How to blend personal story into academic paragraphs

Sometimes you will get a college assignment that allows or invites you to bring in personal perspective or personal story or personal example into the paper. When students do this, they often really do a great job telling the story, but then are at a loss on how to bring in academic support for their story. BUT, it is actually pretty easy (or at least it is doable, lol) to do this. Here are the steps:

1. Write up your personal story/anecdote/example
2. Now, ask yourself, "What concept is found in my story?" (sometimes there might be more than one concept, but pick one.)
3. Do a 3-4-5 that explores, explains the concept. DO NOT mention your story at this point. (No Names in 3-4-5's)
4. Now that you have your concept, look into your prompts, texts, readings to find support for the concept.
5. You are ready to build a Paragraph. You have a concept that you did a 3-4-5 for, you have 2 kinds of support for the concept --your personal story, and your quote support from the readings.
6. Write your paragraph!

Paper #4 ---RISK

For this last essay assignment, you are being invited to think again about the ideas/prompts that we explored this semester through the lens of "RISK."  As we said in class, what makes this essay different is that unlike the earlier papers where you were guided as to how to organize the paper, for this #4 essay you will be deciding for yourself how to organize it. What that really means is that you should come up with 4-5 "sections"  of the paper. A section should be substantial enough that you can then do Rule of 3 for each section. In that way you will generate 10-15 paragraphs. ( Of course, ALL the body paragraphs need to have 1-2 quotes--preferably 2!).

There are a number of different ways to come up with sections of an essay. One way is to generate questions, another is to do a Brainstorm that you then ReREAD in order to see what sections might be lurking there. You will be asked to integrate the main prompts we used this semester into this paper. BUT you should not organize the paper by each prompt. (In other words, you don't want to say "my first section of my paper is Bread Givers, my second section is Passion Project movie---don't organize the paper by prompts, instead organize by some concepts that you come up with.)

Your Homework that will be due next Monday (or Wednesday for the Wednesday night 1A):

1. Try to finish Into the Wild.
2. Create a detailed outline of your paper. It should have 4 or so sections, and each section should have 3 or so concepts.
3. Once you have created your outline, please write up 4-6 of your paragraphs, so that we can begin to see how your  paper is going.

The main prompts we used this semester: Bread Givers, Passion Movie , Why School, Into the Wild.

For this paper you should be sure to reference all 4 of these, with about half your references being from Into The Wild. You can also bring in other sources, either new ones that you find, or older ones we have used, for example, Andrade.

Good luck---remember, this paper is a chance for your to really go deep and personal about Risk, and to combine your personal feelings with academic analysis. Have  some fun with it!

Paper #3—“Education and the Outer Ring”

Paper #3—“Education and the Outer Ring”—McFarland—Chabot—Fall 2013

Be sure to read all of this post, so you have a full idea of what is going on. ALSO, at the bottom of the post are the different due dates and draft dates for your particular class. Be sure you check this.

Thanks for offering your ideas for the paper #3 both in class and in your HW and emails. I have tried to integrate your ideas into this assignment. You will see for this assignment you have 3 choices. You will pick one. If for some reason you don’t really feel interested in any of these choices, I will consider you coming up with your own assignment, but you will need to email me very soon so I can hear what you have in mind.

For this paper, you will be asked to build an argument/discussion in which you consider the concept of Education in light of what I am calling the “Outer Ring”. By Outer Ring I mean the world of nature/ecology/natural systems. (You can of course fold in discussion of the other rings: country, community, college, class---but the outer ring is the main focus of the essay.)

1.     Here is a claim: every aspect of planet Earth—its ecosystems, its species, its resources—is so badly damaged, so under duress, and it is so likely that things will only get worse--that the only moral and practical response from the point of view of education is that every discipline in every college should redesign their curriculum and teaching to address this global problem. Like how every one in the USA was focused on supporting the war effort in WWll, every one in education should have our planet’s fate at the front of their minds.

For this essay you will: Argue for or against this claim that content in every discipline in college should be significantly changed in order to begin to address this global problem. Your task is to generate reasons to support or to argue against this claim. If you plan to argue in favor of this claim, you will need to take into account that change is difficult in any system, including education, so you will want to discuss HOW these changes in education might occur. If you plan to argue against this claim, you should plan to argue how this planet can get fixed if education doesn’t play a significant role.

2. How concepts from the natural world can inform our educational system. This assignment asks you to research a concept or system or process in nature. You could start by looking into some core concepts/processes/systems in Ecology. Once you choose one that interests you, you will explain in some detail what it is. Then, you will discuss in detail how this concept or process or system can be used to offer a new or different way for educators to do their work in the classroom and/or larger college. You are building an analogy or a metaphor that offers educators a new and different way to think about their work. Explore and explain the metaphor/analogy deeply. If you are for example, talking about how trees work, perhaps consider picking a specific KIND of tree. A palm tree is very different than an oak or pine for example. Look deeply into the processes involved with trees (or whatever you pick) so that you can offer specific advice for educators. Don’t just say, for example, that trees need water. Try to talk about HOW it uses water; the idea is that the more specific your analogy is, the more specific the advice can be for the educators. Remember, for this assignment you discussing the concept or process or system not for its own sake, but so that it can be analogized from, in order to influence educational choices in the classroom and larger college.

3. Write about some problem in nature that you think needs to be more fully considered and addressed in college and why. This could be toxins in food, or the melting ice caps, or any problem in nature. For this assignment you will first lay out what the problem is. Then you will argue why this problem should be addressed in college—you need to say which disciplines in college need to address the problem. Try to think outside the box a little and  argue for disciplines in addition to the sciences.  Then—and this is the most important part of doing this assignment—you will create a few  real lesson plans for teachers that they can use to educate their students about the issue that you have picked. You must devise lesson plans if you choose this assignment.

Whichever one of these 3 you pick, you will see that you will want to do some research so that you can bring depth and detail and specificity to your paper. Be sure to cite your sources in your paper.

You must average a minimum of 1-2 short quotes per paragraph. You should include more than one quote per paragraph whenever possible. Quote length in a paper of this length should be no more than 1-2 lines. Remember that the video prompts you have watched are a great source of quote support.

The essay’s page requirement is 5-7 pages. You don’t need to do a really lonnnng paper, BUT if you end up doing so, that is fine too.

Paragraph topic sentences should start with concepts. Paragraph topic sentences should also feature KEYWORDS, which are taken from the questions/prompts that you have been exploring.

Keep RULE OF 3 in mind here. It will help you.

For the M/W classes, and for the Wed night 1A class, please bring 2 copies of your paper to the next class which will be next Wednesday Nov 13. You should write as much as you can. Try to generate 4 pages at least.

For the Monday night class, Please email your draft to me by next Tuesday, Nov 12^th. You should write as much as you can. Try to generate 4 pages at least. I will look at it and send comments back. That will allow you to make revisions so that you can bring 2 copies of your paper on Nov 18^th, which is the next time we meet.

For the M/W classes and for the Monday night class, the final draft of paper #3 is due on Monday, November 25^th.

For the Wed night class, the paper will be due via email by Tuesday, November 26^th. (We wont see each other on the 27^th b/c of the holiday.)

Best of Luck!!

Monday night class--prepping for paper 3, continued

hey there!

so in the previous post you have 3 HW type things to do and to post.....

meanwhile, it is reallllly important that you send to me by tomorrow night several paragraphs that lay out what you think you might like to do your paper on...

you can simply do a brainstorm about your ideas,
or you can say "here are some questions I Would like to discuss"
--the key I think is to write as much as you can, so I can get a sense of what you are thinking

THEN, by friday I will get back to you with what the essay #3 will be...i am not sure yet if we will all do the same thing (based on one of you coming up with the most killer idea), or if we will give you a few choices to decide from, or if we will make it a deal where we all do our own thing....

i will know better once i see your paras....

please email me  by wed nite...

smcfarland@chabotcollege.edu

by friday nite i will have the assignment posted....along with details about due dates, as well as having you send me a first version of your draft sometime next week....

Prepping for Paper #3

In preparation for doing paper #3, we have a few things we will be doing.

1. Watch Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard on Youtube. Here are a couple of question for you to write a 2-3 paras about: What do you think of her strategy of explaining things by analyzing "systems"? What implications does this kind of analysis have for us in higher education?
2. Check out Chris Jordan Photography. What implications does this kind of art have for us in higher education? (1-2 paras)
3. Find article or statistics that offer insight into the state of our planetary system. You can focus on a smaller system, like the Bay, or a river, or you can go big, and talk about Climate. Briefly summarize the article and give a link to it.

These 3 assignments above should be posted to your blog site. (you can do it as one post, or 3, it is up to you.)

Finally,so that we can get an idea of what to write about for paper #3, please:
type up a 2-3 paragraph discussion of what you think you might like to do an essay about, based on the discussion from today....This doesnt need to be posted to your blog. Instead, just print it and bring it to next class.

Home work for next week. for all the classes.....

Hey there, now that your papers are done, we are going to give you a chance to do some more reading.

In "Why School"  I would like you to read chapters 1 through 5. For each chapter, write up one/two paras of discussion response to what he is saying. You can pretend you are talking to Rose. What do you want to tell him after reading each chapter.

Please bring the book to class next week.

We will assign paper 3 next week, but you should check back on my blog on Friday. I will assign some more work at that time....

until then.....

Class cancelled tonight, Wed Oct 30th....!

Hey all, I have to cancel class for all the classes for today Wednesday, oct 30.

For the Monday/Wed classes, please bring your essays next Monday.

For the Wed night class, please bring it next week.

I will be posting the next Home work, etc, tonight....look for it tonight..thx

and sorry for the inconvenience....

No class Monday! (Oct 28th)--------

Hey all, sadly I have to cancel class for all the classes on Monday.

For the Monday/Wed classes, please bring your essays on Wednesday.


For the Monday night class, please bring it next week.

For the Monday night, I will post your HW for this week on Wednesday.....

(For the M/W classes, i will give you the HW on Wed, in class....)

HW for the Monday Night 1A class--due on Oct 21

Hey there! here is what is due for Mon Oct 21st.

1. So, please bring  2 typed copies of your first draft attempt at turning your posts into an essay type format. Please look at earlier posts I posted where I offered advice about how to go about creating this essay...there is a lot of good advice. If you like, you can email me your first draft BEFORE next Monday if you want me to check it out.

2. Please bring the Why School book to class.

3. Please finish watching the Darrick Smith video, and then write a post in response. (That will bring you up to 10 posts!)

For those of you doing rewrites on the Bread Givers essay, you can bring your rewrite next Monday the 21st if you want, and I will look it over....of course you can also email it to me to have me look at it.

HW for Wed Oct 16 for the M/W classes

Hey there! here is what is due for Wed, Oct 16.

1. So, please bring a typed copy of your first attempt at turning your posts into an essay type format.
(If you did it on Monday, and I said you were looking good, please bring it again anyway, so you can share it with others. You are welcome to continue to fix and shape it before tomorrow of course.)

2. Please bring the Why School book to class.

3. Please finish watching the Darrick Smith video, and then write a post in response.

What to bring to class next week----

Hey there, so I had originally said that this last Monday I was going to assign 3-4 more posts for you to do, bringing it up to 12. Let's hold off on that for a bit.  Instead what I would like you to do is to go through the posts you do have, (its 8 or 9 depending on which class you are), and begin to take your first attempt at creating your essay #2.

The first thing you should do is  to go back and read through and think about your posts—you may also want to re-look at the video prompts—and see if you can begin to shape a coherent discussion that links these different posts into a single essay that situates you inside of Education—what value does it have for you, what challenges do you face, what strategies do you employ. The paper as well will be exploring your POV about Education itself—its value, its challenges, its role in our society.

Part of your job is to begin to decide which writing should go first, which writing should follow after, etc.

As you begin to build this essay you will be drawing from 3 sources of writing: 1) the blog posts you have already created (of course you may well want to expand them and add to them)…2) any new writing you do to flesh out your ideas…3) transitional phrases and paragraphs you create to stitch together your paper’s flow/argument.



For your first day of class next week I would like you print out and bring your first attempt at doing the paper. Dont worry to much if it feels a bit choppy. Try to write and bring as much as you can!

For the M/W and Mon nite class, pls bring the draft on MONDAY, OCT 14

For the Wed nite class, pls bring it on WED, Oct 16.

Water Polo

No class on Monday or Wednesday--meanwhile enjoy this vid that shows some cool goals in  waterpolo.

On Monday the 7th, be looking for your next set of blog post assignments. Also, we will be very likely asking you to bring your first version of your paper the following week to class. SOOOO, its important you keep creating good rich posts so you can draw from them to start to build your essay...

Stay dry!

Monday night 1A--! please read this post... this is the #2 essay assignment

Hello Monday night 1A class. Below is the #2 paper essay assignment guidelines. You will see that all of the posts  you are being asked to do will be integrated into your paper. So it is really important that you do the blog assignments that I have been posting and will be posting. 

EDUCATION and SUCCESS ESSAY

For this paper, you will be asked to build an argument/discussion in which you consider your attitudes/philosophy in light of the concept of Education. You have been--and will be--exploring your point of view about Education in series of blog posts. Most of the posts have been in response to a written prompt or video, though some posts may be responses to a prompt that you came up with.

Now you will be asked to go back and read through and think about your posts—you may also want to re-look at the video prompts—and see if you can begin to shape a coherent discussion that links these different posts into a single essay that situates you inside of Education—what value does it have for you, what challenges do you face, what strategies do you employ. The paper as well will be exploring your POV about Education itself—its value, its challenges, its role in our society.

As you build this essay you will be drawing from 3 sources of writing: 1) the blog posts you have already created…2) new writing you do to flesh out your ideas…3) transitional phrases and paragraphs you create to stitch together your paper’s flow/argument.

You will want to really think about how you want to organize the paper. You will have a LOT of material to draw from if you have been doing all the posts and writing a lot inside each post.

You must integrate Mike Rose’s Why School? into this paper; quotes from the book need to be included in your paper, as well as a consideration of concepts that are found in the book.

You must average a minimum of 1-2 short quotes per paragraph. You should include more than one quote per paragraph whenever possible. Quote length in a paper of this length should be no more than 1-2 lines. Remember that the video prompts you have watched are a great source of quote support.

The essay’s page minimum is 6 full pages…(BNDJTM…)

Paragraph topic sentences should start with concepts. Paragraph topic sentences should also feature KEYWORDS, which are taken from the questions/prompts that you have been exploring.

For the Monday night 1A class, The paper is due October 28th. First draft is due Oct 21st.

(Of course, before the "first draft" date, you will very likely be bringing in and sharing paragraphs from your paper. That would happen on the 14th. Keep looking at my blog for news about that. )

Best of Luck!!

HW for M/W classes and for Monday night 1A class

Here are your next 3 assignments. (This will bring you up to 9 posts total. You will get 3 more next Monday.) 

a

1. For this assignment, please watch this video interview with Jeff Duncan Andrade. Please write a post in response to this interview. Here are some questions to consider (you don't need to do them all): 

What seems to be his philosophy of education? What do you think about his philosophy? Why is he such a badass lol? In what ways does this interview speak to or reflect your own experiences with education?

2. For this assignment you are asked to see if you can find your own video to embed and write a post about. The video should have some relationship to education. It can be explicitly about education, like the two videos above, or it can be a video that perhaps talks about education in a more symbolic or metaphorical way. (For example, one student picked a video of a person bungee jumping whose cord broke. The student wrote about how that could be a metaphor for education.) What ever video you pick, you should write a post that explains why you picked it and how it relates to education.

3. For this assignment you are asked to pick any two chapters from Why School? to read and write about. (Of course, don't pick 9 and 10--we already did those.) Once you read the chapters, you are asked to write a post that explores these questions: What seems to be the main ideas of each chapter? How does your personal educational experience relate to the content of the chapter? What is your opinion of the main ideas of each chapter? 

HW for the Wednesday night 1A class

Hey there, below are 4 assignments for you to do, and then to post to your blog. (I had said I would give you 3 assignments, but this way we can do 4 and then 4 more on Monday--to kind of balance out the work.)

1. For this post assignment, you are asked to first watch this video that was made by 2 students here at Chabot. The movie profiles 6 kinds of community college students. After watching it, please create a post on your own blog that is a response to the movie. Questions you can consider: Which kind of student do you consider yourself to be? How do you feel about being a ___________ kind of student? Do you want to change categories? How might you do so? How can we talk about where students are in their college experience without turning it into a kind of "blamegame?" What role or relationship does Passion play here?

2. For the second assignment you are asked to read chapters 9 and 10 in our text, Why School? (pages 117-137) One of the things Rose writes about is that there seems to be an impulse in Higher Education to "kick remediation off campus." Write a post in which you discuss whether or not you agree with this idea. (Remember to Rule of 3 this, bc it is a complex issue and you will want to dig into it.)

a

3. For your third assignment, please watch this video interview with Jeff Duncan Andrade. Please write a post in response to this interview. Here are some questions to consider (you don't need to do them all): 

What seems to be his philosophy of education? What do you think about his philosophy? Why is he such a badass lol? In what ways does this interview speak to or reflect your own experiences with education?

4. For this assignment you are asked to see if you can find your own video to embed and write a post about. The video should have some relationship to education. It can be explicitly about education, like the two videos above, or it can be a video that perhaps talks about education in a more symbolic or metaphorical way. (For example, one student picked a video of a person bungee jumping whose cord broke. The student wrote about how that could be a metaphor for education.) What ever video you pick, you should write a post that explains why you picked it and how it relates to education.

Paper #2—“Education and You”—McFarland—Chabot—Fall 2013

For this paper, you will be asked to build an argument/discussion in which you consider your attitudes/philosophy in light of the concept of Education. You have been--and will be--exploring your point of view about Education in series of blog posts. Most of the posts have been in response to a written prompt or video, though some posts may be responses to a prompt that you came up with.

Now you will be asked to go back and read through and think about your posts—you may also want to re-look at the video prompts—and see if you can begin to shape a coherent discussion that links these different posts into a single essay that situates you inside of Education—what value does it have for you, what challenges do you face, what strategies do you employ. The paper as well will be exploring your POV about Education itself—its value, its challenges, its role in our society.

As you build this essay you will be drawing from 3 sources of writing: 1) the blog posts you have already created…2) new writing you do to flesh out your ideas…3) transitional phrases and paragraphs you create to stitch together your paper’s flow/argument.

You will want to really think about how you want to organize the paper. You will have a LOT of material to draw from if you have been doing all the posts and writing a lot inside each post.

You must integrate Mike Rose’s Why School? into this paper; quotes from the book need to be included in your paper, as well as a consideration of concepts that are found in the book.

You must average a minimum of 1-2 short quotes per paragraph. You should include more than one quote per paragraph whenever possible. Quote length in a paper of this length should be no more than 1-2 lines. Remember that the video prompts you have watched are a great source of quote support.

The essay’s page minimum is 6 full pages…(BNDJTM…)

Paragraph topic sentences should start with concepts. Paragraph topic sentences should also feature KEYWORDS, which are taken from the questions/prompts that you have been exploring.

The paper is due _________. First draft is due _______ 
(Of course, before the "first draft" date, you will be bringing in and sharing paragraphs from your paper....)

Best of Luck!!

HW for M/W classes--due this Wed (Oct 2), posted to your blog site

For this post assignment, you are asked to first watch this video that was made by 2 students here at Chabot. The movie profiles 6 kinds of community college students. After watching it, please create a post on your own blog that is a response to the movie. Questions you can consider: Which kind of student do you consider yourself to be? How do you feel about being a ___________ kind of student? Do you want to change categories? How might you do so? How can we talk about where students are in their college experience without turning it into a kind of "blamegame?" What role or relationship does Passion play here?

For the second assignment you are asked to read chapters 9 and 10 in our text, Why School? (pages 117-137) One of the things Rose writes about is that there seems to be an impulse in Higher Education to "kick remediation off campus." Write a post in which you discuss whether or not you agree with this idea. (Remember to Rule of 3 this, bc it is a complex argument and you will want to look at it in some depth.)

Jeff Andrade Duncan on Education "I teach my neighbors' kids"

Homework for Mon and Wed night 1A classes AND for M/W classes

Chabot wants to adapt and changes its policies and practices to focus more on you, the student. A huge part of that process revolves around understanding who our students are and where they come from. It is important to hear your story. Use the following questions to tell it. You will be soon creating your own blog, and this will be your first post on it. SO, you should be sure to save your writing in a word doc so you can easily post it into your blog (after you create the blog.)

(All the HW below is due by the next class: For the Monday night and for the M/W classes that means Mon, Sept 30. For the Wed. night class that mean, Wed, Oct 2nd.) 

1. Create your blog. Here is how: Google "blogger" and go to that page. Either sign in (if you have gmail account) or sign up to Gmail. After you are in Blogger, you will find a screen that says "create a new blog." Follow the guidelines on this screen to create your own blog!
After you have your blog, you will want to start creating  posts. There are 4 homework assignments below; they should each be their own posts.
ALSO, once you create your blog,  please email to me your blog address. It should look something like this: http://seanchabot.blogspot.com       email it to smcfarland (at) chabotcollege.edu

Good luck with all this!!

2. How do you define success? (Try Rule of 3.) (post this to your blog!)

3. What helps you succeed in your community? What prevents your success?
You can use the following list to get started, but if an important part of your life is not represented here please incorporate it into your response.
1. Family
2. Religion/Culture
3. Crime
4. Hunger
5. Transportation
6. Personal
7. Money
(post this to your blog!)

4. Please Watch: "Surfacing With a Dream" ----Please address this question: Should community colleges support ESL students to reach their goals IF the goals dont seem to align with the mission of the community college. (For example: some students in the movie want to learn English to be able to talk to their child's school teacher. That is not really part of the mission of the typical college.)
(post this to your blog!)

5. After watching "The Passion Project," please write a response. Please "go deep" with your response. Here are 2 questions to consider: How does this movie speak to you? What role do you think passion should play in education, especially in the classroom?  Try to Rule of 3 these questions...and for sure you should quote from the movie as you write your post. The full transcript will help you do that.
(post this to your blog!)

Education and Success

Chabot wants to adapt and changes its policies and practices to focus more on you, the student. A huge part of that process revolves around understanding who our students are and where they come from. It is important to hear your story. Use the following questions to tell it. You will be soon creating your own blog, and this will be your first post on it. SO, you should be sure to save your writing in a word doc so you can easily post it into your blog (after you create the blog.)


1. How do you define success? (Try Rule of 3.)

2. What helps you succeed in your community? What prevents your success?
You can use the following list to get started, but if an important part of your life is not represented here please incorporate it into your response.
1. Family
2. Religion/Culture
3. Crime
4. Hunger
5. Transportation
6. Personal
7. Money

3. Please Watch: "Surfacing With a Dream" ----Please address this question: Should community colleges support ESL students to reach their goals IF the goals dont seem to align with the mission of the community college. (For example: some students in the movie want to learn English to be able to talk to their child's school teacher. That is not really part of the mission of the typical college.)


This will be due on Wed, for the M/W classes.
For the once a week classes, this will be due next week.

HW due on Monday Sept 9 (this is for the M/W classes and WED night class

Hey there,


This HW is due Monday for the M/W classes
and of course for the Wed night class you'll turn it in Wed...

1. A lot of you decided to revisit your interviews and see if you can push them a bit....making them longer, asking more questions, and trying to generate more specific concepts....I think doing this is a good idea, and I hope you try it again if you are not quite satisfied with your first attempts. You can also go talk with brand new people if you want as you work to go deeper with your interviews.

2. You should bring 6 typed paras to class--these should be hard copy or on a computer that you bring...these are body paras, and you are answering the questions on the essay assignment. You should for sure try following the template that we went over last week. You can answer any of the 5 questions that you want as you create your 6 paras.

(3. Just a heads up, you should have the entire Bread Givers book done being read by Wednesday of this week.)

HW for M/W 1A and 102 classes AND HW for Wed night 1A

So, of course there is no class next Monday, so the HW below is due on Wednesday Sept. 4.

Reading: Please read up thru Book II in Bread Givers. (thru ch. 16)

Interviewing: You should bring to class your typed up interviews that you did with 3 immigrants.
To prepare for the interviews you should go to this link and read through the advice about how to do interviews and how to prepare for interviews.       Tips for interviewing!

As we discussed in class, below is an approach for developing good interview questions:
You need to come up with concepts that you can explore in the interviews, but where will you get your concepts from? Well, one trick is to start with what you know. There are several places from which you can come up with concepts:

• Bread Givers has lots of concepts that can be inferred from the episodes in the story
• Check your class notes
• Consider your own experiences
• Look to other classes you may have had that explore these issues
• Do some research on Internet

Once you have some promising concepts, you should do a Rule of 3 on them to make sure they are not too big or general. Once you have developed these "right-sized" concepts, you are ready to start turning them into interview questions. Remember to avoid "Yes/No" style questions. Good luck with the interviews, and do not forget to check out this link!  Tips for interviewing!

Homework for M/W classes AND for the Monday night 1A

HW due Wed Aug 28: (This is for the M/W classes....)

Read: Finish up through at least Chapter 9 in Bread Givers.
Write: pls respond to this question--What are 2 struggles that women today face that are similar to what Sara faced in the book? (Type it and do a Paragraph for each.

Below are two links....one is to a discussion of Rule of 3...the other is to a discussion of how to build effective academic paragraphs...you should read them both...

Link: Rule of 3!

Link: Building academic paragraphs!

HW assignments for the Monday night 1A class:

We don't have class next week, so the assignments below are due Sept 9.

1. Finish reading Bread Givers

2. You should finish your interviews of immigrants. Here is a link to some advice for how best to prepare for and conduct an interview. You will find it VERY helpful, so you should read it!
  
      Tips for interviewing!

3. Write 6 paragraphs as your first response to the essay assignment. (You can pick any of the questions to answer; you should eventually try to come up with 3 answers--that is 3 diff paragraphs that address 3 diff concepts--for each question.

Below are two links....one is to a discussion of Rule of 3...the other is to a discussion of how to build effective academic paragraphs...you should read them both...

Link: Rule of 3!

Link: Building academic paragraphs!

http://practices.accelerationincontext.net/2011/09/17/rule-of-3-and-creating-academic-paragraphs/

HW for Breadgivers

Here is your HW due next week:

Get the Bread Givers book. (get all the books) Start reading, and pls read up through chapter 8.
Writing Prompt: Discuss 2 tensions that Sara as an individual has with her larger family unit. (type this--figure 1-2 paragraphs of discussion for each tension.)
Visit: Tenement Museum website--cruise around on it and write 2 paragraph discussion of what you think of it
Research: What was the Triangle Shirt Fire? Why is it important in US history? (2-3 paras discussion.) Use your own sentences to write these paragraphs.

Type all the HW and pls bring hard copies next week. 

SOME LAST MINUTE GUIDELINES FOR THE FINAL PAPER

Below are some guidelines we offered in class for shaping up your final papers:

• Do 3 para intro--For the "BooK": Into the Wild, but maybe also Passion project. 
Cook is crucial….For hook you could perhaps choose something that you wrote that  you like that perhaps doesn’t fit into your paper's flow. 

• Paper is due Monday august 12 by 5pm. 
Remember it should also be posted to your site, with “pretty stuff” –links etc,--built into the posted version of your paper---

• “Rule of 3 is the shit”  says Monique—it forces transitions…it pulls more ideas out of you, it works!

• As for quotes…try 2 per para as much as possible….also , remember there are LOTS of poss quotes…inside the many prompts we have---

• Don’t start paras with prompts….no names of prompts in the the 3-4-5 (Dont start a para with a reference to "Into the Wild" for ex. Instead, start off a good 3-4-5 that elaborates on some concept that is FOUND or SUGGESTED BY your prompt, (in this case "Into the Wild") and THEN bring in the prompt as a quote. 

• This idea came from Elliot in the 7 class: Read the paper, see what it is trying to tell you…(overall)---what is the paper about, what is its “feel”—(not really talking about COOK here…)…this FEEL, once you have identified it, can serve to help shape the movement of the paper…you can add aspect of this IDEA/FEEL  to your end of para commentaries for example.

• Make the transition paras big as possible so that you dont have a look of 3 big old paras (for a Rule of 3) followed by a little para. 

HW for this weekend --

1. On Tuesday, pls bring a draft of your paper. Pull your posts into a Word doc, and shape it/organize it as you see fit. Be thinking about what thesis is emerging in all of your writing. Once you see that, that will help guide you about what new writing you need to do to flesh out your paper.

2. Please do a post that addresses these two questions: should a student in the Passion class be asked to critique Education? Should a student in a passion class be asked to look into themselves?

Last Paper--guidelines and due dates, etc.

English—Last Formal Essay —McFarland—Summer—2013

For this final paper, you will be asked to build an argument/discussion in which you consider your attitudes/philosophy in light of the concept of Education. You have had a chance to explore your point of view about Education in series of blog posts. Most of the posts have been in response to a written prompt or video, though some posts are a response to a prompt that you came up with.

Now you are being asked to go back and read through and think about your posts—you may also want to re-look at the video prompts—and see if you can begin to shape a coherent discussion that links these different posts into a single essay that situates you inside of Education—what value does it have for you, what challenges do you face, what strategies do you employ. The paper as well will be exploring your POV about Education itself—its value, its challenges, its role in our society.

As you build this essay you will be drawing from 3 sources of writing: 1) the blog posts you have already created…2) new writing you do to flesh out your thesis…3) transitional phrases and paragraphs you create to stitch together your paper’s flow/argument.

You will want to really think about how you want to organize the paper. You have a LOT of material to draw from if you have been doing all the posts and writing a lot inside each post.

You must integrate Into The Wild into this paper; quotes from the book need to be included in your paper, as well as a consideration of concepts that are found in the book.

You must average a minimum of 3 short quotes per page. You should include more than one quote per paragraph whenever possible. Quote length in a paper of this length should be no more than 1-2 lines. Remember that the video prompts you have watched are a great source of quote support.

The essay’s page minimum is 7 full pages…(BNDJTM…)

Paragraph topic sentences should start with concepts. Paragraph topic sentences should also feature KEYWORDS, which are taken from the questions/prompts that you have been exploring.

The paper is due Monday, August 12th. First draft is due August 7th.  Best of Luck!!

You will be emailing me the paper in a Word doc format. It should look like a regular essay:

smcfarland@chabotcollege.edu

mcsean10@hotmail.com

Send paper to both addresses—attach the paper but also copy and paste it into the body of each email,,,just in case the attachments don’t open. Thx!

You should also put your paper in a post in your blog. (It should be posted the same day the final paper is due to me via email.) Doing this will give you a lot of freedom to really bring the paper to life. You can have words or phrases in the paper be linked to some place on the Internet. For example, you can be talking about Chris McCandless and link to a picture of him. You can link to education statistics or charts, or to videos that relate to your point you are making. You can link to an article that you pulled a quote from. You can divide up sections of the paper with pictures/quotes/etc. There are limitless possibilities.

You will get three grades on the final paper.

1. Content 2. Grammar 3. Blog post presentation