Today in the MW classes we covered a lot of territory connected geographically to the first of three essays connected to the theme of happiness. This first essay takes its topic from Gretchen Rubin's book, The Happiness Project.

In the MW classes students were to bring in their planning, which included a thesis sentence to share with a peer. Most students did not do this assignment, so they spent the time doing the work. We then shifted to a couple of worksheets in a package from the Hacker website. We looked at plagiarism. Students sometimes had problems with acceptable paraphrases.

Students need to complete the handouts I gave them earlier this semester. Other students didn't know what is meant by MLA format for a citation. Still others waited to today to complete the assignment and the college website was inaccessible today. Don't wait to the last minute to do assignments.

Homework is to complete the fast draft and bring in an item for the freewrite on a woman you admire. See the previous post for the details.

In the English 1A, the afternoon classes, we looked at a draft student essay in Hacker. The exercise models effective peer comments.  Use it as a guide. See 3f (pp. 41-49.) We also looked at outlines in Hacker, integrating citations and how to document in-text citations. We talked about signal phrases and the importance of introducing quotes.

I told students that anyone seen using the computer for activities not connected to the class will be penalized by having points taken off the next essay assignment (1 entire grade level).