Here is a note about class this week along with your weekly reminders, the agenda for our class on Tuesday, and a suggested workflow for your week!

Week 2 Reminders

This week you needed to submit your final subreddit selection on Slack and catch up on any missed Week 1 work. If you didn’t submit your Slack post with your final subreddit selection, make sure to do so promptly (but be aware you may not receive feedback on Slack).

Week 3 Schedule of Work

As always, the agenda is in the course calendar. As you begin the “Review” work posted to the Week 3 module on D2L, remember that the materials referring to peer review should be completed after everyone in your group has exchanged drafts, and without explaining what your paper is about to your readers. The point is to receive feedback on what you’ve written, not what you think you’ve written.

In our live session on Tuesday 2/16, we’ll do the following:

  • Discuss Shepherd’s essay
  • Review Essay 1 Phase 1 instructions
  • Re-review formulating claims
  • In breakout rooms, practice working with claims by using the template claims and by reverse outlining the sample student essays using the “says/does” method (as we discussed before with the Pulp Fiction worksheet)
  • Discuss how to conduct effective peer review

The “Describe, Evaluate, Suggest” video lecture will be posted to D2L by Saturday evening the end of the weekend.

Workshop Instructions

Reminder: These instructions apply to what you’ll do between Tues – Fri, after we go over directions and questions in our live session.

For workshop, you must share your work in Google Docs or OneDrive in your Slack workshop group, which I will create and invite you to on Tuesday evening. (You’ll save your work as an MS Word/PDF file to submit to me on D2L by Friday). Plan for at least a few hours to be able to do all the work asked of you. Don’t talk about your essays with each other until after you’ve completed the instructions below.

  1. Read the full draft without making any comments.
  2. Reread the full draft, and make comments while you’re reading using the “Insert/Comments” feature. You may want to underline/highlight what you think the controlling idea is, ask questions where you have difficulty following the writer’s leaps of logic, or take notes about what you think the writer’s aims are.
  3. Complete the Essay 1 Phase 1 Peer Review Form posted to D2L.
  4. After receiving the peer review forms commenting on your draft (emailed to you automatically as a PDF), go over your peers’ feedback. If you need to, discuss their comments asynchronously in your Slack #workshop channel.
  5. Write a ~500 word reflection that identifies what you prioritized for revision and why, and explains which assignment criteria you think you’ve met and which you think you need to keep striving towards. You may also reflect on any regrets or difficulties you dealt with while writing the draft, your attitude towards the draft and feedback, or any burdens of college or life that crept into your work. Include this letter as a paragraph at the end of your draft.
  6. If you have time to do so, revise your draft before submitting it (and your reflection paragraph) to me as one file on D2L by 5pm on Friday.

As the ability to effectively critique writing is an essential part of the critical thinking and writing process, peer review is mandatory. If you do not complete the peer review forms, you won’t receive credit for the assignment; you’ll lose the opportunity to receive feedback; and you won’t be able to complete the post-workshop material afterwards. I also recommend you decide as a group if you want to schedule a group conference with me to discuss any collective assignment questions or issues of craft you’re all facing, as some students have found this helpful in the past.

Looking Ahead…

We do not have a live session scheduled for Week 4. Instead, I will be holding mandatory 15-minute one-on-one conferences with each of you. I provide oral feedback on first drafts, so if you don’t meet with me, you’ll miss out on the feedback you need to revise your essay for Phase 2. You are responsible for scheduling these conferences with me. If you don’t meet with me in Week 4, it will count as a “Missed” conference. If you anticipate being unable to meet with me in this timeframe, reach out to me to make alternate arrangements.