Tag: collaboration

Weekly Write Up #8 (10/10 & 10/12)

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Weekly Write Up #8

 

By: Tylar and Kieron

Class Reading:

On Tuesday, the reading for class was to read the introduction and chapters one and two from Just Mercy. In the introduction Stevenson describes how he entered into the law program at Harvard and his years there. He described how law school was very disconnected but when he came to Atlanta to start his internship and met with Walter McMillan he found his true passion. He also gives many statistics about the prison system. At the end of the chapter after Stevenson informs McMillan that he will not die within the next year, McMillan begins to sing called “Higher Ground” in which Stevenson named the chapter.  In chapter 1, Stevenson receives a phone call from the judge advising him to drop this case in which ironically his name is Robert E. Lee Key, Throughout this chapter Stevenson describes. McMillan’s background including the fact that he is from the same town as Harper Lee, the author of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Stevenson describes McMillan earlier life and how he worked his way up in society. McMillan reputation became tarnished after he had a romantic relationship with a married white women by the name of Karen Kelly. At the time, interracial relationships were highly frowned upon. When a murder occurred a suspect with faulty evidence, McMillan became a key suspect partially due to his relationship. In the beginning of the chapter 2, Stevenson is just beginning to take death row cases in Alabama. He is focusing his attention on the condition of the prisons and more specifically the Attica Riots. Stephenson gives a personal anecdote about an instance in which he was brutally stopped by a SWAT Team member, who illegally searched his car and threatened to kill him. Stephenson was a lawyer so he knew what things to say to the police to calm the situation, but he explained that the typical black male would not know how to handle the situation. This situation inspired Stephenson to speak at churches and organizations about the work he was doing, and provided him with further interest and motivation in this cause.

On Thursday we were assigned to read Chapter 3 and 6. Chapter 3 describes what McMillan was doing on the day of the murder. On this day McMillan was working on his truck   and hosted multiple people at his house in which he couldn’t have been at the crime. It was claimed that McMillan’s truck was seen near the crime scene while McMillan was at home with guest. In chapter 6, the theme for the chapter was children in the prison system. Stevenson describes a case in which a boy’s grandmother calls him to assist with getting him out of jail. They young boy shot and killed a police officer, who was domestically abusing his mother. He was then sentenced to life in prison but with the help of Stevenson his sentence was reduced to a few years. After telling his story to others, a pair of grandparents whose grandchild had died were very persistent in assisting him when he was released.

Class Activities/Discussion

On Tuesday, we started with the daily grade which asked us what we needed to do to be successful for the rest of the semester. We then had a group discussion in which each person said what they needed to do along with what they were going to do to get there. We then began to talk about the class book, Just Mercy. We were split up into small groups, in which each group was assigned a chapter. In these groups, we were asked to create a summary, choose a quote and its significance and come up with 2-3 discussion questions.

On Thursday, we were asked to pick a passage from JustMercy and why it was significant. At the beginning of class, we discussed out third essay, which is a research paper. It was advised they we start searching for topics and resources to use for this essay. We then went into the same groups from Tuesday to refresh. The groups then combined by chapter and combined there work for presentation. Each group then gave a summary to the class along with their quote. We then answered their discussion questions.

 

 

Weekly Write-Up Week #3 (09/05- 09/07)

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Weekly Write-Up Week #3

By: Joseph Seka & Amyn Said

Reading for class: 

The reading for Tuesday was done in the book of Changing Writing.” We had to read CW: Chapter 2, Approaching Writing Situations,pp.33-47.”  In this chapter, the textbook talks about how we will be using the framework  PACT to writing situations you confront when creating new texts. You know, everyday we deal with a wide range of writings situations for example working on a resume to apply for a job or texting a friend if they are interested to go to charity event over spring break: They are stuff you do. “But thinking systematically about them as writing situations can help make you more effective by helping you understand what rhetorical move will work best in that specific situation.” To understand a writing situation you must analyze a content and people within it, you have to take in consideration the situation as it is now and the situation as you would like it to be. More importantly you have to figure out a way for you to move current state and future state to the situation you want it to be.

By the way, “any writing situation involves a mix of four primary aspects: purpose, audience, context, and text.” The purpose of a writing situation is to know the problem, what are you specifically going to need to change the situation, and also what you will do to achieve the change. For example: “you notice that students might have misconceptions about how much work is involved – maybe if you show them how easy registering is they’ll be inclined to do it.” The context is to know where the problem’s at, like on your school campus or something. The audience is what are the readers position within it groups like a soccer events. And what’s their motivation will be a long term, like having a great job and starting a beautiful families. Then we get to the text, which is what type of resource will you use for example a website, poster, social media and etc. A will have to be simple and straightforward because they won’t put in much efforts to read a long and boring text.

Lastly, you have to consider your motivators and barriers to change. The point of this will be to get your audience to make a change which can be the most complicated thing to find out. After you have got the detailed involved in the four aspects, it’s useful to step back and think about a way to convince your readers to your suggestion. Don’t forget that change is also stressful. So it not surprising that it had to get people to change. When writing something that intends to cause change, you will need to find an effective way to convince people that change is in their best interests.

The reading for Thursday was CW: Scenario 1” Advocating Voter Registration on Campus” – Read and make a PACT chart. All you had to do on Thursday was to review the PACT charts on pages 33-36, which respond to Scenario 1,”Advocating Voter Registration on Campus(p.263). Create your own PACT chart for this scenario. If you were creating a poster to encourage voter registration on campus, what might it say? What would the words and images be?.”

Class lecture/discussion/activities:

On Tuesday from week three, we began to review the reading from Chapter 2, Approaching Writing Situations, pp. 31-47. Dr. Crowther also gave the class lecture on a recap over the specific pages. She suggested that when writing its best for you to write essays over time. Some reasons are that your eyes will open to unique ideas along with a pure mind and also it’s a good habit to make. Further, she talks about how making an outline is helpful when writing. This is a good thing to do because it gives you a feeling of understanding about what you will be writing about in each paragraph. When it comes to errors in writing Dr. C also told us if we recognize something obvious then we can go forward and correct it, but if it’s a minor mistake we can go back to it another time. Later we discussed some of the obstacles that students come across when writing and a few stated things like grammar and organization. Some advice given by Dr. Crowther is that we can use the PACT questions on pgs.42-43 to help create some ideas for writing or even getting started.

Throughout the majority of the class period, we got in groups of two and created a PACT chart for four scenarios that Dr. Crowther wrote on the board. Those four being applying for a job, raising money for a charity, informing your friends/neighbors about local events, and the last complaining about noisy neighbors. Our fellow classmate Lucy has created a well-organized PACT chart for all four scenarios. Later on, we closed the class by going over three modes of persuasion. The first is Pathos which is an emotional appeal where you persuade an audience by showing emotion. The second is ethos which comes from ethics, means do we trust people, in other words, do we trust the author’s credibility. An example the class came up with is that when you apply to a job the manager may research your job history to see if you are capable for the job. And third is logos which appeals to logic, means to convince the audience to logic or reasons.

                                  

For Thursday’s class, we got into groups of three or four and discussed our PACT analysis that we did for homework on Scenario 1 on “Advocating Voter Registration on Campus”. We created a brand new PACT chart that had all the related ideas we wrote from our writing assignment. Some examples that students had in common for the purpose were “The number of votes from college students need to increase” and “encourage college students to vote”.  Later in groups, we designed the logistics of this scenario and made a poster, flyer, or website to really get the students attention. We had many students produce posters to get there point across along with a group making a post on the class website. When it comes down to making an advertisement for voting the class chose the best way was to create a sign with big and bold words so that it can grasp the eyes of the students as they walk by.