Fri Aug 24

Reading: No new Reading

Writing: My Writing Life due (two copies, and printed out using the formatting requirements included on your assignment sheet.)

Thurs Aug 23

Reading: Sample "My Writing Life" drafts, along with your criteria scores and an explanation for those scores.

Writing: Here the writing is based on the Criteria you can find on the Blackboard page of this website, and which we talked about on Wednesday.

So, what do you write? After reading the first essay, and after reading and thinking as best you can about the criteria and the description of what 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 mean, assign scores to each of the categories for that first paper--and then add a sentence to each score you give to explain why you have given it the number you have given it. This is NOT a high stakes exercise so don't worry about whether you are "right" or "wrong." It's just a way to be able to talk about the relative strengths of a paper.

Then, after reading the first essay and giving it scores and a short explanation of why you gave it what you did, go on and read the second essay and do the same thing. You just want to have thought as best you can about it. We will then discuss all of our scores tomorrow morning.

With that preparation, tomorrow in class we'll look at the two papers and we will do what is called a "norming" exercise where we find ways to talk about all of our scores and decide on a final set of scores for each paper. This is a first step towards becoming better self-assessors of your own work and that of others....

You are also, of course, working on "My Writing Life," which is due on Friday (two copies, and printed out using the formatting requirements included on your assignment sheet.)

Wed Aug 22

Reading: Kohl: "I won't Learn from You," pp. 1-15 (to end of paragraph in the middle of the page).

Writing: I will have given you a set of questions--read them ALL and think about them all, but then go on to write about the one you have been assigned and then one other--free pick!

Remember that the criterion for good work on low stakes writing is ECI!