Descriptive writing activity (30 min)

Tell me what happened on your commute today, how did you get here. Alternatively, tell me about breakfast or another recent meal. Describe it as best you can.

Let’s look at this video about quick tips for helping with descriptive writing.

Try each of the things and rewrite it.

Turn to page 90-91 of the textbook. Read the two paragraphs from “Naturally…” to end of paragraph after that one.

How does the writer use the descriptive writing to help them think through the meaning and relevance of their personal experience for an understanding they are trying to grasp about themselves and the world around them?

Return to the commute description you wrote. Try the extra step: so what? What did you find meaningful about this scene? Tell me your thoughts and feelings as best you can, significant or insignificant.

Let’s try a memory you have about finding, evaluating, and/or using information. Try to describe and reflect.

Shitty First Drafts (10 min)

If you haven’t started your information literacy narrative yet…you just did!

I liked what Tahmid said: “comprehending old thoughts and filtering it down” after having written a shitty first draft.

Lewis, too, captures things nicely, I thought: “embracing imperfection”

Jasmin: “sometimes we need to step away…a new way of looking at the same information”

Distraction Management and Process/Practice (10 min)

Go over handout for strategies and talk about starting where you feel most confident/able.

Handout is on Blackboard in “Syllabus and Other Course Documentation”

Writing Session (30-40 min)

We talked about your writing processes last class as well as successful writing sessions.

Take a look at those briefly to remember what you described for yourself as well as what other people try to do.

We have talked today about doing some descriptive and reflective writing, which are two forms essential for the literacy narrative genre. We have talked about trying to be aware of your process from a big picture standpoint as well as your own practice from a localized perspective in a given time you sit down to work on writing.

Let’s put all of this to work through a writing session. The handout I am passing out is also on Blackboard in “Syllabus and Course Documentation” if you ever want to keep using this.

Writing Session Debrief (5-10 min)

Let’s complete the “Reflection” and “Goal(s)” part of the bottom of the handout now.

Next Time (2-5 min)

• Update Labor Log by tonight
• Submit to Blackboard your Working Writer’s Journal Post 2
• Bring a “shitty first draft” of your Information Literacy Narrative to class on September 13 printed out. Also submit to Blackboard. LET ME KNOW BY EMAIL IF YOU ARE NOT COMFORTABLE WITH CLASSMATES READING WHAT YOU’VE WROTE BECAUSE IT IS TOO PERSONAL