Unit 2, Day 25: Monday, October 15

What you’ll do today in class:

- Workshop prewriting focus assignment in small groups to clarify exigence, audience, purpose, and focus

- Discuss effective claims for Essay 3

- Have students write a claim coherent with their exigence, audience, purpose and focus

- Assign Prospectus for Essay 3

Connection to course goals: These activities are moving students toward the writing processes and activities they’ll need to go through as they develop their own papers. The mini-workshop also reminds students of the importance of seeking peer response as part of the revision process. Additionally, discussing expectations for claims shows students what they’ll need to consider as they write and revise their overall claim. The prospectus asks students to begin to outline their Essay 3 as they consider contextual concerns such as their exigence, audience, purpose, focus, and the expectations of the assignment.

INTRODUCTION:

1. Remind students who missed last Friday to sign up for conferences for Day 26

2. Workshop prewriting focus assignment in groups (5-7 minutes):

- Have students work in groups of 3 (with the 2 other students whose prewriting they responded to on the forum for homework).

- Ask the students to take a few minutes to talk through their responses. This is a good opportunity to have students clarify any of the comments/suggestions readers offered on what was posted.

3. Have students list an exigence, audience, purpose, and focus for their analysis

(5 minutes): Have your students use the feedback they received on their prewriting and their own preferences to choose a tentative exigence, audience, and focus. Remind them that they won’t be held to these choices, but they need to choose so we can move on to developing claims.

Transition: Create a transition that explains to students how the next activity can help them make sure the focus and audience they choose for their analysis is appropriate to their exigence.

4. Assign WTL on audience analysis (5 minutes): Have students look at their audience (the audience they’ll most likely address) and respond to the following questions:

· What will this audience already know about the show? That is, what would any viewer who sits and watches this show already be consciously aware of?

· What messages will they be able to see fairly easily?

· What will they know about the aspect of the show that you’ll be focusing on?

· What do you think you can add to what they know about the show?

· Why does this audience need to know about this cultural message? How will their knowledge fulfill a social need (i.e. your exigence)?

5. Have students use the WTL to clarify their focus (5 minutes): Ask students to look back at their focus so that in writing their claim they’re dealing with messages that wouldn’t already be clear to the reader.

Transition: Write a transition that explains the relationship of evidence to a claim.

6. Discuss what an effective claim should do (5-7 minutes): Here we’re working on focusing students’ paper with a clear and concise claim. Ask students to generate a list of what the thesis for this paper should do (e.g. what a reader would need to know in terms of what the essay is trying to accomplish).

· the shared cultural belief that you see the show addressing or dealing with

· what the TV show does with that belief (reproduce and challenge) through the cultural message it offers

· some sense of exigence—the claim might include a sub-claim about the implications (for viewers and culture) of what the show is doing with that cultural belief

7. Have students write a claim (1-3 sentences) for their paper using their updated information on focus, audience and purpose (10 minutes): Encourage them to include a reason the audience needs to consider their analysis.

8. Give Essay 3 Prospectus assignment (5-7 minutes): Explain to students that the purpose of this prospectus assignment is to get them to begin outlining their context, audience, purpose, thesis and support for their Essay 3. Go over what you’ll require in the prospectus, whether you give students oral instructions or a handout that clarifies your expectations. For instance, be sure to let students know that based on what they decided in class today for their exigence, audience, and focus, they should go back to REVISE and expand the prewriting focus activity they posted on the forum. In addition, remind students that they’ll need to access their posting in the forum you’ve designated and “edit” it to make and save their changes. (See the SyllaBase forum instruction sheet in the appendix.)

Students should post their prospectus by Wednesday at 8:00 am. Remind them that you’ll be reading over these new postings before they come to conference.

Some suggestions for what to have students include in their prospectus:

1) a description of the TV show they’ll write on

2) a brief description of their focus (i.e. the cultural message they’ve chosen)

3) an explanation for why this cultural message needs to be written about (i.e. their exigence)

4) an explanation of their audience and purpose in writing to that audience

5) an explanation of their tentative thesis (overall claim) that indicates the shared cultural belief they’re centering the analysis on, how they see the show reproducing and challenging that belief, and what implications this has for viewers and culture

6) a list of all the evidence (textual examples and any relevant “outside” evidence) they can think of that could support their tentative thesis (and sub-claims) they’ve identified. Also provide some explanation for how each piece of evidence would substantiate their overall claim

7) a brief explanation of why they think their audience, purpose and focus “fit together” or are coherent with one another

CONCLUSION:

Assignment for Day 26:

- Post Prospectus (revised focus assignment) to forum

- Come to conference with a printed copy of your prospectus and questions/concerns you have about writing your Essay3

- Read the Essay 3 samples (see appendix) for Day 27

Important Reminders (in preparation for conferences)—

1) Remind students that class is cancelled on Wenesday for conferences.

2) Remind them that coming to conference counts as their attendance for class that day—missing conference constitutes an absence.

3) Remind students of what they should bring and how they should prepare for conference.