignments below, of course. Some things were done in class also.

If you missed turning in your draft on Tuesday, you can still get feedback on your two paragraphs as long as I have it by 2:00 Friday. Click here for instructions.

February 22

1. Work on your revision for about an hour. PRACTICE writing.
2. If you missed class, you can turn your current draft in as long as I have it by 4:00 tomorrow. Click here for instructions.

February 20

1. Fill in the web I gave you with topic sentences for each body paragraph of the current draft of your essay. (Click here for a copy of the web.) You can complete the outline on the back of the form (or Click here for the outline form.) if you think it will be helpful.
2. Revise your essay using what writing topic sentences showed you about the organization of your essay. In other words, improve the structure/organization of your essay.

February 15

1. Work on revising your essay for at least an hour: Improve the specific details in your stories and the references to the song. (It should go without saying to incorporate relevant details that you came up with from the in-class exercise. Click here for a copy of the brainstorming questions we used for the "Explode the Moment" exercise.)
2. When you complete your revision, write a 15-minute reflection on the revision. Describe what you did specifically so that I can tell you have completed the assignment and I can give you feedback. You might include the following:
   • What kind of new details were you able to come up with? Give examples.
   • Did working on details lead you to consider other changes you might make? Like what?
   • How have you integrated words into the essay
3. Read pages 617-626 and skim the rest of Chapter 14. Read the Revision Handout I wrote. Click here for a copy of the handout.
   

Reminder: To print the handouts, use the print button on the "Macromedia Flashpaper" tool bar, not the print button at the top of you your computer screen.

I apologize for being so late to class on Tuesday. Old age must be causing my memory to fail.

February 13

1. Revise your essay. focusing on the following:

• Work on telling about specific incidents in enough detail to show the reader how the words are meaningful to you;
• Work on keeping the personal stories connected to the words: incorporate specific lyrics and general descriptions of the song.

Click here to listen to the essay I played in class Thursday--which demonstrates how stories can be connected to the lyrics of a song.

2. After completing your revision, write a 15 minute reflection that describes and evaluates the revision: What do like about the new draft? What still needs work? Describe your revision in enough detail that by reading just the reflection I can tell that you have completed the assignment and can give you feedback. (For example, in the reflections I returned today, if you told me what incidents you were writing about, I was able to highlight the examples that were specific or point out that you need to be more specific. If you wrote down a thesis, I gave you feedback on that.)

February 8

Click here for the in-class writing that leads up to the essay draft described below:

1. Turn your stories into an essay draft:
   
   State a thesis, a single sentence at the beginning of the essay that states the meaning of the words in your life (#1 in the "Standards of Academic Writing"). What is the meaning of these words to me? You don't need an introductory paragraph at this point, just the statement of thesis.

   Organize your stories into paragraphs, each of which makes a point relevant to your thesis (#3 in the "Standards of Academic Writing"). You don’t have to use all of the stories you wrote up and you can add additional stories if you need to.

   As you finish the draft, or after you read through the whole draft, write a brief conclusion for yourself; You don't need an introductory paragraph at this point, just the statement of thesis.

By the time the essay is finished (after several more drafts), body paragraphs should be 100-200 words (sufficient, specific support--#2 in the "Standards of Academic Writing"). Have these standards in mind, although your paragraphs might not hit those targets yet.

Tell the stories in a way that your reader sees the meaning of the words as you stated in the thesis (relevant support--#2 in the "Standards of Academic Writing").

2. Read “A Voice for the Lonely,” pages 86-89 in The Curious Writer. Write in your journal about what you think is important about the essay—at least a page.
   

February 6

If you missed class Thursday, I recommend that you first do the work that we did in class. The assignments will then make sense. Click here for the in-class work we did. You can e-mail me your responses to Writing #1 and #2. (Keep the others in your folder for Essay 1.) You can also e-mail me the homework for February 1. If you e-mail all of this work by Monday, I will give it full credit (whether you missed class or not.)

1. List as many experiences as you can that are related to the "words" you have chosen to write about. Click here for a copy of the "Grocery List." Remember, it is extremely important to focus on specific experiences--things that happened one time, one day. (That's what "I want.")
2. Choose 5 or 6 of the experiences from your list and write up those stories. Tell what happened--describe the experience in a way that shows its relevance to the "words."

NOTE: The steps above imply an order, but don't take that too literally. As Ballenger discusses, the writing process is recursive (26-27). So you might list a few experiences and write up a couple of stories and then add more experiences, and then write another story, etc. In other words, don't stare at the list unproductively--keep writing. When you write, you will probably come up with more ideas.

Second Chance: If you were not prepared to write about your learning styles this morning. Do the work to learn about your learning styles and e-mail me your response to the beginning-of-class writing prompt. You can use the link above to remind yourself of what I asked you to write.

February 1

1. Explore the information on learning styles using the websites I have posted on my home page. (Link to the right.) Identify one new strategy or change of habit you can adopt in class and one new strategy you can adopt when studying outside of class to take advantage one of your learning styles.
2. Complete your identification of 1,000 important words. (See January 30 for links to examples on the web.) Click here to see my 1,000 words--still in progress.
3. Complete your list of strengths and weaknesses. Identify a strength and weakness in each of these areas:
   • grammar
   • content/structure of your writing
   • your writing habits or processes.
   NOTE: I didn't identify these 3 categories in class because we ran out of time.

January 30

1. Spend about an hour beginning to turn your 1-hour writing about a subject you are curious about into an essay. Don’t stress!! Just work on it.
2. Make a list of “easy” writing tasks. What kind of writing do you do that is easy? (Like writing letters to people you know.)
3. Complete a learning styles evaluation. Click here to go to the evaluation. Print two copies of your results.

Also get started on the following for Thursday (We will discuss them further on Tuesday):

1. Make a list of your strengths and weaknesses as a writer—think about everything you have done so far and what it has shown you. Be specific.
2. Identify your 1,000 important words—passages that are meaningful or important to you: what it is and where it came from (who said/wrote it). Write a brief explanation of why you chose each. To make sure you understand what is expected, read through the two examples we looked at in class.

• Click here for the example that best resembles what your list should be like.
• Click here for another example.  

• Have at least 5-6 different passages on your list--and probably several more.
• Have a variety of sources (not all Bible passages or all song lyrics or all things your grandma told you)
• Don’t let one passage (or even one type) be more than half of your 1,000 words.
• Limit the number of clichés— let's say no more than 2

January 25

1. In your journal, begin writing a letter to someone that you have not seen for a long time. Since you will not actually send the letter, you might even choose to write to someone who has passed away. Write until you feel as though you are actually writing to the person. Complete this writing before you start the reading assignment.
2. Begin to read Chapter 1 in The Curious Writer. Read as much of the chapter as you can in one hour of focused reading. It doesn't have to be one hour all at once. If you read for 10 minutes and lose focus, stop and come back to it later.
3. Write for one hour about the subject you are curious about (what you wrote about for the January 23 assignment). Again, this does not have to be an hour all at once. If you find yourself not producing anything, stop and come back to it later.

January 23

1. Make sure that you can log on in the lab, check your e-mail, and generally use the computers.
2. Read the syllabus. (There is a link to the online syllabus to the right.)
3. Complete Exercises 1.1 on pages 5-6 and 1.3 on pages 22-24 in The Curious Writer.
4. Write a couple of pages in your journal that disuss your curiosity about a particular topic. What do you do that shows that you are genuinely curious about it? (Remember this is something you already pursue knowledge of, not something you want to learn about some day.)
5. Start making a list of words that are important to you. These might be Bible passages, words to a song, a poem, advice from your grandmother you remember, anything.

January 18

Class will not meet this day.

January 16

First day of class: show up with your writing tools.