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Assignments |
| GRADE BREAKDOWN | |||||||||||||||
| Writing Project 1 | 15% | Publication Presentation | 5 % | ||||||||||||
| Writing Project 2 | 40% | Self-Assessment (Final Exam) | 10% | ||||||||||||
| Attendance | 15% | Informal Work (including reading responses, JPMS reflections, weekly assessments & in-class activities) | 15% | ||||||||||||
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No matter what the assignment, handing it in on time is essential. Please follow assignment due dates. INFORMAL One particular skill I would like you to work on in your informal writings, as "strength-building" for your formal writing, is critical thinking. What I mean by this is that I want you to not just remember the events and characters we read about, but I also want you to think about how they connect to other books you may have read, people you have known, experiences you have had, and cultural events of the 20th and early 21st centuries. One concrete activity you will do this quarter to help you focus on thinking about the books will be to regularly write about your reading. The writing you do about the reading may be in the form of specific journal entries, for which I will ask you to respond to a specific question or address a particular topic that surfaces in the reading. Or it may be something you approach in class with a group of your classmates or on your own in an “on-the-spot” in-class writing. In any case, when you write about the reading, I want you to concentrate on an idea, event or concept the author writes about in that reading selection. Don’t simply summarize the reading; write what you think about it. Some of these informal writings will be done outside class, as homework, and some of them will be done in class. In addition to giving you practice in writing and thinking about the texts, these informal writings may also serve as resources for paper topics for your major writing assignments and/or for collaborative work with your classmates. Because of the variety of texts we will be working with, I don't want to limit this work to writing. There will be visual and oral components of class that factor in to this 15% as well. These could be PowerPoint presentations, discussion leading, or other activities that ask you to process what we are reading and discussing in non-written (or not exclusively written) ways. WRITING PROJECTS Due Dates: It is incredibly important to follow due dates
since each assignment builds on the previous one. Not completing assignments
on
time will prevent you from being able to effectively move forward in
your assignments; therefore, late assignments will not be accepted
unless we have negotiated prior to the due date. It is better to turn
in a draft you’re unhappy with than no draft at all. WRITING PROJECT ONE: (Three Options for this assignment: Literacy Autobiography, Community Literacy Narrative, or Community Literacy Practices) Write about group's/members' behaviors, rules, artifacts, language, and any other ways of communicating and/or interacting that are unique to that community. In addition to describing the ways members of the group (yourself included) act and communicate, you must also analyze the behavior to let readers know how being a literate member of the group "works." Use the questions below to help you begin thinking about how one is literate in the group or community and what is significant about that literacy.
Be sure that you focus your essay carefully--don't take so broad a focus that you are overwhelmed when creating the story of your experience. Community Literacy Narrative Describe the group's/members' behaviors, rules, artifacts, language, and any other ways of communicating and/or interacting that you have observed in that community. In addition to describing the ways members of the group act and communicate, you must also analyze the behavior to let readers know how being a literate member of the group "works." Use the questions below to help you begin thinking about how one is literate in the group or community and what is significant about that literacy.
Be sure that you focus your essay carefully--don't take so broad a focus that you are overwhelmed when creating the story of your experience. For this major writing assignment, you will be writing about a particular literacy practice and how it functions within different groups. You may be familiar with the term "literacy" as it relates to language use, but for the purposes of this assignment, think of literacy in the broad sense: to be literate is to be knowledgeable about and function capably within a particular culture or group. Select a literacy "behavior" or characteristic (see above lists and refer to lists from class discussion) and write about its presence in several different groups. Analyze how it works in each group, determining its importance to group membership and what it teaches group members about being a part of that group. What does it tell you about group values and membership?We will have three specific days in class during which you will share drafts of your essay and receive feedback from your peers. You will also get feedback from me and your Success Challenge tutor (during Week 5). The three in-class draft response days, below, are days on which you must bring a hard copy of your draft to class to share with classmates. Draft Due Dates: WRITING PROJECT TWO: Publication Project This project will be designed collaboratively and some of it will be written collaboratively. There are several introductory steps to the project. The first goal for the project is to select a group to work with and a topic for your publication. You may go about this in a couple different ways. You might select the group first, based on people you would like to work with, or you might first come up with several types of publications you are interested in designing and writing. Either way, negotiation and maybe compromise will be involved at this stage of the process. THE PROJECT
When thinking about group members--and guidelines once you have selected your group--you will want to consider individual members strengths and ways to contribute most effectively to the project, so this won't be important just at the "people" stage. THE PEOPLE There can be no more than 4 members in each group (that also may require negotiation within the whole class group to determine how to separate into publication groups). Think carefully about the advantages and disadvantages of group size (each individual will have the same number of "long" pieces to do, so general workload isn't affected by group size). Keep in mind, based on our conversation in class about writing, revising, and providing feedback:
The first part of the project, once you have decided on your group members and the type of publication you plan on doing, is to write up a description of your reading audience (community and characteristics) and write up a description of your vision for your publication. What will it include? How will it speak to your audience? One of the main criteria for evaluation of the project will be how clearly and effectively the concept is directed to a particular audience. Of course, the execution of the concept--the quality of the writing* and the use of graphics and layout to appeal to the particular audience--are very important. I just want to make it clear that knowing what audience your publication is directed toward and addressing that audience through language, content, and presentation is all important to the publication's success. * Language is, of course, an important way to reach an audience. Slang and/or "non-academic" language is acceptable in your publication. Do not think that means there is no need to edit and proofread the writing. There is a difference between sloppy, carelessly proofread and edited work and language (grammar included) that specifically appeals to a particular audience. You are responsible for spelling, grammar and punctuation, regardless of whether the pieces are written in formal, academic language or in informal language (even slang).
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