Weekend Reminders

There is no assigned reading over the weekend, but I highly recommend that you begin drafting your Compare and Contrast Essay in preparation for Wednesday's due date. The rough draft needs to be submitted to a Discussion Board (which will be available next week) prior to the start of class on November 5th. For more details, please see the assignment sheet that I have uploaded to the Content section of D2L. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

I will be posting to the content section a student example of a compare/contrast essay over the weekend, if you want to get some ideas for structuring and organizing this paper. We will go over it in class on Monday, along with some logical fallacies (which can be found in Chapter 9 of the textbook).

Homework for Wednesday, October 29th

Please read the essays, "Angels in America," by John Tierney (622) and "Our Brave New World of Immigration," by Victor Davis Hanson (624) for Wednesday. We have a reading response due by the beginning of class, and I recommend approaching this response with a focus on comparing and contrasting the two pieces (though you are welcomed to focus on only one, if you'd like).

As I mentioned in class, the rough draft of the Compare/Contrast essay will be due in one week (Wednesday, November 5th). I will cover the guidelines and assignment sheet in class this Wednesday. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Homework for Monday, October 27th

Again, please disregard the reading assignment listed on the course schedule. While we will be reading about fracking, we are going to examine the first two pieces in Chapter 20, instead of the ones originally assigned. For Monday, please read "Shale Drilling is a Disaster Waiting to Happen," by Don Carns Jr. (538) and "Unfounded Fears about Shale Gas Obscure Facts," by Scott Cline (page 541). Both pieces are short, and there's no reading response due on Monday. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Homework for Wednesday, October 22nd

Please disregard the reading assignment that is listed on the schedule. As I mentioned in class, we will be reading the pieces on the local food movement instead: Stephen Budiansky's "Math Lessons for Locavores," (476) and Kerry Trueman's response, "The Myth of the Rabid Locavore," (479). You also have a reading response due by the beginning of class as a dropbox submission.

You have the option of writing about either one of these pieces, or you can write about both, focusing on a few of the areas we discussed at the beginning of class--message, purpose, tone, evidence, reasoning, structure, the writer's motivation, genre, focus/clarity, etc. We will discuss the points each writer makes in preparation for the next paper. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Homework for Monday, October 20th

The readings listed on the Course Schedule are correct, but I'm pushing back Reading Response #5 until next Wednesday. The only homework you have over the weekend is to read the Thomas E. Ricks essay, "Let's Draft Our Kids," (on page 645 of the Current Issues textbook) and the Dave Eggers piece, "Serve or Fail," (on page 648). We will continue our research unit by looking at various perspectives on different issues, starting with public service. Please be prepared to discuss these essays in class.

October 13th Reminders

Please remember that we are not meeting in class today. I want you to take this time to work on revising your summary/response essays, in preparation for Wednesday's due date. I have uploaded audio feedback to the dropbox submissions, and there are documents--the Summary/Response Assignment Sheet, Questions for Responding, and the Quoting/Paraphrasing PowerPoint--in the Content section of D2L to assist you in your revisions. The dropbox for the final draft closes at the beginning of class on Wednesday, October 15th.

Also, please remember to post a tentative thesis statement to your blogs before midnight tonight. I have uploaded a document to the Content section to provide tips on composing a solid synthesized thesis statement. We will be workshopping them in class on Wednesday. If you have any questions, please contact me as soon as possible.

Homework for Monday, October 13th

While we will not be meeting on Monday, you still have an assignment. Based off the research you've conducted in class today and leading up to the summary/response, I would like you to post a tentative thesis statement to your blog. The thesis statement should be a claim that has three parts/concepts to it. I have posted a document to the Content section of D2L with some guidelines for composing a thesis that should be able to help you with this. Please make sure to have this posted by the end of the day on Monday, as I will be compiling them for an in-class workshop on Wednesday, October 15th.

I will be providing you all with audio feedback for the rough drafts of your summary/response papers this weekend, and I will send you an email once all the feedback as been uploaded to D2L. The revised draft of the summary/response paper is due on Wednesday, October 15th. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me via email. See you all on Wednesday.

Homework and Reminders for Wednesday, October 8th

Please remember to turn in a rough draft of your Summary/Response paper to the D2L dropbox by the beginning of class on Wednesday. The focus of the response should be evaluating an internet source in preparation for the final argumentative paper. Please see the blog questions (posted to the content section), assignment sheet, Questions for Responding document, and Topic Breakdown Examples for more information.

We will be meeting in the library at 2pm on Wednesday, near the circulation desk. Please be on time, as we will be moving shortly after this initial meeting. As I mentioned in class today, we will not be meeting on Monday, October 13th. Please take this time to revise your rough drafts and compose a tentative thesis statement (to be posted on your blogs by next Monday). If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me via email.

Homework for Monday, October 6th

Our reading assignment for the weekend is "The Story of an Hour," by Kate Chopin, found on page 438 of the Current Issues textbook. Please be sure to write a response to the story and submit it to the dropbox (Reading Response 4) prior to the start of class. We will discuss our interpretations of the story on Monday.

Also, as I stated at the beginning of class, you will need to submit a rough draft of your Summary/Response paper to the dropbox (Summary_Response Rough Draft) by the beginning of class on Wednesday, so that I can provide you with feedback. The final draft of the paper will be due the following week.

For those of you who are interested, tomorrow is a Good Thunder event. You can find more information about times and locations from the link on the class syllabus blog. Below, I have included a link to the Matthew Dickman poem we looked at, as well as a link to a video of a spoken word poet who Prince had mentioned during class.

Matthew Dickman "Ghost Story"

Shane Koyczan "To This Day"