Summarizing

I apologize if you checked the blog earlier in the day and wondered what essay you had to write during class. That was an oops on my part -- I put the AP Lit blog on yours!

In Advanced Composition land, we added four more words of vocabulary and finished our discussion of college writing. Using the article, you produced your first summary, which we peer and teacher reviewed.

A successful summary encompasses seven items:
1. The original text is read twice -- or thoroughly annotated,
2. The author and title are in the first sentence,
3. The author is referred to multiple times in the paragraph.
4. There are no direct quotes are a plethora of specific examples.
5. There is no opinion -- be objective and stay in third person.
6. It is short -- usually one paragraph.
7. It ends with a concluding sentence that reaffirms the main idea and includes the author.

Make sure you read and annotate the Adjunct article for Monday's class. We will be using this in a similar fashion to the Sperber article. This article will help you see that there are many types of instructors in the college environment.

Annotating

After adding four new vocabulary words to our vernacular, we spent the hour talking about and doing annotation. As mentioned in class, annotation helps with notes, vocabulary understanding, furthering research, studying assistance, and overall reading comprehension of articles and texts for college. Annotation is not a one-fits-all skill. Each of you will focus on different elements in a text. In visualization, an annotated page features highlighting, or underlining, or circling to indicate key ideas and words. The margins will feature notes, thoughts, questions, and analysis.

For tomorrow's class, we will finish our discussion -- which was very well-started by our first 8 participants. Then, we will be working on summary writing.

Laptop Woes

Our first item of interest today: vocabulary, specifically the words replete, arable, ubiquitous, and equanimity. Tomorrow, we will add for more words to our vernacular, and we will check to see if you have retained your knowledge from today.

The remainder of the class centered on the first assessment: student to professor e-mails. By 11:00 a.m. on Thursday, August 18, you will need to send me three separate e-mails. The topics for these e-mails are asking a question, reporting an absence/requesting makeup work, and requesting a rec letter. Make sure to pay attention to the details -- mechanics -- so that you will not receive any deductions on your e-mail evaluation. 

For tomorrow's class, we will be working with annotation and summary writing. We will not need laptops tomorrow, so it should be a smooth ride for us.

First Day Housekeeping

Welcome to Advanced Composition. You have chosen to take a course that will challenge you to improve your introductions, construct theses, transition ideas, create original conclusions, correct mechanical distractions, and, in essence, fulfill your writing destiny as future college and career writers.

To give you more background of me, this is my fifteenth year of teaching. My first four years were at college level, the past eleven years at high school level, and my eighth year here at FZN. I have three collegiate degrees: BA in English, MA in English, and MA in Education. I have the fortune to teach AP and college-level English courses here, and my goal is to make you become the writer you could be, not the writer you should be. (Natalie Orf put that in a thank you note, and I realized that phrase truly encompasses my teaching philosophy in composition.

For today's class, we completed any necessary school information (lunches, tardies, food, etc.). Then, we looked over the syllabus so that you may see our upcoming units. As mentioned in class, we start with what many see as more simplistic levels of writing but are actually necessary components in communication - e-mails and summaries are necessary compositions for any collegiate student.

Next, we started our first unit of vocabulary experts. For your assigned word, you will be sharing the definition, two synonyms, and a memory trick for class. We will have four words for class tomorrow. Hence, homework tonight is prepping your vocabulary.

In our last moments, we started discussing student to professor e-mails. Reasons? Asking a question, reporting an absence, advising classes, gathering makeup work, asking for feedback/editing, turning stuff in, or requesting a rec letter. What mistakes can be made in e-mails? Lack of greeting, lack of capitalization, unspecified class, student, assignments, lack of spelling accuracy. I have a feeling there are a great deal more out there.

See you tomorrow for e-mail examples, suggestions, and writing your own -- hopefully without all the mistakes.

First Draft

As our research comes to an end, you will have the first draft completed by 3 p.m. on Monday. During class on Monday, you will have time to work on the essay. However, I will have 2 elements for you to do with the essay -- these elements involve your diction and verbs, little elements that may slide by in your haste to write the perfect first draft.

A Boring Blog

At current status, we are in research mode, which means not much is going on other than reading, note taking, and claiming. Today the first four sources and claim were due.

Organizing Arguments

During today's class, we created an outline for an argumentation essay on women in the military. The process, which you may use when constructing your actual essay, commences with brainstorming possible claims, selecting the claim that would have the most evidence or be easiest to argue, listing evidence, grouping similar evidence, and composing warrants for each evidence grouping. Phew! However, we were not finished with argumentation. Next up, you selected a counterclaim (which could be one of your brainstormed claims), incorporated evidence to support the counterclaim, composed a rebuttal statement with evidence, and finished off the writing with a concluding sentence.

For the remainder of class, we discussed your argumentation essay and the requirements for its completion. While we did not finish all the due dates and steps, you are more than welcome to start your source pages for the textbook essays.