For Thursday, February 28th

Please remember to post the rough draft of your personal narrative essay to the discussion forum (titled, Personal Narrative--Rough Drafts) by 2:00pm on Thursday. You and a partner will read each other's draft and address at least five questions (at least 250 words) from the Personal Narrative Questions for Consideration document, posted to the Content Section of D2L. Make sure to focus on providing each other with constructive feedback, elaborating on the advice and suggestions you're offering to your partner. Since we will not be meeting in person on Thursday, this feedback needs to be posted in reply to your partner's draft by 11:59pm.

If you have any questions about the questions for consideration, the assignment, or the due dates for Thursday, please feel free to email me. I will be providing everyone with audio feedback for their rough drafts, in preparation for the final version of this paper. Please reference the Personal Narrative Assignment Sheet for additional details and grading criteria.

Personal Narrative Drafts

In case you missed class this past Thursday, please check the Content section of D2L for the Personal Narrative assignment sheet. It has all of the submission details and due dates listed on it. (FYI: the first draft is due Thursday, February 28th.) If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. This weekend, I will be setting up the discussion forum for the workshop.

Reading for Thursday and Extra Credit

For this Thursday's class (2/21), please read the essay, "Shitty First Drafts." This can be found under the Content section of D2L. We will highlight the key points of the essay before continuing to work on the blog post about tragedy. 

If you are interested in an Extra Credit opportunity, then please consider attending one of the Good Thunder events this Thursday. The craft talk will take place from 3:00pm - 3:50pm in Ostrander Auditorium, and the reading will be at 7:30pm in CSU 253. If you go to either event, please take notes and report your observations, thoughts, and/or questions about the material presented in a blog post.

This extra credit assignment will need to be posted prior to next Tuesday's class (2/26), and it should be at least 200 words in order to get credit for it. Remember to identify the writers by name and any of the work they read from. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Reading for Tuesday, February 19th

I have posted an essay by Jo Ann Beard to the Content section of D2L titled, "The Fourth State of Matter." Please read this piece before class, in preparation for our discussion. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Class this Thursday, February 14th

We will not be meeting in person tomorrow. Instead, we will be workshopping each other's very rough drafts that we started on Tuesday. Please have the narrative (about two pages) about a time that represents the concept of truth posted to the D2L discussion board (titled "Truth" Drafts) by 2pm tomorrow. 

Like the last time we had an online workshop, you will need to reply to each member of your discussion group with 5-7 sentences of feedback (questions on details, suggestions for improvement/clarity, points of contention, etc.) by midnight tomorrow. If you have any questions, please feel free to email: daniel.dewolf@mnsu.edu. I will update D2L tomorrow with a reading assignment for Tuesday.

Narrative Writing Prompts

The first writing prompt for this unit is to tell the story of your experience with a horrible teacher or boss. After you have zeroed in on one person/event, write a scene that best exemplifies the situation and proves the point you are trying to make about him/her, as well as yourself.

The second writing prompt for this unit is to tell a story from your life that exemplifies truth. This is a broad and general prompt, but I want to see in which direction you take this idea. Are you going to simply tell a story that actually happened, or are you going to tell a story that you don't remember well but has been a poignant moment in your life, told to you by the people who raised you?

For Thursday, February 14th, I would like you to compose a very rough draft of the second prompt and post it to the discussion forum titled, "Truth" Drafts, before class.

Final Draft of Profiles Due

This Thursday, February 7th, the final draft of your Profile assignment is due. Once you have revised your papers, using feedback from peers and me, please submit an electronic copy of your paper to the D2L dropbox titled, Profile--Final Draft, and bring a printed copy to class (we are meeting in person). If you have any questions about my feedback or the assignment, please contact me as soon as possible, so that I can get back to you with enough time for you to apply that additional feedback to your paper. Also, please reference the assignment sheet that is available under the Content section of D2L for policy and grading questions.