Thur. March 4, 2010

Students turned in their first draft of the Project 2.1 assignment. Additionally, I asked them to bring in three total copies so we could workshop papers. In work shopping, I put specific questions on the board for them to answer. I prefaced their peer work with the notion of not just saying "good" or "bad", but actually offering substantial feedback. For example, one question called for students not to just list the writer's purpose, but give a thoughtful sentence that summarizes the writer's purpose. Also, they had to list the actual aspects that created each person's community. In other words, the paper focuses on community identity and how this identity is constructed and conveyed to the world at large. They had to use outside sources, scholarly and non-scholarly, and Said to build their argument, so the peer reviewer was called upon to examine and critique whether or not these tasks were effectively accomplished. Further, I called attention to the fact that this exercise is also an attempt for them to build their own critical muscles so they can go home and do the same critiquing of their own papers. In regards to actual progress, I found they worked hard and critiqued well. Many students wrote significant feedback.

I experimented today. I've found many students rely on cliches to try and convey their points. So as a group, we brainstormed cliches and I asked two students to write the cliches on the board. After many good laughs, I pulled a sentence from a student paper and put it on the board. It read, "Sometimes, this is when volunteer spirit has to kick in and we have to do the right thing." I asked students to identify the cliches and see if they could replace these instances with more specific language, language that "really " says what they mean. I thought they did a terrific job of taking in the notion of saying what they mean rather than relying on out-worn phrases. Most took the notion to their peer-reviewing work and began seeing where cliches were limiting them. In the end, I was pleased by our progress and the connections we're making.