Course Folder and Conferences

1. Course Folders include all graded essays and paragraph assignments. These are used to do a final appeal for any student and teacher who believe the student should move on to 101A despite second and third readings.


2. Our 1-on-1 conferences, which we will schedule on Friday, are for Monday, May 12, from 2:45-4:45pm.

Doing Evaluations

Click here: https://mc.simplyvoting.com/

Take 15-20 minutes to evaluate your professors this semester.

How Will You Work On Transferring Knowledge?

On Wednesday, I want you to write a paragraph in class in which you explain how you plan to develop your critical thinking skills over the summer.

First, though, I want us to read some passages in an article called "Why Don't They Apply What They've Learned" Part 1 and Part 2

"Ambrose and her co-authors point to two reasons for the failure-to-transfer that all of us see sometimes in our students. First, they might tie whatever knowledge or skill we are teaching too closely to the context in which they learned it. Thus, students can write innovative opening paragraphs in my freshman-composition course, but in their other classes they continue to rely on the same strategies they learned in high school. Second, the inability to transfer a skill or information to a novel context might indicate shallow levels of learning. If students are capable of solving problems, writing essays, or answering questions according to some formula they have learned, they might not have grasped the underlying principles of our course content. Without that deeper knowledge of what lies beneath the formula, they can't pick up what they are learning and put it back down in an unrelated context."  [from Part 1]

...

"For example, one pattern he found among highly successful college students was the willingness to embrace and learn from failure. The comedian and talk show host Stephen Colbert, one of Bain's more famous subjects, describes how improvisational theater taught him to see the value of failure—to learn from the experience and then move beyond it. "You haven't done it before," Colbert says, speaking about how he learned to embrace failed first-time learning efforts, "how could you possibly get it perfectly right?"

But the pattern that struck me most forcefully in Bain's subjects related to the subject of far transfer. The very first story he tells in the book, after his introductory chapter, describes a student who entered college with four major questions he wanted to answer—deep, profound questions, the kind that it would take a lifetime of learning to understand, much less answer. The first of them was "Why does anything exist?"; the last was "What's the nature of intelligence?"

That student, unsurprisingly, "took a deep approach to learning, asking in every field why and how, and trying to connect everything together." His own words describe a thinking skill—building theoretical models—that he learned and then transferred to multiple disciplines: "You could build models in math," he said to Bain, "but you could also do it in music, in business, and in engineering."

Transfer occurred for that student because he was seeking answers to his own questions. Every learning experience he had was automatically filtered through the lens of the big questions he wanted to explore, and the habit of seeing across courses and disciplines led him to the kind of connected educational experience that we want for our students.

Bain heard something similar from Colbert, who "took control of his education and began to decide what areas he would explore when he was 10 years old." Bain heard the same thing from an investigative journalist who would earn his fame working with students to help overturn death-penalty convictions, and whose big college questions "centered around justice and how to maintain it and create it." He heard it from a doctor who "chose every course at Boston University with one goal in mind: getting into medical school and becoming a physician." And not just pre-med courses: "She majored in social psychology because she thought it would help her become a better physician."

Those students transferred knowledge and skills from course to course because they brought their own questions and interests to their college experience. Whatever they might have been asked to learn in any one course, they sought to understand how everything they learned connected to their overarching questions and interests. They were able to see how a problem-solving skill learned in one class could help them in another, or how a piece of knowledge from one course connected to another, because they oriented themselves toward some larger question, challenge, or problem. That orientation encouraged them to transfer learning across contexts, to make connections, and to see the bigger picture." [from Part 2]

Critical Thinking Questions on Reading Kitchen Confidential

• What are two ways the memoir challenges you to think about the larger world that we all live in? 

• What knowledge (think of the subjects we've covered) did you gain from reading the memoir (hint: an answer of 'nothing' or 'very little' does not make you look smart)? 

• Also, how have you tried (or may you try) to transfer or apply the knowledge to the rest of your life?

Final Exam Preparation for 4/30

Prepare for the final exam, which is 1 hour and 25 minutes. Make sure to bring the following with you:

• a dictionary or thesaurus for word choice/spelling
• Kitchen Confidential
• Rules for Writers
• One page of typed up (or handwritten) notes--only on one side.

• include:
• thematic ideas that you may make thesis or topic sentence points with

• including problem, struggle, epiphany and resolution ideas for Bourdain

• important passages that you want to use as support

• reminders of grammatical rules, such as FANBOYS or PRE
• Compare and contrast language, transitional devices

1. Subject by Subject

• each text is discussed separately
• often the "high school way" -- and can weaken an essay's larger analysis IF the writer lacks a solid thesis and analytical topic sentences

2. Point by Point

• two (or more) texts discussed by points
• a comparison point
• a contrast point
• some other "connection" point, such as how one is more important than the other
• cause and effect

1. "The danger of this subject-by-subject organization is that your paper will simply be a list of points: a certain number of points (in my example, three) about one subject, then a certain number of points about another. This is usually not what college instructors are looking for in a paper—generally they want you to compare or contrast two or more things very directly, rather than just listing the traits the things have and leaving it up to the reader to reflect on how those traits are similar or different and why those similarities or differences matter. Thus, if you use the subject-by-subject form, you will probably want to have a very strong, analytical thesis and at least one body paragraph that ties all of your different points together."    -- University of North Carolina's Writing Center website


2. "Alice Walker and Maya Angelou are two contemporary African-American writers.  Although almost a generation apart in age, both women display a remarkable similarity in their lives.  Each has written about her experiences growing up in the rural South, Ms. Walker through her essays and Ms. Angelou in her autobiographies.  Though they share similar backgrounds, each has a unique style which gives to us, the readers, the gift of their exquisite humanity, with all of its frailties and strengths, joys and sorrows." -- Student Example, Roane State CC 

Help with FAFSA applications

During the week of April 28-May 2, the Financial Aid Office will dedicate the week in providing assistance to students to complete their Financial Aid Application early.  Please inform students about this week.  We are trying to get as many students as we can to complete the financial aid process early so they will not wait until late August to start thinking about how they are going to pay their tuition and fees. 

Do You Need Assistance Completing Your FAFSA ?

The Financial Aid Office Staff Is Available To  Help You

Monday           Wednesday           Friday

             April 28^th           April 30^th              May 2nd  

  9:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

&

Tuesday, April 29^th 12:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

	WHAT TO BRING

 

• ·          2013 Tax Returns (or your estimates)       
  ·          2013 W-2s & other earning statements
  ·          Bank Statements & any Benefit Statements
  ·           Social Security Numbers
  ·          Pin (go to www.pin.ed.gov.

 

 

TURN IT IN TUESDAY

(May 6^th)

                      Bring in all of your Financial Aid forms  to complete your file

 

Wednesday, 4/23

For the next 50 minutes, work on one of the following editing strategies for your two Portfolio Essays:

1. Run-ons: both fused sentences and comma splices. Review the blog and Rules for Writer for techniques and examples.

2. Fixing pronoun references and pronoun agreement issues, including replacing confusing or weak usages with synonymous, more accurate word choice.

3. Test all sentences for subject-verb agreement issues.

4. Verb tense shifts and mood shifts. Get rid of them! See pages 136-138 in Rules for Writers for help!

5. Work on subordination of ideas, using run-on techniques discussed earlier this term. Look for places in essays where two ideas exist back-to-back, and this is where you will want to spend time considering and trying out subordination (and coordination, if necessary). See pages141-145 in Rules for Writers for how to do so, and pages 146-152 for considerations when to subordinate and when not to...

If you feel editing is okay, focus on one of two major content areas where an essay may need improvement in the writer showing authority and supporting ideas. To strengthen authority, look at:

1. Your illustrations of ideas.  Do they fit the point? Are they specific enough, descriptive, and more than one sentence when needed?

Are they placed effectively within paragraphs as hooks in intros or as supporting examples in PRE formed body paragraphs?  

Are,they appropriate examples for the prompts purpose and point of view? 

2. Context for subject matter. Do you give enough background on your subject  that you can use or do address in essay? Do you spell out who people are or what things or places are? Do you give a framework of important factor, or do you assume too much? Think more about individual qualities that your subject has. For instance, in Essay 3, define the culture you give advice on. Address who is there and what are some norms and beliefs that your advice is relevant for. What is a person up against in this culture that they should follow your advice?