Tuesday, November 29, 2011

 

Arthur's Comrade Dies in the Line of Duty

Today, Arthur made an annoucement about the recent deaths of three soldiers, two who trained with him who were killed in Afghanistan two months ago and a recent casulty just last week. He is collecting donations from students who'd like to help.

The young soldier was just 19, recently graduating from high school.

DANVILLE -- Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Joshua Corral, of Danville, killed Friday during combat operations in Afghanistan, will be honored Saturday night at a public memorial.

The San Ramon Valley High School Leadership program is sponsoring the tribute to Joshua "Chachi" Corral at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the school's football stadium, 140 Love Lane. The event is open to the public.

Corral, 19, graduated from San Ramon Valley High in 2010. A funeral has yet to be scheduled.

Corral's body will arrive Monday morning at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield. The Warriors' Watch Riders will escort the family to the base and will escort them and Corral's body home to Contra Costa County.

According to the Marine Corps, Corral died while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force from Twentynine Palms.
A memorial fund has been set up at Bank of the West. Donations should be sent to "Memorial Fund in memory of Joshua Corral," Account #25916759, Bank of the West, 307 Diablo Road, Danville, CA

 
For the essay, include the following:

The Social Entrepreneur essay is due Wednesday-Thursday, Nov. 30-Dec. 1. Presentations are Wednesday-Thursday as well.

FINAL DRAFT OF ESSAY

PLANNING: INITIAL PLANNING SHEET (TYPED) & OUTLINE

5 SOURCES IN MLA

PEER REVIEW (TYPED)

Abstract for presentation

CYBER-ASSIGNMENTS WHICH INCLUDE: FRONTLINE WORLD AND MUHAMMAD YUNUS ASSIGNMENTS

 
Post your abstract for the Social Entrepreneur Essay here. We will present our essays on Thursday. The essay is due by then as well. Presentations will be 3-5 minutes long.

The abstract should answer the questions posed in the Frontline World Assignment.

Monday, November 28, 2011

 
Social Entrepreneur Essays

Today in class I read student Social Entrepreneur essays. I am pleased to say, all the essays I read received passing grades. Students were told what to do to improve them. Some essays were too short. The reason why I want to see these essays is so that I can let students know if they are passing the course. If you cannot write a passing essay, you will not pass the course, and I can drop students up to Nov. 30.

Organization
Follow the outline I gave you. If you answer the questions, you have an essay. A few writers did not give examples of the people served by the business, nor did most of the essays give a detailed analysis on why the person felt compelled to do what they are doing.

Sample Essays
Markese does a good job in answering this question about his social entrepreneur.

Survey Essay
While I was reading students continued writing or started the Stewart Pidd Hates English survey essay. This essay in first person looks at the semester long SPHE experience. Manuel has a really great introduction for those who need a model to start.

Revisions

I also looked at a few revisions of the Grammar Exam correction essay/evaluation. Students are not reading these essays aloud, so there are lots od errors one could catch if he or she proof read the essay.

For the revisions of the essays on Hip Hop culture, the same was true for the essay I read. 1. The student didn't go deep enough, and 2. the student didn't give any examples to support his claims.

Note: Students are also using contractions in their scholarly essays. Stop.

Presentations

Tomorrow we will continue writing the Pidd Survey essays and complete the SE essay, write an abstract and get ready for presentations Wednesday and Thursday. The presentation is optional.

Do not waste our time. Make sure if the person is an artist, bring in work for us to see. If they are a musician, we want to hear a part of a song. Also give us the lyrics.

Bring in CDs and DVDs and VHS tapes, books, magazines, films, etc. You will have 3-5 minutes to present. Afterward there will be a cyber-assignment, self-reflection and student feedback. This will go into your portfolio.

Errors
Some students had so many errors on their first drafts, I suggested they identify the errors and let me see the draft before they start on revision. You grade drops for all the errors which we covered this semester, so pay attention and submit your best work. Some students are making the same mistakes over and over again.

Make a list of these errors and check your final draft for them.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

 

Winding Down

Today in class students worked on revisions. Those students who missed the second grammar exam yesterday completed it today. I shared Corazon's introductions to her SPHE overview essay and her social entrepreneur essay.

Tomorrow we will hear from students who have done great work on the essays we have been working on for the past month: "Hip Hop Beyond Beats and Rhymes" and "Afeni Shakur: Destiny or Choice; Nature vs. Nurture." The students I called on are: Michael and Aman. Other students can share as well.

Social Entrepreneur Presentations

Practice your presentations in advance. Bring in abstracts for your audience. If you need copies, you can use the mail room. Get the copies in advance. An abstract is a short summary of your key ideas and argument. We will use the abstract to comment on the presentation.

An entrepreneur is a business person.

Related Cyber-Assignment due immediately
A follow-up cyber-assignment will be a self-reflection on the presentation: what did you learn, what did you like most about the process, what would you change?

Students will also give a positive and constructive response to each student presentation: content, delivery, anything else you want to share. You will include these assignments as part of the SE portfolio when turning in the essay electronically to me. Start grabbing the cyber-assignments now.

Homework

Complete the SE essay. Revise essays, work on revisions. If you have essays without final grades, that is: C, B, A. Get the revisions in. All revisions at this point need a essay narrative in third person. Write it like you wrote the Pidd essays.

If you want to identify the errors and check them off with me first, before writing the essay, that is fine. If the correction essay is not correct, you will have to revise it.

Stewart Pidd Final Essay

Yesterday, I wrote a sample introduction for the SPHE essay which looks at the entire book and its content. Some students used this for their grammar exams evaluative essay. This is okay. You can combine this essay with the review of the entire book and its content.

Monday, November 14, 2011

 
1. Identify and answer the questions posed for the Frontline World assignment re: Muhammad Yunus. Use the article from Ode magazine to find the answers.

2. Grammar Exam 1. We corrected GE1. Students are to write an essay evaluating the exam (in third person) and advise the writer how to proceed in his or her studies based on the score.

We divided the exam into sections giving each a score of how many correct out of the total possible correct. Students then gave a grand total of how many correct out of 50 possible.

The essay is due attached to the exam in the morning. Print a copy for me.

3. Three part Thesis (handout)

For the Social entrepreneur essay assignment students are to use this type of thesis sentence. We practiced using Muhammad Yunus as an example. On the back of the sheet is an outline. Use this for the outline of your essay. We will practice in class tomorrow.

Bring in the SV AGR essay from Pidd tomorrow, printed out. We will review it and take Grammar Exam 2. We will also talk about the evaluative Pidd essay for the semester.

4. Some students asked about the Book Report Essay. This essay is optional, however, if there is a book written about your SE and you would like to write a separate essay about the book let me know. This essay is not a summary of the book. Students need to have a thesis, so check-in with me before writing it.

5. For students who did not complete Grammar Exam 1, you cannot write the essay. If you were not here today, you cannot write the essay tonight. I did correct the essays of students who were not here.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

 
Today in class we spent the entire time looking at how the Ode Magazine authors use signal phrases in the first article on innovative ideas and innovators like Muhammad Yunus, "Turning Poverty into Peace: What the Nobel Prize means to Muhammad Yunus--and how it shows the way new ideas come into the world" (Kamp and Visscher 43-44).

The second article is an interview with Muhammad Yunus, thus the quotes. The entire article is in his words. Does Yunus agree with the authors' preface?

Students first identified 10 signal phrases. many students didn't remember what signal phrases are: See SPHE pp. 330-332, 335-376. We will review the exercises on Thursday or Monday-Tuesday (8-9 AM) class.

Homework is to work on the SE essay. I don't understand why students don't understand that they need to read the articles they found on their entrepreneur, watch the films, read the book(s).

How can you write an essay about a person or on a topic if you do not know anything about the topic? How do you learn about a topic? Research isn't an activity, one does research to learn more about a topic, in this case the topic is Social Entrepreneurship.

After you have reviewed the five sources, see if you can answer the questions for the assignment (the same questions posed in the Frontline World assignment). If you cannot answer all the questions, then do more research to find the answers.

Students are turning in drafts. Bring in your best work for peer response.

Cyber-Assignment

Post your 3-5 sentences using the article or interview to support the following claim or thesis:

Ideas are more powerful than the most sophisticated weapons of mass destruction. Innovative ideas are even more powerful, because these new thoughts are the premise of industries that not only change lives, they change the world.

Example of sentences that support the thesis using evidence from the article. One is a direct quote. The other is a paraphrase.

1. In the Ode 2006 article "Turning Poverty into Peace: What the Nobel Prize means to Muhammad Yunus--and how it shows the way new ideas come into the world," journalists Kamp and Visscher, use the compelling story of 2005 Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus to illustrate the movement or development of innovative ideas, in Yunus's case: microcredit. They state: "Microcredit, [the system Yunus devised to lend money to the poorest entrepreneurs or business persons] has simply gone through the stages that every innovative idea undergoes: first it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and third it is accepted and embraced as self-evident" (43).

2. The idea journey is wrought with peril, and often the prize is not within view, yet, the innovator continues on often laboring in the dark or out of the limelight, because he or she believes in the vision and doesn't mind if there are naysayers who don't; I guess as long as these opponents don't effect the venture's bottomline. In such cases, one has to respond as was the case with the Wall Street Journal article in 2001 which criticized Muhammad Yunus's Grameen Bank (43).

Tuesday, November 08, 2011

 

Cyber-Assignment

Today in the early class we read the first essay in the package on Muhammad Yunus. We identified the topic and talked about the thesis. We never articulated it. In a short essay response, (250 words) analyze the article. Talk about its premise. We said it was about innovation and innovators, like Muhammad Yunus.

Talk about the evidence the writers use and its effectiveness. Discuss the ease with which the writers use signal phrases to connect ideas and let us know more about their experts highlighted in examples.

Look at the organization of the essay. How does it start? How do you know when it is ending? What are some of the clues?

Look at the writer's style. Talk about the kind of examples they use. How Muhammad Yunus is referred to again and again and how specifically the writers bring him back into the discussion without jumping or losing the continual reference to innovation and innovators.

What do you like about the piece and how it is written? How will you use this article to help strengthen your own writing style?

This assignment is different from the previous one where students are asked to summarize the articles (2).

Tuesday, November 01, 2011

 

Revision Strategies

Today students watched the video "Revision Strategies." Post your three (3) paragraph essay response to the program.

To site the video write:

The Write Course: Revision Strategies. Anneberg Learner. Videocassette.

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