Unit Two, Day 20 - Thursday

Unit Two, Day 20 - Thursday

Class Goal: Critical reading of student writing as a way of learning to be a better reader of students’ own texts; further emphasis on audience and "so what" questions when constructing an essay.

Connection to Course Goals: Writing as choice based on purpose and audience; writing as a series of revisions where writer must learn to read for their own weaknesses.

Activities:

Workshop CMA (see Appendix).

Introduction: The most difficult aspects of this assignment are staying focused and developing all the claims made, so the workshop sheets below ask you to focus on these two areas.

Directions: Make copies of the paper #3 responding sheet in the appendix and clarify directions. Break class into groups, asking them to get at least 2 readers, hopefully three, for their drafts.

Closure: Once students have finished responding, pass out grading criteria for media paper (in appendix) and encourage them to use these as yet another revision guide while working on their final draft. (60 min.)

2. Introduce Unit III:

List for students (or with them) all the reading/writing skills they have learned up until this point:

critical reading of texts and culture
analysis of context (via cultural analysis paper and academic response)
writing for varied audiences
summary
support for opinion: textual and personal
evaluation (academic response); either/or positions (personal response); cause-effect analysis (media paper)
exigence: providing a "so what" for the audience
organization and coherence appropriate to purpose and audience

This next paper will ask them to use all of these skills. In particular, the most difficult part of this assignment is that they will have to conduct research in order to define their own context, purpose, and audience for writing.

3. Introduce Educational Inquiry Assignment

Highlight various aspects you think are important for students. Emphasize the need to focus on a particular issue. Explain sequence that will follow : ie. why we are reading and researching for half of this unit before they begin writing their own papers. (why: because educated argumentation precedes with investigation and inquiry into topic and context to provide a "reasoned" response to the issue). Remind them that it is better to hold off on forming an opinion until they become versed in the issue. (5 min.)

Assignment: Read Gatto (166) and Anyon (186). Finish CMA.