Writershelp Exercises

I'll be posting two hours of work using writershelp. This will give us two hours of credit toward our make-up class.

Second hour:

Be sure "Table of contents" is selected on the upper left.

Go to "Writing About Literature."

Read: "Integrating quotations from a literary work."

Then scroll down to "Sample Literature Papers" and read Margaret Peel's "Opposing Voices in Ballad of the Landlord."

Then go to the upper left and click "Exercises." Click "Academic Writing" and read "thesis statements in literature papers." Having your own poetry paper open on the screen, evaluate your literary thesis statement according to the questions as you progress through them.

Add this exercise to the Word doc mentioned below and turn it in.

Be prepared to discuss how your thesis statement compared to what you learned in this exercise when you are in a small group discussion.

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The first hour is to do comma work. Click the "exercises" tab on the upper left and do the first six exercises under punctuation. They are:

Major uses of the comma 1
Major uses of the comma 2
All uses of the comma
Misuses of the comma 1
Misuses of the comma 2
The semicolon and the comma 1
The semicolon and the comma 2
The colon, the semicolon, and the comma

On Monday, I will go over the comma rules, particularly coordinating conjunctions (BOYSFAN words) and restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses. In addition, we will go through a semicolon Powerpoint.

Because I'm giving you the instruction after you answer the question, I'm not concerned with the score and will give you a checkmark credit for doing the above. To prove you did the exercises, though, copy and paste your score and put it in a word document and turn it in on Monday. You will have eight scores that will count as checkmarks.

I will have a comma quiz, however, on Monday. That one will be for a grade.

I will be posting another hour's worth of exercises here later.

Snow E-Mail

I just sent this to all students:

 

Just looking at the snow coming down as steadily as it is and also looking at the weather reports, I don't think it's smart to go out in this weather.

 

I am going to cancel class today because I think they will cancel it anyway.

 

I will call the school and see if we can get a classroom for tomorrow. If too many people can't make it tomorrow, then possibly next Saturday or by adding an hour on to each class for next week.  Another possibility is a  week from this Saturday.

 

Please click reply and tell me your preference on when to hold this class.

Writing 102 Thursday, Jan. 6

The instructor returned papers and gave students a chance to read her comments. Concurrent with this, we looked at proofreading symbols so students could understand the marks made on the papers.

She again reminded students of sources (go for journals, specialized dictionaries). Source (note: to be finished later, had to leave classroom for incoming class).

12pt point
went over errors made in Pt 1

discussion over paper due dates

person consistency cannot do
tense consistency

Titles and MLA

Drama teams

Pick up papers

Works Cited

how to do illustration
how to do video

Writing 102 Wednesday 8:30-12:15

We worked on thesis statements today.

We did two thesis statement exercises from writershelp.

We wrote tentative working thesis statements and put them on the overhead projector and the class helped the writer edit them.

Drama team points:

Team 1-2pts, team 2-3pts, team 3-2pts, team 4-1.5 pts, team 5-2pts,team 6-1 pt.



To Do for Next Class:


Write poetry paper. To see the assignment that was previously sent to you by e-mail, go to "poetry assignment sheet" in the Links section of this blog.

Read drama terms

Writing 102 Tuesday 8:30-12:15

In our first hour, we discussed poetry and the poetry paper. The instructor put various past projects by students on the overhead doc cam.

In the second hour, we discussed the research paper. The instructor talked to students about point 1, which will be due tomorrow. Point 1 includes a definition of terms and a literature review. Students referred to their research and circled terms for which they thought definition would be needed. 

The instructor highlighted parts of writershelp and the Lester online book that would be useful to students as they work with their research.

The instructor passed out a date schedule which covered the poetry and research paper due dates. It will be posted here later.

We then went into the drama section of the class. Students were divided into groups and the purpose was to form a team to define the terms. The instructor outlined the rules of the exercise. We went through terms A-F and our next round will be on Thursday. For Thursday, students should know the terms G-M.

After working on drama, we went back to the research paper and the instructor put research papers on the overhead document cam. Students were able to read parts of them.

She discussed the difference between primary sources and secondary sources.

To do for next class:

Write two pages of definition of terms and the literature review. It needs to have internal text citations and a Works Cited. These documents may be "rough."

Read some of the drama terms G-M.

Prepare for tomorrow's writing, with will be the poetry paper, which will include the explication.

Writing 102 Monday 8:30-12:15

We worked on Web citation. The instructor put a checklist from Hacker on the overhead projector and showed students how to use the list to retrieve the pertinent information for their citation. Students exchanged their papers with a colleague who corrected the citation.

The instructor said she would post an example of a current correct MLA citation as the Hacker book was out of date. We used the green library update to bring the example up to date on the doc cam. Example:

Jenkins, Henry. "Bearings." MIT Communications Forum. MIT. 19 Feb. 2002. Web. 16 June 2005.

You will also find examples at writershelp.com.

Next we did the syllabus quiz.

We went to the computer room to work on the poetry assignment. Students looked for literary criticism for their poetry movement/school or genre.

The instructor checked in the five sources for the research paper and the two sources for the poetry paper.

Next class:

Read first chapter in Lester book

Add sources to the research paper annotated works cited

Add sources to the poetry paper works cited

Movie Quote that Applies to Research Papers

This is for my writing 102 students. It is a movie quote:

"Find a truly original idea. It is the only way I will ever distinguish myself. It is the only way I will ever matter."
A Beautiful Mind (2001)