We will start our presentations on Wednesday. Email your peer review to your classmate today. Tomorrow we will assemble the Essay Portfolio.

Post your abstracts here for the Book Report Essay. Keep the presentations 2-4 minutes in length. Rehearse. Bring the book. If the book has been made into a film, bring the video and show us a short clip (smile).

Monday, April 30, 2012

Peer Reviews for English 1A Book Report Essay

Name & who’s essay are you reading? If you do not complete the peer review now, send it to the person. Tomorrow add the peer review to your Essay portfolio.

The order is:

Final draft

Planning Sheet

Outline

Peer Review

Essay Reviewed

Any relevant Cyber-Assignments (1)

Peer review guideline take from They Say, I Say
All of the questions are taken from pages 1-120.

Starting with what others are saying: Does the writer find an idea or topic they support, that others might not only disagree with but find hilarious? See page 29.

How well does the writer summarize key points in the story to support their argument? What signal phrases does the author use? Are they vivid and precise (39)?

Are the verbs concrete?

Does the writer frame every quotation (44)? How so? Are all the citations relevant? Are any citations overanalyzed?

From “Three Ways to Respond (55) Does the writer disagree and explain why (58); Agree –but with a difference (61); Agree and disagree simultaneously (64). Is the writer undecided (66)?

How well does the writer keep what he or she says unambiguous, that is, separate from what “they say?” (68). What writing tools does he or she employ to guide the reader? Are you ever confused?

What would you suggest if you are confused? Use the book (Chapter 5). See page 77.

Does the writer plant a naysayer in the text? If so, where? If not, where would you suggest the writer do so? (78).

How does the writer ellicit empathy from his or her audience? See “So What? Who Cares?” (92).

How effective is the writer in connecting all the parts into a coherent whole? Does the essay make sense? Are there any ideas left hanging out on the side of the road, like victims of a hit and run accident? See “As a Result” (105).

What pointing words does the writer use? Are any words overused? See page 120.

Today in class students can catch up on revisions, work on their Book Report Essays. Bring in a draft for a peer review tomorrow.

If you have not developed an outline for the essay yet, do that now. Use the 3-part thesis for this essay and for the final essay, unless another form works better.

Cyber-Assignment for today

1. Book title with author

2. Theme or subject or topic you are exploring

3. Question you are answering

4. Thesis

The essay is due Monday, April 30, 2012. Bring it electronically as an essay portfolio, which means all the documents created connected thematically to this book will be included like reading logs and cyber assignments.

You will add the peer review before submitting. On Tuesday, students will each be assigned an essay to read and grade. If you are not present, your essay will not be read. If you do not have an essay submitted, you will not be able to participate.

Tomorrow, bring in the planning and outline to share for Essay 3. The presentations will take place over the next week. Each student needs to also prepare an abstract.

Cyber-Assignment

Today in class we read one of two articles from Ode Magazine (2006) on a social entrepreneur, Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Prize winner. For th0se who were absent here is a link: http://odewire.com/53697/turning-poverty-into-peace.html

Students are to read the second article which is an interview. Respond to the article here in three paragraphs. Read another student's response and extend their comments with another 1-2 examples.

Talk about the writing in light of what you have read in They Say, as well as what we talked about in class re: thesis and the use of an example for the entirety of an article or essay.

Talk about the purpose of the article and why Muhammad Yunus is the example chosen (smile). It is pretty obvious given the article's introduction and concluding paragraph. Look at definition and how key terms are both defined and repeated.

In They Say, the authors talk about repeating with a deference. The authors talk about planting the naysayer, recent assignments looked at audience and how a writer addresses them. Who is Ode's audience? How does the article answer the so what, who cares question?

Keep going in your analysis. Post here.

When posting the exercise, post the original and label each type of paraphrase. use Daniel and Mark as an example.

Funny, students said in class today that the blog hadn't moved since a post about seven days ago. I mentioned that I hadn't updated the blog because we were still working on the assignment posted April 12, 2012. We completed an exercise from Diana Hacker in class looking at in-text citations Monday-Tuesday. For the most part we have been trying to get through the activities in Chapters 7-9 in They Say.

For Thursday, students are to have prepared Exercises 1 & 2 (128). Today students were to prepare exercises 1 & 2 (119-120).

I am going to have students post the responses to 1:128 in class.

For the exercises that ask students to look over something they have written, look it over before coming to class and annotate your writing. I suggested students use the same essay multiple times and change the color of the note. For instance, if one is looking at creating empathy, then the writer can highlight the sections that answer the questions "Why should I care?"

When looking at planting a naysayer in the text, the writer can use the same essay and highlight the sections that answer these questions in another color.

Book Report Essay Due Date Adjustment

There are due dates coming up and we have adjusted the due date for the Book Report essay. The planning, outline, etc. are due next Wednesday, April 25, 2012. The presentations for the Social Entrepreneur essay will not be May 14-15. We will do the presentations the final week the day of the final.

I am only allowing revisions for essays that get C- or below. I am not commenting on the entire essay, just one paragraph. I will give you a narrative note, re: the major problems by category. If any student wants more, come see me in my office.

Writers are only allowed 5 errors cumulatively, so if you make more, you are not getting a passing grade on the essay. I listed in a previous post what these errors are: coherence or logic, structure or organization, evidence, grammar, mechanics and MLA. Within the MLA, since this class is to learn proper documentation, I will allow students to correct this; however, if essay after essay has the same errors, I will not be as lenient.

The grammar errors are: confused words, parallel structure, pronoun agreement, verb tense, possessives, over use of be-verbs, misspelled works, pronoun agreement and vague pronoun references, sentence punctuation (run-on, fragments, comma splices).

We will meet in A-232 after all tomorrow, so students can catch up.

Homework: Read the book you selected and start writing the essay, even though it isn't due yet. The student essay with a thesis in the package I gave students, Writing with a Thesis, is a good example of an essay about literature. Make sure you are answering a question with the essay. I will give students mapping and invention handouts on Monday to use to generate ideas.

Other homework: We will continue with chapter 10: "The Art of Metacommentary" (129), Monday. Prepare Chapter 11 (141) and "What's Motivating This Writer?' Reading for the Conversation" (145) for Monday-Tuesday as well. This will help you write your book report essay.

You will use your book to reflect on the author's points. We might meet in the lab on Wednesday next week to reflect in a cyber-assignment.

Bring Half and Mighty to each class, along with They Say and Hacker. If students have the wrong edition of They Say, photocopy the correct assignments.

For the weekend: Continue in They Say. If you did not complete the freewrite, finish it over the weekend.

Announcements: The LAUNCH Conference at UC Berkeley, Friday, April 20, 2012, 8 to 1:30 at the Clark Kerr Campus. Attendance is Free. Lunch is provided. For information visit http://haas.org/launchyourcareer

Also Cal Day is April 21, 2012 Visit http://www.berkeley.edu/calday/

Today in class we looked at Chapter Seven, "So What? Who Cares" (92). In this chapter writers are asked to frame their issue to audiences who might not readily care or feel empathy towards their subject.

In exercises 1 & 2, (100-101) , students were asked to respond to both. Most students couldn't do 1 because they didn't have Mighty or Half with them, so now it is homework.

The freewrite is to look at the "Chapter So What? Who Cares?" and reflect on why it is important to include a response to these two questions in one's work and how such inclusion makes for a more powerful ally?

I call this creating empathy and if not empathy, one is creating understanding for readers of one's position even if they do not agree. (Do not post your revised essays here. If this exercise improves your Half essay, then resend it to me with a note (smile).

For Exercise 1, use Mighty and Half and answer the questions. Bring to class Monday to share. You do not have to post your rationale here just the page numbers. Find 1o examples, 5 per book and post here.

Today is also the deadline for Frontline World.

Other homework: Read your book for the Book Report Essay. Continue working on the SE research.

Reading for Monday-Tuesday, They Say--pages 105-120, ex. 119-120. Prepare for class Monday-Tuesday.

In class today we completed the Writing with a Thesis package. Students should be spending their time reading their pre-approved book for the next essay and presentation and working on the SE essay.

Tuesday and Wednesday, I handed out library research worksheets. I have provided links to these sheets here.

Note the due dates previously posted to see when these assignments need to be completed.

The book report essay is approaching.


Research Tools
1. Visit http://alameda.peralta.edu/projects/20013/EnglishSabirpathfinder.doc

2. http://alameda.peralta.edu/projects/20013/EvalWebWksht.doc for the assignment: Evaluating a web page. Students need to open this document to complete the earlier assignment.

Other resources
3. http://alameda.peralta.edu/Projects/20013/researchsteps.pdf

The Half the Sky Essays were due yesterday via email. Today we will spend time talking about Social Entrepreneurs and watch a Frontline World episode together in class. If we have time we will look at the Writing with a Thesis handout.

Homework is to continue working on the Frontline World, identify your SE and begin research and read the approved book for the book report essay.