I was missing a good amount of students today; I only had 11 out 17. Pretty disappointing. Everyone keeps telling me it was the nasty weather....which if it was, is a really sad excuse. We live in Michigan! It's always crazy weather and it's not like it's snowing yet.
Anyways, I started class by confessing to the class that the transitions exercise that I did on Wednesday of last week wasn't very good, but that the words and the idea are really important.
I then collected the students second drafts of Project 3 and their ranked list of ideas for Project 4. I had 9 drafts from the 11 students and only 3 ranked lists!! I told them I was pretty disappointed.
While I put marked their work for credit, I had them write a Viewpoint about why they don't complete the writing process. They had to tell me if they see the importance of the process, what they struggle with and why. I reminded them that I want honest answers.
After they were done writing, I handed back their draft and lists, and we started talking about the Viewpoint. I was pretty shocked at their honesty. Many of them told me that they didn't complete the process because they're lazy, don't want to go to the lab to print out their work, and other things like that. It was really disappointing and frustrating. I forgot to collect the Viewpoint today, but made note to collect it during the next class.
One other thing that I did with my students was introduce a new policy. I told them that they needed to highlight or underline any and all changes from one draft to another. I told them that I didn't have time to constantly be looking to see if they changed things from one draft to another and that they need to be aware or their changes, too. I gave them a few minutes to mark changes to this draft so that they could practice doing that.
I then moved the discussion to the problem of plagiarism. I had several students in their drafts obviously copy and paste information from the internet. In order to combat that, I used a handout that Maggie had made about tips to avoid it and also an example from the writing handbook that shows students how different their work needs to be from their source if they decide not to actually quote their source. We then talked about this...mostly I was talking about what I've seen and told them that I am not stupid and catch it when they do. The whole conversation/lecture was pretty somber, but I think they got the point.
In order to change the mood of the class and continue our work on Project 4, I introduced the class to the three styles of persuasion: ethos, logos, and pathos. I had the students take notes on their meanings and ask any questions. Then, I split them into 3 groups and they had to read an opinion paper from the Kalamazoo Gazette out loud with their group and decide which styles were used and find specific examples. When they were all finished they had to share with the class how their writer proposed to solve the problem that the 3 articles discussed and then tell which styles were used and what the specific example was. Each student had to say at least one thing. This went well but we just about ran out of time because the studio consultants arrived.
I quickly wrapped up the activity by handing out the proposals for Project 4 and gave the homework for Project 3. The students then got to munch on Halloween cookies I had bought for them and take a few minutes to chill before the other class came to join us for the editorial board review.
Once the other class arrived, Kate and I had the students line up and were given a partner from the other class and a peer review sheet that they needed to fill out with their peer. After they were finished, they were able to leave.
Overall, I think it went well. The consultants and I had to definitely keep the students on track, make sure they were following directions, and guide them through when they got stuck, but they all left with basically a rubric filled out about their work.
No comments:
Post a Comment