Month: October 2017

Weekly Write Up 10/24 & 10/26

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In-Class Discussion/Lecture

Tuesday: At the beginning of class we did Daily Grade #14 in our journals, with the prompt asking us what we would ask Bryan Stevenson if he were to come on campus—whether it be about Just Mercy, or some other topic. Afterwards, we discussed the library visit that would happen on Thursday, where we would go over our research proposals, and learn proper research methods and different types of sources. Dr. Crowther recommended that we make sure to find our own sources outside of the information in Just Mercy, and maybe even collect some primary sources. We were also reminded that our research proposal, plus a planned timeline for our research, were due on Friday by 8 pm. For the rest of the class, we each brainstormed some topic ideas, or, if we already had come up with one, worked on a research plan.

Later, we discussed the research process and worked on an example topic (Research Process-253fxun)  , “Recidivism”. Dr. Crowther also gave some tips as to how to start our research; for example, to come up with a research question, and then come up with your own ideas to answer that question, which you would then try to support with your research. She also gave us some tips on how to best search through search engines and databases, using keywords and filters. At the end of class, we were reminded that our rough outline is due next Tuesday (10/31).

Thursday: On Thursday, the class met in the library, room CL 2220, where we learned more about the different types of research sources, and how to best find them. First, we did a short activity where the librarian had us sort different sources of information from least to greatest based on different criteria (amount of editing, research, effort/ease of creation, time, or length put into each source). She then showed us the library search engine to find various databases, based on name and/or topic. We discussed exactly what a database is (a collection of different resources), and the reasons for using one rather than a normal search engine (they are often more specific and give more scholarly, reliable, results). Then we were given a short tutorial on how to filter and find certain results, and got some recommendations of specific databases to use when searching for certain types of sources. Thursday was also the due date for the completion of the LearningCurve activities.

Readings

The assigned reading for this week were from both our Changing Writing (CW) and Successful College Composition (SCC) textbooks. In Changing Writing, we had to read Chapter 7: “Getting Information and Writing from Research” (pgs. 155-180) and Chapter 6: “Managing Writing Projects” (pgs. 140-152). Chapters 6 and 7 collectively give tips on how to properly conduct and use research, the different types of primary and secondary sources, taking notes from and recording said sources, and suggested methods of planning out and managing your research process.

In Successful College Composition, we were assigned to read Chapter 4: “Writing a Research Paper”, sections 4.1 through 4.5, which goes through the purpose of doing research writings and the early stages of the research process. As this chapter puts it, we conduct research to learn in depth, and more deeply understand a topic using “facts, interpretations and opinions you encounter in your research to create a narrative and support an argument” (Crowther et al. 134). It then goes on to detail the research process: first, choose your topic through brainstorming, then plan and schedule your research; afterward, conduct your research, organize your sources, draft your paper, and then revise and edit. The rest of the chapter gives tips on how to choose the best topic—one that fits the assignment criteria and holds a personal interest, but is not too widespread or too narrow—and how to find and identify reliable sources, as well as how to properly use citations and quotations in your paper.

Thursday’s Class ; October 19, 2017

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by Ariana Tolbert

 

  • Keep in mind that we will be meeting in the Library for Thursday’s class, October 26, 2017, in the computer lab!  

 

Body of Class :

We regrouped with the same members from Tuesday’s class and made final touches and after we presented our group work to the class.

Pact Chart

    • Presentations included a few websites, posters, skits, webpages, community outreach events, brochures, and even newspapers.
    • The purpose of these presentations were to raise awareness about juveniles in the justice system and to get people to make a change!
    • When presenting the presentations, overall everyone wanted to reach out to government officials and the public in general.
    • Our context, as a whole, were people who were unaware of the issue, government officials, college campuses, communities, etc.
    • Everyone’s presentation was an example of a text.

 

 

 

 

Daily Grade # 13

You were also supposed to read Just Mercy chapters 12, 14 and 15 for Thursday’s Class! However, we ran out of time before discussing the chapters. My partner will upload the summaries soon!

For next class, Tuesday, October 24th, we will begin our research paper. We will be using critical/secondary sources, learning to annotate sources, and discussing research proposals. So be sure to read Changing Writing textbook [Chapter 7: Getting Information and Writing from Research, pp 150-180]. Also, chapters 4.1-4.5 in SCC!

Do not forget to complete your launch pad solo assignments! It is due by the end of October!!

Weekly Write-Up 10/17 & 10/19

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By: Tyler Booth

Tuesday 10/17

In class:
At the beginning of class we did our daily journals on Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson and connected it to anything related to modern society. Later Dr. Crowther assigned us into groups and we did a class project on “Juveniles in the Justice System”, where we had to raise awareness about the corruption of adolescent people in the justice system. In the assignment we had to make a PACT chart- Purpose, Audience, Context, and Text, which can be seen in “Changing Writing” pages (11-20). We also had to look up background information to add facts to our proposal. We didn’t get to present our presentations today, but Thursday we are going to present.

Homework:

Just Mercy:
Chapter 6: In this chapter the readers are introduced to a young Caucasian boy named Charlie who was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Charlie was arrested for murdering his abusive s

Chapter 8: In this chapter the readers are introduced to more cases involving young children serving life in prison, which all of them having horrible backgrounds. In the first case, a fourteen year old girl named Trina and her friends broke into someone’s house. Trina lit up a match and accidently set the house on fire, killing the trapped boys. Soon, Trina was arrested for the murder of the boys and she was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Trina became a victim of sexual assault while in prison. She became both mentally and physically ill.
In the second case, a thirteen year old boy named Ian and his friends robbed a couple at gunpoint, which ended with the lady being shot in the jaw. Ian was soon arrested and given life in prison without parole. Ian was put into solitary confinement, which was little to no human contact, since he was at risk of rape. In the justice system judges don’t even consider to look at the history of the convicted people.

Chapter 10: In this chapter the readers are introduced to a mental disable man named Avery Jenkins. Avery was on death row for killing an elderly man. We soon find out that Avery was abused sexually and physically when he was younger. In court Stevenson defends Jenkins and manage to get him off of death row and into a mental health facility.

 

WEEKLY WRITE-UP #8: 10/10 & 10/12

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by

Unnati. P. Kakkad & Thien B Ngo

 

Oct 10th, 2017 class:

Daily Grade #10:

Write a self-evaluation of your performance in this class and at GSU so far this semester

  1. Are you meeting your goals?
  2. If not, what could you do to improve your performance? (think of 2-3 strategies)

Strategies:

  • Have something that reminds you: write on hands, put reminders in your phone, use sticky notes and stick them around. Try to keep things visible, so you don’t forget. Dr. C suggested to sticky notes around the room with “be on time”, or “go to bed early”, it helps you to motivate to finish work on time, but you can always use whichever works best for you. We can also have a look on some strategies that comes from successful people such as Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, one of his strategies is, as he has so much things to manage each day, he prioritize things which are mandatory to be done. Try to identify habits that are not productive. Of course, you could give yourself a window of 30 minutes to relax, after that you should go back and manage productive things.
  • Dr. C also let the class know that she always welcome student come to get her advice about study skills, how to organize ideas for essays, writing processes or any type of difficulty, if she can’t help it she will definitely make you contact the right person for detailed information.

Class activities:

Work in group of 3 and in your group, discuss and draft answers to the following questions for assigned chapters (Introduction, Chapter 1 or Chapter 2). Be prepared to discuss with other groups working on similar chapters:

  1. Discuss what happens in your chapter. (Think about who, when, where, what, how, why).
  2. Collaboratively, write a summary of what happens in your chapter.
  3. Choose one central quotation to include. Add a brief discussion of why the quotation is significant.
  4. Generate 2-3 discussion questions- what are the most thought-provoking issues the chapter raises?

Oct 12th, 2017 class:

Daily Grade #11:

Pick 1-2 messages from Just Mercy and free-writing on why the passage interest you.

Strategies:

Students should take this chance to brainstorm and prepare for the research paper later on. Dr. C. advised students to highlight interesting passages. And as there is not enough time to write down the full passage from Just Mercy, so students could write down the page number (eg. page 45).

Class activities:

Dr. C gave groups some time to discuss and prepare themselves for mini presentation in front of class in which each group have to present summary, quotation and explanation, and discussion questions on the same chapter of Just Mercy: Introduction, Chapter 1, Chapter 2.

Here is the picture of a group presenting Introduction

 

Weekly Write Up Week 7 (10/3 and 10/5)

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Pre Reading:

The assigned reading for Tuesday, October 5th was Scenario 19, which begins on page 297 in Changing Writing. Scenario 19 was also assigned as reading for the previous week, so we only had to review the material instead of taking notes on it. In this scenario, the reader is asked to picture themselves as a writer for Perspex, tasked with finding a pre-existing scholarly article to translate for a wider audience, much like our assignment for essay.

A few questions to consider when repurposing a text (Page 298 in Changing Writing)

After explaining the scenario, the book explains that even though summary/paraphrase essays will usually only be used in the classroom, they should always be correctly cited to avoid accusations of plagiarism in the future. The text suggests that the writer choose a topic they’re interested in, and consider how to make the article useful to a less informed audience. Additionally, the text suggests that writer consider the intentions of the article’s original author and focus on bringing across the same overall message. Finally, the textbook gives us the hypothetical paraphrase article, which is about a study into the effects of stress on crops.

The reading we were assigned for Thursday class came from the book successful college composition, chapter 2.4(SCC). This part of chapter two explains the important of revising and editing and why writers should always go through them. The author argues that, to improve your essay you must always undertake these two tasks. First revise, and then edit. You may think that your paper is perfect and only needs little improvement, but every essay needs to be revised and edited to be perfect. The first step in revising and editing understands the purpose of doing them. When you revise your essay, you’re looking for mistakes in your draft that makes your ideas not clearer or accurate enough. You might change some things up to make your essay more convincing. When you edit your draft, you fix your grammar errors, punctuation and, sentence structure. You make your essay into how you want it to be. The next step is peer review. You’ve work so closely with your paper to the point where you can’t see your mistakes. In this case, you need someone else to review your draft. Work with a partner, read each other’s drafts, and give positive feedbacks on how you can both improve your drafts. After you get feedbacks, the book tells you to use them as help to improve your paper. The author also discusses about being clear and having unity in your essay. Always be clear in your essay, and not vogue. Make sense of your essay by creating unity within your essay. Before submitting your essay, make sure your paper is in the right format.

Lecture:

On Tuesday, class began with Daily Grade 9, for which we were given a choice to write about how the media has reported the Mandalay Bay Shooting or a topic of our choosing. Since this Daily Grade wasn’t related to the lecture of the day, we didn’t spend time discussing what we wrote afterwards. Instead, Dr. C. began by explaining the difference between a summary and a paraphrase, both of which we are a part of essay 2. A summary is a general overview of an entire article or piece of information, and as such is a lot less specific and technical. In contrast, a paraphrase takes an article’s ideas and general structure and expresses them in the writer’s original words. Since a summary is an interpretation of the writer’s ideas rather than a direct usage of their ideas, summaries do not require in-line citations unless they use a quote. On the other hand, paraphrases do require in-line citation because they use the ideas from the article in question. After explaining the difference between a summary and a paraphrase, the class did an activity in which we summarized our chosen article to someone nearby.

Watch this video for an explanation on The difference between a paraphrase and a summary.

How to cite in a few circumstances

In the next part of the lecture, Dr. C. explained some rules regarding citations that we need for essay 2. For this assignment, we all need to include a full citation of the article we’re using for the assignment at the top of the first page. We can either create this citation manually, through a database, or through Easybib. Additionally, the assignment requires we include in-line citations whenever we use a quote or idea directly from the article, citing with parentheses, the author’s name, and a page number {ex. (Jones 11)}. Dr. C. took time to explain how to cite in a variety of different circumstances, but eventually she told us to use online resources like Purdue OWL instead of memorizing MLA format. She also explained how use Turnitin.com to make sure our papers don’t include any plagiarism. Since the submission folder on Icollege is linked to Turnitin.com, we can submit our papers to Icollege and see the percentage of words in the paper that can be found on the Internet by clicking the number of submissions. Dr. C. will take the most recently submitted version of our essays, so we can use Turnitin as much as we need, though the site will think final versions are plagiarized from earlier submissions. After the lecture was over, Dr. C. gave us 20 minutes to work on our essays using the 2-3 paragraphs of the rough draft that she assigned us to write for the class.

Thursday was our peer review day for essay 2. Dr. C went over how peer review is all about and how it supposed to be done. She went over the purpose of essay two and how to do in text citation. She also showed us how to us Perdue OWL and how to cite more than three authors. She then told the class that essay two rough draft (with the interview questions) was due later on that day on icollege. After that, she putted the peer review interview question on the board and paired us up in twos. At the end of the class, we gave our assigned partner feedbacks and what he/she can do to improve their draft. We closed by getting information about when essay two was due.   Don’t forget, essay two is due Sunday 0ct 8 by 11:59 PM

 

 

Weekly Write Up #6: 9/26 & 9/28

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by

Lena Levette and Erin Evans

Reading for class:

For class this Tuesday we were assigned to read Scenario 19 “Repurposing a Text” and take notes. This scenario asks the reader taking on the role of a writer who works for the online magazine, Perspex. You are asked to recreate the style and structure of an article for an audience that is not specialized on the topic. In order to accomplish this task you must be able to reorganize the text while still conveying the message. In addition to this you must avoid plagiarism or copyright. Coinciding with this reading, we were also asked to find a scholarly article and bring it into class. Scenario 19 goes along with our class discussion because we will have to use this example to help us take on the challenge of writing essay 2.  The first step in this process should be pretty clear, start off with a topic that interests you and find an article that correlates to it. Keep in mind that once you have found your article it is important to read between the lines and draw a deeper conclusion so that your new audience can be informed and entertained.

For Thursday we were asked by Dr. Crowther to read Chapter 1:  Introduction to Writing (SCC) –1.3. This section of the text discussed how to properly use a source and what it really is. In college a source is simply anything that is not your own work that you will use for your writing. Anything from a poem to an online editorial can be categorized as a source. Majority of the assignments you will and have been given require a source.  To briefly state why they are necessary in academic work, sources help the writer take part in a fundamental conversion of knowledge that has long preceded you and will long succeed you. The knowledge you will need to engage in academic dialogue must come from a certain understanding that can only be obtained from a higher viewpoint.

After using quotes, paraphrases, and summaries you must give credit to the original creator to avoid plagiarism. The first guideline for using a source is to first have permission to use the source. Next comes the citation of the source using MLA or APA format. This is a highly important step because it gives the reader a chance to locate the source. Lastly include the citations at the end of your work. Also remember to properly introduce your use of sources in your writing by explicating it. In order to do this you may use quotes such as, “In other words”, to signal a phrase and justify how it supports the argument being made. Overall good source usage is prevalent to your writing because it provides concrete evidence for your audience.

Class Lecture:

In English 1101 we were lectured to about better writing strategies and how to properly construct an essay. In order that you must first create an outline to better construct a paper, because it helps you organize your ideas and paper. We also talked more about outside sources and how to put it in your own writing. When using outside information it is important that you give the most accurate credit to wherever you got the sources from not only that but, it’s highly recommended that you use a scholarly/ peer reviewed document because the source is more accurate and stronger. While going through the source you want to highlight keys ideas or quotes except they must be in your own words, which falls back on the plagiarism side. At the end of your essay you want have a work cited page so that if your reader wanted to check you on your quotes, then they can find the quote exactly where you found it at.

For Tuesday’s lecture we started off with the Daily Grade number 7. We were asked to write about the process of writing essay 1. What went well? What strategies were helpful? What was challenging and why? What would you do the same or choose to do differently next time? Once our daily grades were completed Dr. Crowther then let us share and we all got feedback on our responses. Many students had trouble with their organization skills and Dr. Crowther went back to stress the importance of writing an outline, which are essential to any writing project.  Included in this discussion she also showed the class her dissertation to show us that when you write as long as you have organization, from writing an outline, you can always complete the assignment at hand no matter how long it is. Other answers and suggestions such as brainstorming and writing sloppy rough drafts came up in the discussion as well. After that we began the introduction on essay 2 which is all about how we use outside information when we are writing. For our editorial we mainly relied on our own opinion but moving forward, outside information will be necessary for majority of our writing. When you are trying to add knowledge to your writing you must do it responsibly. This means giving full credit to the place where you received your information. Dr. Crowther explained that scenario 19 models this very well. She then went on to explain the summary and paraphrase assignment we will do for the scholarly article we chose for our topic. But first we need to know if the article we choose is reliable or not because there is a plethora of access to information and not all of it is true. To test this she broke the class up into groups of three to think about the author, place of publication, date, and where they are getting their information from as well.

For Thursday’s class we started off again with the daily grade which was to write 2-3 sentences describing what happens about a movie or book without naming it. Then we were asked to pick a scene and describe it in detail. This daily grade assignment went along with our paraphrasing and summary discussion because it showed us that you should have already have a good understanding of the information instead of just simply changing a few words from your source and calling the work your own. To fully understand the text you must first read and annotate the text. Then what Dr. Crowther recommended was to read it again and take notes. It is important for your notes to be your own words because if you use another person’s words it makes it more difficult to avoid plagiarism in your writing. As you’re writing you should add your own ideas to the research you found. If you use a quotation you must use an in-text citation, which is the author’s last name and the page number in parenthesis, so you can reference your source. To make the lesson clearer, Dr. Crowther showed the class three summary examples from Purdue owl’s website and had the class work on them in groups of three. Each group chose an example to work on and completed their summaries individually. Once they were done everyone in the group came together to create one summary with all their ideas. This task helped the class get more practice on summarizing and collaborate on ways to make our work better.