Independent Work on Research Projects (30 min)
First, look on Brightspace for my feedback on your Synthesis Paragraphs. Also check to see if you have feedback on your Research Plan about your use of sources.
Second, look at your Research Plan. Where are you at? The draft is due Wednesday. Get to work with an accountability partner. Say what you are working on right now. Toward the end, you will talk about what you did and what you are gonna do next with your partner.
I’m going to come around and talk to you–get ready to tell me something about your projects!
Final Reflection Intro and Grade Boost Check-ins (20 min)
Let’s take a step back and think about what is coming up for the rest of the semester.
I have all of your grades updated, excluding grade boosts, on Brightspace. I should let you know some time next week about the grade boosts I have on record to make sure you have credit for them going into the final week. IT IS POSSIBLE that I reach out to you and say “hey, I can’t accept this but if you do X and Y, I will accept it.” See your email and Brightspace. It is unlikely it happens but it can and does happen sometimes.
For EXTRA peer review letters: make sure those are submitted on Brightspace spot for grade boosts and NOT somewhere else.
Let’s go over the Final Reflection assignment.
Let’s go over the grade boost version of the Final Reflection assignment, the Experiential-Learning Document.
Let’s also go over the guidelines for revising the Literacy Narrative or Rhetorical Analysis for a grade boost.
A Lesson on Style: Sentence Types (30-45 min)
We have talked about:
Let’s review some of what it does to readers to use short or long sentences, to vary sentences, to use commas for certain situations, and to use other forms of punctuation.
All of the above can be thought about, also, through the idea of sentence type. In English, there are four types of sentences:
- Simple sentences
- Compound sentences
- Complex sentences
- Compound-complex sentences
Here’s a quick explanation of the differences between these sentences:
Sentence Types – Purdue OWL® – Purdue University
Open up the textbook to page 69 (go to “Library” and click our textbook, enter “69” as the page number or search for the number if on your phone). Read the second and third paragraphs.
I want you to pay attention to three things in a paragraph we are going to look at together:
- What you think the sentence type for each sentence in the paragraph is (it’s kind of tricky so if you are not fully confident, that is okay)
- What it feels like to read each sentence. In other words, what does the sentence make you think and feel in the way that it is constructed (e.g., its rhythm, how it stops and starts, how smooth or unsmooth it reads)?
- How does the length, variety, and/or punctuation contribute to those feelings?
With a partner, talk about your reaction to the paragraph. Pay close attention to at least one sentence and be prepared to talk about it in front of the class.
After we have our discussion, I want you to return to the spreadsheet where you calculated sentence lengths. Go back and see the original paragraph you used for that. If you weren’t here that day or can’t remember which paragraph it was, choose any paragraph from your previous or current writing. Answer the following questions an talk about it with your partner:
- What are your favorite parts of that paragraph? Why?
- What sentence types are involved?
- What is it about those sentence types that help create the rhythm or feeling when reading?
Next, try to change one sentence to a different sentence type. If you weren’t here that day or if you want to work with a different paragraph from your writing, that’s okay to do, too. Be ready to talk about why you changed it.
Provide the original and the revised version here.
So what does all this do? Make writing less boring to read? Is it more than that? What do you notice in your writing and others’ writing? What does this attention to punctuation and sentence structure help do for you as a writer and reader?
Does all this attention to sentences have any effect not just on the reading experience (e.g., making things interesting, creating a pleasant rhythm) but on meaning itself? Does writing mean something different based on choices in length, punctuation, sentence type, etc.? Can we think this through some examples we all looked at today?
Things to consider:
- Adding extra information
- Keeping ideas closer together or further apart
- Playing with rhythm for engagement
- Forming explicit connections with words that signal things (e.g., while, next, however, whether)
- Emphasis
Next Time
-I gave comments on ALL rhetorical analysis second drafts. Please read them! I prioritized drafts for people who explicitly told me they would be revising again for a grade boost. If you were one of those people, you had comments back to you last week. Everyone else has comments as of this morning.
-I gave comments on ALL synthesis paragraphs last week. Please read it! It should help you for your research drafts.
-On December 4 by 11:59pm, your research drafts are due. We will do peer review letters in class like we always do. So bring a version of your completed draft, knowing that you can finish it later that day.
-This is a busy time. For many of you, it is your first time doing the “end of semester” thing at college. It is easy to put things off. Please don’t do that with your writing (for this class or any other). It can feel very overwhelming if you are rushing to get writing assignments done at the last minute. Sometimes that means submitting subpar work. I don’t want you to end up in that position. Last fall, I had to require a student to take an incomplete and continue working on their writing in December and January. You don’t want to do that!