ASSIGNMENTS

I have placed my copy of the DVD with "Hush" on reserve in the library. You can check it out for an hour and watch it in the library.

December 14, 8:00-10:00 (Thursday)

Final Exam:

You will be asked to write an essay on Judgement. I will give you specific topic choices at the final. You should anticipate probable topics and prepare for them.

Suggested Preparation:

• Review your exploratory writing and your group’s collage.
• Review what you have learned from the first two assignments—especially the Buffy essay, which is based on a similar source.
• You might want to watch the film again.

Click here for the link to Judgement.

Your final essay will be due at the final. Click here for the instructions.

December 7

1. Since most of you didn't turn in your Buffy essay, completing it should be your first priority. You can turn it in by the end of the week. You will turn in only the final draft.
2. Your last essay will be a revision of the reflective essay you wrote based on the process of writing your song essay. For the revision, you will also discuss your process of writing the Buffy essay. We will discuss this in class on Thursday.

December 4

Click here for the revision workshop from today's class.

1. If you haven't already, turn in your song essay revision by 2:30 Friday.
2. Keep revising your Buffy essay, making it as good as you can. We will work on some final editing in class on Tuesday. You will have the option of turning it in on Tuesday so that you can receive it back graded on Thursday or turning it in later in the week and receiving your grade on it at the final exam.

November 30

1. Finish the works-cited page we began in class (three sources for the Buffy essay).
2. Read pages 549-563 in The Curious Writer.
3. Make final revisions to your song essay to get it ready to turn in to receive a new grade. Turn in your final draft, the draft that I graded previously, and the higlighted rubric describing the grade levels that I returned with your graded essays. I must have all of these. You can take until about 2:30 Friday to turn in the essay.
4. If you have a little additional time, revise your Buffy essay--paying particular attention to your use of sources.

November 28

1. Revise your essay using the feedback from the peer review.
2. Write a reflection that describes how you applied the feedback from peer review in revising. Describe the best revision you made.
3. Evaluate your draft and decide what the most important improvement that needs to be made, and then complete the most relevant of the following revision strategies: 14.5, 14.9, 14.15, 14.16, or 14.17. (Only one is required.)
4. Write a reflection that describes your revision, explains why you made the choice of strategies you did, and describes what you think still could be done to make your essay better.
   

• If you send me your best body paragraph, along with your thesis, before 2:00 PM on Tuesday, November 21, I will give you feedback on it by class next Tuesday.
• If you e-mail to me your thesis and topic sentences before 7 PM on Monday, November 27, I will have some feedback for you by class Tuesday.
• To receive the feedback, you must give me exactly what I have asked for.

November 21

1. Revise your Buffy essay, incorporating details based on our discussion and at least one idea from Why Buffy Matters (quote or paraphrase).
2. Write a specifically developed reflection on that revision.
3. Revise your Buffy essay again, focusing on what you think is most important to make your essay as good as you can--ready for peer review. (If you haven't focused on structure--topic sentences and thesis--in a revision, include that as a part of one of these two revisions--or make it a third revision.)
4. Write a specifically developed reflection on that revision.
5. Bring enough copies of the draft for all the members in your group.
   

November 15

1. Revise your song essay, using your new topic sentences.
2. Write a ½ to 1 page reflection on that revision.

3. Revise your Buffy essay, focusing on structure: good topic sentences and thesis; adjust the support appropriately, make notes on what you need to notice when you re-watch the episode/discuss the episode.

4. Write a ½ to 1 page reflection on that revision.

5. Read the chapter from Why Buffy Matters, and mark ideas that you might use in your essay, including anything that is similar to what you have already said.

November 13

1. Finish your collage:

Choose your best passages from your exploratory writing, ones you might want to include in an essay:

• Interesting ideas
• Well-expressed ideas
• Chunks of good details**

Assemble these parts into a collage. You may have a potential thesis in mind, but don’t let it have total control yet. Go with any interesting track your mind has taken you on.

2. Turn the collage into an essay: (First and Second drafts):

1. Write a thesis that reflects what is most fully and interestingly expressed in your collage. Use this thesis to focus a rough draft using the pieces from your collage/exploratory writing. Cut and paste (or type up) the relevant parts of your collage together in a word file—put in necessary transitions and clarifications and print. (You can handwrite this rough draft if you want and type it in Word for Step 3.)
2. Write ½ to 1 page reflection: Describe the process. What is good? What needs to be done to turn this draft into a complete essay?
3. Make revisions to move it more clearly toward a focused essay: Add details, examples if necessary, using relevant invention strategies: listing, fastwriting, brainstorming. Then print.
4. Write a ½ to 1 page reflection: Describe what revisions you made and how you think the draft is going. What needs work?

 

The reflections will be handed in and will be used to evaluate your effort on the drafts.

 

3. Bring the following to class next time:

• your graded copy of the song essay (highlighted, with grammar corrections),
• your latest revision (if you have completed any revisions),
• your completed topic sentence exercise from 9/25 (if you did it).

4. Over the next couple of weeks, spend some time revising your reflective essay.

November 9

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

If you need the handout I gave before we watched the video, with the in-class writing, click here.

Click here for the link to the page where you can read a transcript of the episode.

November 7

No new assignment. It would be a good time to make some revisions on your first essay and save them in anticipation of a revision opportunity later.

Click here for the link to Judgement, the film we watched in class.

November 2

1. Complete the grammar corrections and plan. (See #2 below.)
2. Complete the reflection you started for Tuesday (See #1 below.) In addition to the reflection you have begun, include some evaluation of the finished exercise. The whole thing should be at least a page. Consider the following questions to evaluate the exercise:

• What parts seem good in some way? Which don’t?
• What would have made this exercise work better? What could you have done? What could your peers have done? What could the instructor have done?
• What do you think the point of this exercise was supposed to be?
  

October 31: Meet in the lab again.

1. Start to write a reflection about this week's group activity: creating a collage. What was interesting, useful, dumb. Do you think you learned anything from it? Write for about a half hour; produce at least half a page.
2. Begin making Grammatical Corrections and a Plan for Learning for next Monday:

1. Look up and correct all of the grammatical errors (marked in red ink) on your essay. Correct these errors on the page where they are marked by crossing out incorrect forms and writing the correction in the space between lines or in the margin. Write the corrections in ink a different color from any I used on your essay.

2. Classify your errors into three groups (note the quantity of each type of error):

• Errors that you understand completely without further practice. These are errors that you won’t repeat.
• Errors that you are pretty sure you can come to understand by practicing.
• Errors that you don’t understand. (Don’t try to correct errors you don’t understand.)

3. Write a plan:

• What actions will you take to be sure that you don’t repeat the first group of errors?
• How will you practice the concepts that you can learn?
• How will you get help with the concepts you don’t understand?
  

October 26: meet in the lab

1. Revise your exploratory writing. Focus especially on the areas that were identified as best by your group. Before Wednesday’s class, e-mail your exploratory writing to your group members and to me. It needs to be accessible by class time Wednesday.

October 24

1. Read through Chapter 3 in The Curious Writer if you haven't yet. Spend about a half hour. Focus on what is relevant to what we are doing in class right now.
2. You might want to watch Judgement again while you are working on the exploratory writing about it. Use the link above.
3. Click here for the handout that has the assignment.

October 19

There will be no class on October 19, so complete the assignments for October 24.

Click here for the handout describing the assignments for the week of October 16.

October 5

• Continue to revise your essay: It should be turned in to me by Friday. Late papers will be reduced one letter grade. Turn in only the final draft of the essay this week. You can turn it in to me in either of the following ways:
  • Give a printed copy to Cheryl McKendree in AD 211 before 4:30 Thursday, or before 4:00 on Friday. She will be out of her office from 10:00 until about 3:00 on Friday.
  • Attach the essay to an e-mail to me and send it by Friday midnight. It must be attached as a Word document or I may not be able to open it. To be safe, I recommend copying the paper into an e-mail as well as attaching it. If I can’t access your e-mail, I don’t have your paper on time.
• Read through Chapter 3: Skip the exercises. Read with a focus on what you are in the middle of with your group.
  

I will not be in class with you on Thursday. You should work with your groups to accomplish the following:

• Continue discussing the movie and brainstorming a list of questions.
• Decide on two questions that each member of the group will use for a half hour of exploratory writing each.
• Designate a group member to e-mail to me by Monday your list of questions and your assigned exploratory writing.
  

October 3

1. Click here for the handout from today's class, which includes the assignment.

September 28

1. Complete the evaluation on page 679 on paper. You will discuss the evaluation with your group.
2. Write a reflection that evaluates your own effort in Tuesday's peer review: What were your contributions to the group? (Be specific.) Did you bring a good draft to the review? Did you stay engaged--listening to what everyone said? What did you do to help the group work together? How could you improve your own contribution to the group in the future?
3. Revise your essay. Use any useful advice you received in the peer review.
4. Complete Revision Strategy 14.14 on pages 652-653.
5. When you have completed the revision, write a 10-15 minute reflection.
6. Bring your handbook to class next time.

September 26

1. Be prepared to complete the peer review of the sample essay (see the instructions below) and your group list of the qualities of a good group workshop (Exercise 15.1, page 670).
2. Complete the dialectical process for the items in your feedback that you agreed and disagreed with: write until you believe (or understand) what you disagree with; write until you doubt what you agreed with in the evaluation (20-30 minutes).
3. Revise your essay, using the comments from the feedback I gave you. Prepare the Essay for Peer Critique. (1 hour) Bring enough copies so that everyone in the group has a copy to read from.
4. Write a 10-15 minute reflection on your revision.
5. I forgot to mention this, but read pages 669-681 to be prepared for the peer review.

Instructions for Peer Review of Sample Essay

Everyone, take 5 minutes to read and make notes on the essay, and then discuss the essay as a group, coming to a consensus on the following points:

Compliment: What in this essay really works for you? Be specific. Give examples.

Question: What question do you think this essay should answer or clarify? (This might be a something that is confusing or something that has not been covered.)

Suggestion: What do you think is the most important thing you think this writer should work on if he/she were going to revise it?

September 21

1. Write topic sentences for all of the body paragraphs in the most recent draft of your essay.

September 19

1. Complete a revision: Spend at least 30 minutes, no more than an hour, of focused effort. Try something creative—explore, experiment. The most important thing about this revision is to break away from any thought that you have to have my feedback before you do anything else.
2. Write a 10-15 minute reflection on that revision (include a specific description of what you did). I will collect these.
3. The other hour that you would usually be spending on work for this class: take a break from everything.
   

If you missed class on Thursday, 9/14, look in course notes for information on turning in your assignment.

September 14

1. Click here for the handout with Thursday's assignment.

• Click here for a copy of two paragraphs transcribed from the Bob Dylan essay.

September 12

1. Revise your essay: Spend about an hour continuing to put in personal examples and keeping the song in focus. (Look at the directions for revision for September 7 and September 5.)
2. Reflection: After completing the new draft, spend about 15 minutes evaluating your revision--What you did (process) and what the result was (product).

3. Read pages 37-54. This will be relate to your current writng task, but you should relate it to our previous discussions and assignments concerning readings.

4. Bring a CD with your song if you want to share it and talk about it for a couple of minutes.

5. If you want to explore the website on learning styles I introduced in class, click on this link: James Cook Univ Learning Styles Page.

September 7

1. Spend 10-15 minutes reflecting on and evaluating your group discussion. Use the evaluation form on page 679 as a starting point.
2. Revise your essay with focus on making sure that the reader sees your personal stories as they relate to the song and to your thesis: incorporate specific lyrics and general descriptions of the song; (Click here if you want to listen to the essay about Bob Dylan songs again. It downloads quickly even on my dial-up at home.) Of course, continue to develop and add to the personal stories in the essay.
3. Reflection: After completing the draft, write for 15 minutes about your revision:
   • What do you like, not like?
   • What is giving you trouble?
4. Read pages 617-626. (Read with a goal in mind.)
5. Bring a CD with your song if you want to share it and talk about it for a couple of minutes.

September 5

NOTE: To print the handouts referred to below, you will need to click the print icon on "Macromedia Flashpaper" toolbar--second from the right.

1. Click here for the handout with the assignment.
2. Click below for each of the handouts we used in class for exploratory writing. If you want to see a written version of the exercise we did in class, look at page 647 in The Curious Writer.

Brainstorming Questions

Grocery List of Experiences

August 31

1. Write for 5-10 minutes about doubting the information that you agreed with in Chapter 1. (See #4 for August 29 below.) And write for 5-10 minutes writing about believing the information you disagreed with. (If this is confusing, the trick is to write from the opposite point of view--to explore both sides of a question.)
2. Complete a Learning Styles Inventory at the website that you will be directed to at the end of this description. Answer the questions quickly; don't study them. Once you have answered all 44, submit your responses, and you will receive your results almost immediately. Print your results. (I will collect these, so you may want to print a second copy for yourself.) You can go to the link to read the descriptions of the different learning styles, or use the copy I handed out in class. Click here to get started.
3. Using your results and the descriptions of learning styles, make a list of new studying/writing ideas to try this semester to take advantage of your learning styles. Try to find one idea for each of your learning styles.
4. Finish reading Chapter 1 in The Curious Writer, and complete the survey on pages 22-24.
5. Reflecting on everything you have done so far in this class, make a list of 3-5 things that you want to learn this semester. (This is the same question I asked you on the first day of class; I hope your answer has evolved!)

August 29

1. Before starting the reading assignment below, begin writing a letter to someone close to you wome you haven't seen in a long time. You won't have to send the letter, so it could even be to someone who has passed away. Write long enough that you feel as though you are actually writing to the person.
2. Read Chapter 1 in The Curious Writer. Read for about two hours--that's time focused on the reading, not just with the book open. After you have spent two hours, you can stop even if you haven't finished the chapter.
3. As you read Chapter 1, mark passages that stimulate your thinking. (If you don't want to mark your book, you can write the passages on paper.)
4. Choose two of the marked passages: one you agree with and one you question or don't agree with. Write each of these passages at the top of a sheet of paper and fast write for 5-7 minutes about why you agree or disagree with the passage. (You can do both of these writings after you finish the reading or you can stop and write as soon as you read a passage that gets you thinking. If you don't fast write, write long enough that you have thoroughly explored your agreement/disagreement.)

August 24

Write an essay about how a particular song has been meaningful to you. Spend about two hours. The essay should be approximately 500 words.

August 22

First day of class: show up on time with your books and writing tools.