Wednesday, April 27, 2011

 

Cyber-Assignment

Today we looked at Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank. See http://www.pbs.org/opb/thenewheroes/meet/yunus.html

We watched the New Heroes segment on his life and then developed introductory paragraphs. We looked at inductive and deductive forms of reasoning and came to the conclusion that if we took the premise: Credit is a human right as a thesis, and stated that women are human beings therefore women deserve credit.

The deductive argument form is a syllogism: major premise, minor premise and conclusion.

Post your 4 paragraph-essay here. Each paragraph can be five sentences long.

We began class with a writing workshop where students were able to focus on assignments they were behind on, such as essay exams (Jackie you took the exam home. If a student doesn't complete the exam, he should leave it with me.)

Matt and Julien worked in Pidd on parallel structure templates. They then completed the Parallel Structure Quiz. To make it interesting, we also corrected the errors. Both students did well.

The lecture today was on deductive and inductive reasoning. We talked about logic and thinking and came to the conclusion that argumentative writing has to do with logical or reasonable thinking on a topic.

There are three types of claims or arguments: claims of fact, claims of value and claims of policy. The Grammen Bank example is a claim of policy, because Muhammad Yunus completely changed the way financial institutions look at credit and loans.

Many students are behind, who need to catch up. The problem is the students who are turning essays in late are not writing passing essay, which means they then have to revise the essay again.

The social entrepreneur essay is the final essay. The planning sheet and outline was due today. It is due next week. Bring it to class Wednesday, along with a completed introductory paragraph. Only one student presented his book essay and that was Matt. The plan was for students to present their essays on Monday, but only two students were in class, Kimber and Matt. Try not to miss anymore classes.

Monday, April 11, 2011

 

Cyber-Assignment

Today we worked on revising essays, the Half the Sky essays. Homework is to complete the revisions and turn them in electronically with the correction essay or narrative (students have their instructions) by Wednesday, start of class.

We will complete the SPHE Essay Exam 2 or Possessives, for those who have not. for those who have, we will complete the Parallel Structure essay. We will also complete another peer review on the Book Report essay.

Students who turned their HTS in late and those who are on their third revision have to do the correction essay as well. Everything is due Wednesday, April 13, 2011.

We watched Revision Strategies. Students are to post a reflection on what they learned about revision from the film that he or she didn't know before. Also, students are to note what aspects of the revision process were reinforced, that is, the student just needed a reminder of a skill he or she might have stopped using.

Students should not be making any MLA errors in the in-text citations or works cited. There is no excuse for an essay with mi spelled words or any of the errors we have covered in SPHE.

The idea behind Pidd is that students can catch and correct their errors because they have learned to identify errors in Pidd essays.

Wednesday, April 06, 2011

 
We made a bit of progress in class today, several students--half, (only six showed up) were able to complete the Possessives Essay: Essay Exam 2. These three students also completed the Possessives Quiz. We then watched another video about social entrepreneurs, this time, young people in Cuba, who volunteered 50 years ago to teach their country men and women to read and write. This national literacy campaign is explored in the new film, Maestra (Teacher), directed by Catherine Murphy. Visit www.maestrathefilm.org

Some students, those who were behind, also left early, before 2 PM. One student came late and left after half an hour.

The book report essay is due Monday, April 11, 2011. We will meet in A-205. Bring the essay electronically. Presentations are due on Wednesday, April 13, 2011. I will be participating in a poetry reading on Wednesday afternoon. I think at 12:00 noon in the COA Library. Come over if you are on campus (smile).

This weekend The Northern California Book Awards is Sunday, April 10, 2011, 1:00 to 2:30 PM (Awards), 2:30-4 PM is the Book Signing, at the San Francisco Main Library, Koret Auditorium in San Francisco. It is free. Tanim Ansary, Afghan American writer, lecturer, editor, and teacher receives the Fred Cody Lifetime Achievement Award.

Another note is the Special Recognition Award for Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry.

If you go and write something about it, you can get extra credit.

Catch up. We only have two essays: Parallel Structure and Subject Verb Agreement left in Pidd. The Social Entrepreneur essay and the portfolio wrap up the rest of the class (smile). The finish line is near.

Some students haven't turned in Half the Sky. If said student was absent today and hasn't spoken to me, drop the class. I received a Half the Sky essay Monday and the student was absent today. The essay received a failing grade.

You cannot turn two essays in at the same time. You cannot revise two big essays at The same time. If you turn in a late essay, it needs to get a passing grade the first time. You have no time to revise. That opportunity is gone, which means if you have a failing grade on any of the big essays: Half the Sky, Book Report or Social Entrepreneur, you fail the class.

I am getting 2-3 Pidd essays at once. I am not taking Half the Sky and the Book Report essay at the same time.

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