Tag Archives: Class Notes

Class 17

Good morning, folks. It’s day 2 of session 2, just about the halfway point of our book clubs. They’re just flying by, aren’t they? I’m hoping you’re having fun (or at least, listening and/or being prepared).

We’ll take a quick peek at the Essay 3 prompts again. They haven’t changed much but I’m wondering if reviewing them at this point might help us focus some of the comments we’ll make in class today and some of the posts we might write for Monday, Nov 8. The pages we’re looking at for next week are on the Goals and Plans Doc, as well as the schedule and, heck, I’ll put them here, too:

Laymon 117-162 / Diaz 142-247 / Talusan 150-229

Many many thanks to those who have made such great contributions to our big class conversation. Not everyone is, I’m noticing, so please if you haven’t been regularly contributing, let’s get going. This is certainly part of your grade for class.

Class 14

Welcome to Day 1 of our book groups. Thanks to Angel, Leslie, Karen, Adrian, Jasmin, Elijah and everyone else who posted responses to the reading by the start of class. (Those named above posted by 8:30, which is usually when I log on for class and prepare these posts for publishing.) A few bits of business, about a) blog posts and book clubs, b) the impact of this work on your grading contracts, c) Essay 2 (which I’ve finished reading and commenting on), and d) where we’re going with Essay 3.

Those of you who have arrived in class prepared and with your work complete, you’ll work in pairs and then threes to discuss the reading. I’d suggest you start out by sharing what you posted in the blog. It’s OK to have started with summary but the best discussions will move quickly to responses. These responses will be based in the books.

Blog Posts for Book Clubs

For easy reference, here’s a blog post requirement review

  • You’ll write one post per week to our course blog (due Mondays by 9am)
    • It should have a title, tags, a quote from the text, an image or a link out, and citations
    • It should engage the reading and be between 200 and 350 words (2-3 paragraphs).
  • You’ll also reply to the people in your groups (due Wednesdays by 9am) 
    • These should be thoughtful comments that engage the writer and their ideas
    • They should be 1-2 paragraphs, and should summarize what the writer has said before you respond with your own ideas — this is sometimes called the “known-new” contract

Incomplete Work & Grading Contracts

If you didn’t complete your assignment, a) I will mark it as late, and b) you’ll need to spend some time in class completing it. There will be breakout rooms for this. Please go to the room that corresponds to the book you’ve decided to read. Work turned in later than today’s class will be marked “make-up” and, eventually, “ignored.” Please review our grading contract to recall how this can affect your semester grades.

Essay 2 Comments & Required Revisions

You should check your preferred email address (whatever you indicated that was during the submission of Essay 1). I have sent feedback to everyone who turned in Essay 2. These were, generally, pretty good. A few were really excellent and we’ll look at them with the writer’s permission. Many need a small amount of revision, with the most common reason being a lack of engagement with the peer-reviewed readings.

Essay 3 Topics

While the specific prompts won’t be available until next Monday, after we’ve gotten underway with book clubs, I can say with some certainty the general topic choices you’ll have for this essay. We’re returning to a more traditional format, in this case a 1,000-1,500 word essay. Your choices of topic will be as follows:

  1. The Research Option: Using library sources from Lehman or the NYPL, pose a research question about a social issue that emerges from your reading and discussion of your book. Your essay should define that issue and give it some background using at least two peer-reviewed sources. That background should explain where your book enters into a larger conversation about that issue. And your essay should explore the way that issue shapes the experiences of the writer of this book. Examples abound but could include: immigration; identity; sexuality; gender; race; education; place; family; disability. And many more!

2. The “Struggle” Option: As we articulated the reasons we were choosing these books, many writers described an interest in the “struggles” these writers “overcame” along the way to becoming “successful.” If you pick this option, you’ll engage that idea of a “struggle” story (sometimes also called a “deficit narrative”). In what ways do these stories resist that trope? In what ways do they reinforce it? Were these stories “inspiring”, “depressing” or something in between? How do these terms help us as readers, and how is that a binary that limits our interpretations?

3. The Fly-on-the-Wall Option: Drawing on Alvarez-Alvarez and (to a lesser extent) P & E as models, observe your own group and at least one other group. Use research/data gathering skills like interviews and surveys to make an argument about the benefits and limits of book clubs in a pandemic-influenced college class.

4. The You-Tell-Me Option.

Class 13

Good morning, all! As our “Goals and Plans” Doc indicates, we’re at what very much feels like a midway point in the semester. Today, you turn in the second of your four formal essays. Exactly half, by the numbers.

(Turn it in here, if you haven’t already) If you’re having any issues with file format, hang on and I can help you after class. I fixed a bug in the Form with the multiple choice. English professors and multiple choice questions, we’re kind of strangers.

As fits a mid-way point, we’ll do a bit of looking back and a lot of looking forward. Today’s main activity looks at the draft thesis statements you shared in the chat Monday. We’ll use the same rubric that I’ve used with assessments and that you’ve used in peer editing to analyze these statements. That rubric is two questions: Is this statement arguable? Is this statement structured?

After we do an example in the main room, work in breakouts of 4-5 with this handout. Be ready to explain your discussion when you come back to the main room.

With the balance of class, we’ll do one of two activities. We’ll return to the task we started at the end of class Monday. In that activity, you were looking at the conclusion Carmen Alvarez-Alvarez’s ethnography of book clubs in Spain and trying to pull out its five main ideas in your own words. This artifact is a more urgent one, since book groups start Monday. We’ll do our best to wrap it up today or for homework.

If things go very quickly, we’ll take a look at some of the paragraphs you composed earlier this week. These are really helpful artifacts, too, and if we don’t have time for them today (which seems likely) we’ll look at them as “ice breakers” or “brain breaks” over the course of the book club sessions this month.

Looking forward to class today!

Class 09

Good morning. We’ll start off with a quick review of what we covered Wednesday. The activities from that class, as always, are on our Goals and Plans Doc. Last Wednesday:

  • we looked at the shout-outs in the reply box to last Monday’s post (and reviewed the difference between abstract and concrete language);
  • we shared some (concrete) cultural artifacts and described their (abstract) significance to us (and we also introduced the idea of a narrator’s position; cultural artifacts can help us remember and orient the reader to “where we’re coming from”)
  • finally, we did an exploratory freewrite, positioning ourselves (as readers) in relation to the concrete objects (books) we’ll be “reading alone and with others” over the rest of the semester. Some notes from those freewrites:
    • a number of us, including Taisjuan and Angel, liked how reading with others helped “piece together” the meaning of the text (Taisjuan) allowing for conversations about what was “inspiring” (Angel)
    • others, like Elijah and Janelle, liked the flexibility reading alone offers for people to apply their own techniques, like visualizing (Janelle) and reading at various paces (Elijah)
    • many of us, including Nayely and Leslie, mentioned the importance of finding the work interesting and ‘relatable’. Sometimes that had to do with content (Nayely’s “Leap of Faith” for example) and other times that had to do with form (“voice” and “motive” in the example Leslie brought up, A Long Way Gone.

Today in class, we’ll look at the opening pages (79-87) of a peer-reviewed scholarly article. There were some embedded questions in Hypothes.is that I asked you to look at, and these questions will shape our conversations today.

“These analytic conversations can shape and reshape adolescent identities as they learn to trust and affirm their own voices, take risks to act in new and positive ways, and analyze the texts and their own and others’ perspectives.”

(Polleck & Epstein 79)

This was a popular line for response, based on the annotations you made for homework. So let’s use this as a jumping off point. What is the author saying here? Which of these three elements (trusting your voice, taking risks, and analyzing perspectives) resonate most for you with your past experiences? Has one of these skills been hard for you to do when reading in school, but more possible when reading outside of school? In your experience, what other activities besides reading that “can shape and reshape adolescent identities”?

We’ll start class with some freewriting in response to those questions. Take your writing where it goes — that’s what freewriting is for. We’ll share in pairs and I’ll ask you to post a line or two in the reply box in the last few minutes of class.

Class 07

Good morning, all. Hope you had a chance to enjoy this glorious weekend. Today in class, we’ll review a number of the key concepts from Module 1, go over the expectations we can have for each other when it comes to Essay 1 (due Wednesday), and prepare to sharpen our use of digital tools, academic writing skills, and the richness of our class community as we turn to Module 2: Defining Book Groups.

You’ll want to start in the “Goals and Plans” Doc. There, you’ll see a list of the content and skills we covered this Module. We’ll spend some time writing and talking today about the ways we covered that content–and articulating moment where things “clicked” and questions we still have. Module 1 was quite a lot, but don’t worry, we’ll circle back to most of it in Module 2. That’s one thing about writing: it requires practice, and the more “reps” you get, the better.

After that, I’ll share an example of a student essay from Fall 2020 in response to this same prompt. We’ll look at it as a group, considering where we see its main idea, its evidence, its signs of organization, and the way the writer follows conventions.

With the balance of class, you’ll work on one of three things in independent work:

  1. Give a “shout-out” (do people even say that anymore?) or some “shine” (as they say in my kids’ elementary school) to another person in class who did great work in some way. Post that as a reply to this post by the start of our next class. (So, to be clear, if you don’t finish this in class, it’s OK to finish it as homework.)
  2. Use the “checklist” linked to on the “Goals and Plans” Doc to proofread your essay. There’s also a copy of it in the submission form for this essay. It must follow MLA format or I may ask you to revise it before marking it COMPLETE.
  3. If you’re listed under one of the “housekeeping” tasks, it means you’ve not completed the set-up of one or more digital tools. Please do this first, before the other two activities, and let me know if you need any help. I’ll have some breakout rooms open so we can talk without disturbing others doing independent work.

Class 06

Good morning, all. We have our first peer editing session today. The prompt you’re responding to is on our course site (and has been since the first day of class.)

Many of us have posted our drafts. Some of us haven’t. The groups have been updated accordingly. In class today, I’ll briefly go over the rubric I use; you’ll participate in editing this rubric for this essay once you’ve completed peer editing. After we’ve done that, we’ll discuss how to use your prior work in this essay. Then, editing or (for those not yet prepared with a draft) outlining.

While you work, I may call some students into “Room 7” for conferences. I’ll give you a heads up and then will move you myself. Might be a little disorienting. Zoom life.

Class 05

Good morning, all! We’ve made it through the stop-and-start part of our semester, and just at the right time. Wednesday we’ll have peer editing for Essay 1. A week from Wednesday, Sept 29, your first formal essay will be due.

Today, we’re spending time looking at some of the shorter assignments you’ve done with sources to prepare for Essay 1. These are the library assignment (where you were to practice summary and citation) and the blog post #2 (where you were to practice response and opinion writing). These are important skills and they take practice.

After we talk about summary and response, we’ll do some brainstorming about what goes into an effective first paragraph. From there, we’ll start thinking about all the sources and evidence we’ve compiled. How do we organize this under the argument we’re making: “I’ve decided to read X because Y…”

Class 04: Sept 13

Good morning and welcome back after a 12-day hiatus. Happy new year if you celebrate it, and happy first day of school for those of you with little siblings, cousins, kids, etc.

There were some nice conversations on the blog over the last few days. A few posts I’d like to highlight are those by Christopher, Jamy, and Kedwin. Each of the writers published their freewrite on our blog with a title and a tag, and one person commented on their post. Great job folks. If you didn’t add a tag, please do. If you didn’t add an image or make an interesting title, you can do that between now and Sept 27. Comments are closed. These pieces will be graded on a 5-point scale between now and our next class meeting, with two points assigned to the letter and one each to the title, the tag, and the comment from your peer. These are private. You should see them on your end of the Commons page; I haven’t used them before so we’ll learn together.

We will spend some time in class today wrapping up our previewing activities, including the “Page 99 test.” We’ll also discuss our annotations on the readings for today. We’ll also take a look at the prompt for Essay 1,

Class 03: Sept 1

Welcome back.

Our goal for today is to continue discussing reading practices; introduce summary and citation practices; continue previewing texts.

In class today, you’ll respond to “The Cover of my Face” in a way that builds on reading practices we discussed Monday. There were some great questions in the Hypothe.is conversation, and you’ll start there in breakout rooms, then move to a fuller-class discussion. We’ll also look at page 99 of all three texts using the same close reading skills you practiced with Hypothes.is. This is the same way you’ll read “La Otra” by Jaquira Diaz and “Quick Feet” by Kiese Laymon, your assigned texts for Sept 13.

Looking forward, we’ll be using the library to continue to locate texts to use to make our “Pick a book” decision. We’ll briefly go over the Assignment Sheet for Essay 1, on our class site, and the Library Assignment, on our Goals and Plans Doc. That essay’s peer edit draft is due Sept 22, with a revision due Sept 29. You’ll work in Google Docs for peer editing, and the final version will be published to a Commons site that you’ll start over this week, and which you’ll use throughout the semester to make your portfolio.

As a reminder, please log in to CUNY Academic Commons and to turn on Hypothes.is as we start class. If you’re having trouble with Hypothes.is, please be sure you’ve registered and installed the plug-in on Chrome, and joined our class group. If you’re still having trouble, talk with me after class and just follow along the best you can. There will be time in small groups for you to ask a friend from class to help you explain that process. You also should contact IT, whose information is on our syllabus.

Let’s get started with the “Goals and Plans” Doc.