Many of you offered some good tips, for everyone to improve his or her performance, and you pointed to some viable areas to work on. Also, from your responses, I learned that I, too, can help with things I need to work on, so this was productive, I think, for all of us!
Helpful suggestions: Frequent writing (a nice part of the hybrid course); exchange of ideas with group members; annotating sources (thanks, Radia!); using the quizzes as starting points for the discussion.
Things you can work on: using college preparation as a way of working out how to balance your school work and your personal life (thanks, Chi!); speaking up in class (and as Mel suggests, one can “practice” a response in a blog, to help prepare you to respond in class) and trying to get yourself to speak up more will actually help to improve your confidence level when speaking in front of others; looking more deeply into the text; focusing more on specific pieces of text, as this will help you grasp more deeply; writing with more intent and more concisely; if you’re confused, think about how you feel, and note an emotional response (thanks, Mel!); relaxing during free-writing (it’s free, after all). Also, free-writing can also be looked at as brainstorming, so I think you’re doing the right thing, Chi, and as Myra says, don’t think too much about what you’re writing, just go with your ideas; working on pre-writing exercises (take the essay in steps); being more open to group work; working on the structure of the paragraph (it is, after all, the bones of the essay).
Things I need to work on: Giving everyone more time for free-writing. Perhaps I’ll try giving you some time for writing, then giving you time for reflecting, then for writing again? We can talk about this. . Something I’d like to try with you is called a “silent dialogue.” Also, I want to start devoting more time to our circle (we always seem to be running out of time, so that’s something I need to work on).