Week 2: Tuesday, September 2nd  Friday, September 5th

Week 2,  August 30 - September 3:  Overview

Goals for this Week
  • Revisit the concept of summarizing. Review the notion of objectivity versus fairness.
  • Discuss revision and its importance as part of the writing process.
  • Discuss workshopping and workshop etiquette.
  • Discuss the importance of purpose, audience and context for writing summaries.
  • Assign the articles by Krugman, Frank, Gordon and Zukin.
  • Discuss effective use of paraphrasing and quoting. (See page 194 in PHG.)
  • Introduce the concept of responding. Describe the three types of response used in this course: agree/disagree, analytic/evaluative, interpretive/reflective. Encourage students to practice the response forms one at a time and then to combine them for the final paper/letter to the editor. You’ll find a discussion of these types of response in the teaching guide on summarizing and responding at https://writing.colostate.edu/guides/teaching/summaryresponse/.
  • Introduce the New York Times—its layout, features on certain days, productive ways to read it, initial searches for topics/issues of interest. Assignment of News Clip Journal— begin clipping articles of interest on debatable issues—10 total by the end of Portfolio 1. Make sure to record date and section/page. Paste onto notebook paper, one per page, perhaps in the same 3-ring binder you use for class notes and handouts. [Instructors: Consider beginning each class period with a new person in the room briefing the class on one of his or her articles. Also consider keeping your own News Clip Journal so that you can show examples of clippings to your class. Bring your copy of the Times to class every day and encourage students to do the same.]

 

Activities for this Week
Detailed lesson plans are available for the first four weeks of the course. Beginning in the third week you will be encouraged to take over the writing (or rewriting) of all introductions, conclusions, and transitions. You will also notice more activity choices in the third, fourth and fifth weeks.  Beginning in the sixth week, you will be expected to choose activities from a set of suggested activities and/or develop your own activities that will help you and your students achieve the course goals for a specific week.