Week 15/MWFDays 42-45; TRDays 29-30 –

December 5th to December 9th

Weekly Objectives

In the last week of classes, students will be wrapping up their work on A5 and A6. In addition to revising and refining their assignment, it’s often helpful to give students an opportunity to reflect on the work that they have completed this semester. You have quite a bit of flexibility with this week, but here are some of the things that you should try to accomplish.

  • Students will critically read examples of A5.
  • Students will participate in a peer-review for A5.
  • Students will reflect on their experience as a CO 150 student.
  • Students will prepare for their presentations.

Connection to Last Week:

  • Last week, students were introduced to a new unit and a new assignment. They were introduced to the genre of the Photo Essay, and they have begun to identify and analyze elements of visual rhetoric. In doing this, they have also been given the opportunity to practice rhetorical analysis, in order to prepare them for Assignment 5. A lot of information was covered, so it will be helpful to check in with students this week and clarify their questions or concerns. This week, they will continue to refine their understanding of rhetorical analysis by examining student examples. They will participate in a Peer Review, as well as reflect on their experience as a writer in this course.

Connection to Next Week:

  • Next week is Finals Week. While students will have turned in A5, they will be presenting their Photo Essay either on the last day of class or during the scheduled Final time slot. This presentation offers them the opportunity to share some of their hard work with their peers. Therefore, much of this week is about preparing students to be successful in their work on this assignment.

Suggested Activities:

CRITICALLY READ EXAMPLES/ READING WORKSHOP

As we have done with other assignments, it is helpful to have students critically consider examples of the assignment that they are working on. For this workshop, because Week 14 focused so heavily on the Photo Essay, it will be beneficial to shift focus to their rhetorical analysis. Last week, students had a chance to consider the requirements of Assignment 5. It might be helpful to make a strong example of the Rhetorical Analysis available to them, so that they can see what the genre looks like. Additionally, you will need to provide access to problematic examples of the rhetorical analysis. There should be several examples available on Canvas.

  • In order to prepare for this activity, students will have read the weak examples for homework, comparing the assignment to the rubric. They will be asked to annotate the examples, making note of where they student author is meeting the requirements of the assignment and where they are not.
  • Pair students up in class, and assign them one essay to work on. Give them 5 minutes to compare their ideas, and have them respond to the following prompt in paragraph form.
  • Discuss your findings with your partner and together compose a paragraph evaluating the author’s essay. This paragraph should discuss what you think the author has done well and where you feel that they could improve. As always, keep your audience (the student) in mind while you’re shaping your response.
  • Have each student share out their findings making note of some of the patterns that students see in the weak essays. Close by drawing a connection between the patterns that students are noticing and the revising that they will do during peer review.

PEER REVIEW

Although it is the last assignment of the semester, students should still have the opportunity to engage in the revision process. It might be worth reminding them of the important role peer review plays not only because it allows them to offer their peers feedback, but also because it helps them to see someone else’s writing and to consider how the advice they give to others also informs their own work. Even though we have practiced rhetorical analysis skills all semester, the rhetorical analysis paper is still a new writing genre, so feedback will be important.

  • Depending on how successful your workshops have been in the past and the feedback that you have received from your students. You might facilitate this as you have other workshops, or you might consider a new format. Here are some examples of different kinds of peer review:
  • Verbal Workshop: There is something to be said about having students talk through their ideas. Sometimes, this happens naturally in workshop, but not always. This could potentially work as a precursor to a regular workshopping session. One way to initiate this is to have students talk through their assignment with a peer. For this activity, get students into pairs and ask them to talk through the following questions:
  • What topic did you choose to research and write about? What is your claim?
  • What is your purpose?
  • Who is your audience? Why have you chosen this group as your audience?
  • What limitations did you face working in this genre?
  • Identify two rhetorical choices that you made in your Photo Essay. Describe each choice, fully and explain each choice will help you achieve your purpose for your audience.
  • As each person is discussing their ideas, their partner should be jotting down questions or suggestions for them. Once the person has talked through their points, their partner should share any feedback or questions. After this round, there should be time to reshuffle the partners, and have students engage in a more traditional peer review session.
  • At times students tend to offer comments that are vague or sparse; if you have noticed this pattern when looking at first drafts, you might consider giving students a list of more focused prompts to answer directly. Before having students engage in a more traditional peer review session, you might have them first focus on the big ideas of the paper and the hierarchy of rhetorical concerns, by answering the following questions about their peer’s rhetorical analysis.
  • What is the author’s claim?
  • What is their purpose?
  • Who is their intended audience? Why have they chosen this as their audience?
  • Consider the rhetorical devices that the author claims to use. For each device address the following:

What is the device?

How is it expressed in the author’s Photo Essay?

How does this choice help the author to achieve their purpose with their intended audience?

METACOGNITIVE ACTIVITY

In addition to the course surveys that students are asked to fill out, it is often a good idea to have students engage in metacognitive writing. This allows students to reflect on their learning this semester as well as offers you some feedback on your students’ experience and learning. There are several ways that you might administer this, but the easiest way is to present it as an in-class writing exercise or a Forum post.

  • The following Red Light/ Yellow Light/ Green Light prompts should help to give you a sense of what your students found helpful, what they found engaging, and what they found meaningful. These responses can work to better inform your planning and considerations for the following semester.
  • Have student respond to the following prompts:
  • Green Light: What activities this semester do you feel have been beneficial to your writing as a whole? Explain.
  • Yellow Light-: What activity do you feel could have been improved upon in terms of helping you develop as a writer? How would you change this activity to make it more helpful?
  • Red Light- What activity do you feel was not helpful to your development as a writer?
  • What aspects of this class have you enjoyed the most? What aspect of this class do you feel you’ll be able to relate the most directly to your own life?
  • Another option for this is having students reflect in the form of a letter by responding to the following prompt:
  • Write a letter to Future CO 150 students. Reflect on where you were at the beginning of the semester and share what you’ve learned with someone who will be in the exact same position. Consider your audience. Also, make sure to provide examples in your writing. If your advice is to not procrastinate, explain why and relate this to your own experience in the class. You might address the following points:
  • What tips do you suggest on how to do well in this course?
  • What tips do you have for adjusting to and succeeding in college?
  • What are some of the things that you have learned in this class?
  • How best could a future student meet these challenges?
  • If there is time, you might consider having each student share something meaningful that they learned this semester.
  • There are many other forms of Reflective Classroom Assessment. Take a look at the following link consider having students use Padlet themselves for a reflective exercise that captures their understanding of the course as a whole. A Padlet entry like this provides a document you can return to when providing insight into what students learned and where the course might be improved. The Comp Faculty will ask you to provide such insights whether gleaned from a Padlet exercise like this or from another metacognitive activity. Here are the questions on which Comp Faculty seek feedback to improve the course; of course, you can gain from this feedback, too, as you consider how you will improve your delivery in future semesters:

1) How will the Padlet feedback inform your own future practice in the classroom?

2) What are the students understanding about course content? Not understanding?

3) How could thisfeedback inform programmatic re-design?

No matter what form of reflective, metacognitive feedback you undertake, please do NOT grade your students on this activity!

PREPARE STUDENTS FOR ASSIGNMENT 6

In addition to turning in Assignment 5, at the end of the week, students will also be completing Assignment 6, a 5 minute presentation of their Photo Essay. This assignment is available on Canvas. Remind students that they should look at the presentation as a kind of text, which also has a specific purpose and a specific audience. In preparing students for this presentation, you should consider the following:

  • In scheduling these presentations, it might be a good idea to have students go in alphabetical order. The other alternative is to tell all students to be prepared to present on Friday, and to just draw names from a hat. Inevitably, some students will have to present on Friday and some will present during Finals week. All should be in attendance on both days.
  • Stay cognizant of time! Because of the time constraint, each presentation should be no longer than 5 minutes. Tell students that you will be timing them, and you will need to cut them off at 5 minutes.
  • Because of time constraints, you should have a system in place for transitioning from one presentation to the next. You might have students upload their PPT to Canvas beforehand, so that you can transition smoothly from one presentation to the next on your own laptop.
  • Tell students that the purpose of the presentation is to inform their peers about their topic and to engage their classmates with a multimodal presentation. Additionally, they should consider the needs of their classmates who comprise a clear and present audience. In what way might they engage their peers? How might they appeal to their classmates’ values?
  • Remind your students to carefully consider what information their classmates will need in order to understand their topic.
  • Be sure to remind your students to make eye contact with their audience and to speak in a clear and legible voice.

Suggested Homework Assignments:

  • Access the two weak examples of rhetorical analysis papers, posted to Canvas.

Critically read the papers, making notes and annotations as you go. Make note of where the author is meeting the requirements of the assignment and where they are not. Be sure to print them out and bring them with you to class– we’ll be using them for an in-class activity.

  • Prepare a draft of yourPhoto Essay & Rhetorical Analysis to be work-shopped in class. Please note the workshop policy from the syllabus. ForWednesday’s workshop, you must have at least a 2 page analysis, typed and double-spaced for it to be considered a “full” draft. You also need to have begun to work on your photos essay. You should have a minimum of 4 selected images.