Friday, November 30, 2007

Day 44

English 101 Day 44

  1. Essays Due
  2. A Plate of Peas
  3. O/R. Y/N? Intro/Conclusion
    1. Y= +0
    2. N= +0
    1. Essays back Monday.
      1. My focus will be on scores and improvement.
      2. If I'm late getting them back, due dates will be adjusted accordingly.
    2. The Final Week—Special Guest Leon Lett
      1. Monday Bring Something to Work on in the Lab.
      2. Tuesday: MLA DeathMatch 2007, Round One, Portfolio Revision Worksheet Due
      3. Wednesday: Peer Editing, Bring two copies of Final, Final
      4. Thursday: MLA DeathMatch 2007, Round Two
      5. Friday: Final, Final Essays Due; A Cover Letter About Your Writing Due; Evaluation of my teaching in class.

Portfolio Revision Worksheet

Portfolio Revision Worksheet, Due Tuesday

Answer on your own paper

Which essay do you think is strongest? Explain your answer in detail, including a quote or paraphrase from the essay.

Did your peer readers agree with your assessment?

Paraphrase or quote from a peer

What did I have to say about the essay?

Paraphrase something I wrote to support your answer.

What essay do you think is your second best? Explain in detail.

For the second essay, explain what your peers had to say. Paraphrase or quote

Explain what I had to say. Paraphrase or quote

What is your weakest essay? Explain why you think it's weak, using quotes or paraphrase.

What do your readers have to say about this essay? Does their assessment or their comments reflect your opinion?

What is the strongest segment of writing within all three assignment sequences? By segment, I mean paragraph or several sentences. Write out the segment you choose and then explain why you think it's strong.


What revision would you need to do to submit the first assignment? List all the tasks you would need to complete below.

What revision would you need to do to submit the second assignment? List all the tasks you would need to complete.

What revision would you need to do to submit the third assignment? List all the tasks you would need to complete.

Cover Letter

Cover Letter Assignment

40 points towards your Prewriting Score.

Due Next Friday with your Final, Final Draft

Your cover letter should be 1-2 single spaced pages and present an evaluation of how you have performed as a student/writer this quarter.

Your cover letter should take the standard letter format, (See Hacker for this) with a date, and an address:

Mr. Dan Peters

YVCC

Yakima, Washington

98907-2520

dpeters@yvcc.edu


and formal salutation, (Dear Mr. Peters is fine for now), and a signature line at the end for your own signature.

Ideas/Questions that might help you get started:

  • How would you describe yourself as a writer before the class? How has this changed?
  • How did you write papers before this class? How has this class changed your process?
  • Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses as you see them in your thinking, reading, and writing for this course. Use
    the
    rubrics to help frame this response.
  • What work do you do before you begin to write a draft of an essay? How do you develop a strong main point for your essays?
  • How would you describe the peer group work as it affected your writing? Did it help you to have other readers for your papers besides the instructor? What sorts of comments were the most/least helpful to you? Did reading a peer's paper give you any new perspectives on your own writing?
  • What have you improved on this quarter?
  • What skills do you still need to work on?
  • How about as a student overall? (Ways of Seeing the World, attendance, participation, homework etc)

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Day 43

English 101 Day 43

  1. Rubric scores
  2. Outline your essays paragraph by paragraph.
    1. Sample
    2. Do you use EVIDENCE in each?
    3. Do you attempt to TRANSITION between them using KEY TERMS?
    4. Is it BALANCED? (Then/Now)
  3. Tests back and review
    1. Why it's more than a book and a test and a class.
    2. So, what do you do about it?
    3. Literature is a window. It can be a mirror. –Barry Grimes
    4. What touches me about it—
      1. I'm not naturally hopeful about the world. It's such a dark, sad place and people are so tight with their love, with compassion. Some of this is political. But it's bigger than that. It's our culture. We are increasingly crude, selfish, ignorant, hostile, cruel and divided.
      2. Steinbeck sees that, too. Banks, vigilantes, businessmen, the system. But he has faith in people. And your essay test, especially, makes me think that he got his point across. This is one of the reasons I like teaching. Why I need to teach. It gives me a feeling that I'm not on an island. We can read something and get something out of it that might make us better people, or that maybe we have a strong moral sense of outrage or duty to our brothers and sisters. That the system hasn't beaten everybody.
      3. This is this. That is that. This is that.
      4. Me. We. -- Muhammad Ali
      5. You don't have to agree with him.
      6. College is supposed to change you. Maybe some of you will feel so strongly, that you'll do something about it. You change your life around. You'll become like Tom—spirits.
  4. Grades out tomorrow (need to include 1130 RD and 930 Peer Editing)

MLA= Paper format + In-text citations+ signal phrases+ Works Cited

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Day 41

English 101 Day 41

  1. Peer Editing
    1. In pairs
    2. Write down any questions you have about your draft.
    3. Number the paragraphs on your copies.
    4. Let's try this: Read the essays first and complete the form.
    5. Discuss the form and answer the writer's questions.
    6. Thick Skin
    7. Kind/Honest
    8. Read the essay aloud.
    9. Hand in Two Copies of your essay.
  2. Tests back sometime soon.

Monday, November 26, 2007

Day 40

English 101 Day 40

  1. Organization    
    1. Farmworker housing?
  2. Transitions
    1. Transitional Words and Phrases
    2. Key words and Phrases
  3. Intros/conclusions
  4. Six quotes (1-2 sentences long) from GoW that support your thesis/comparisons.
  5. Rough Draft of Essay 3 due Tuesday. In text citations should be there. Works cited can come on Friday.
  6. Tests back sometime soon.

Transitions

 
 

Transitions between Paragraphs

New paragraphs typically introduce new topics; however, the new topic shouldn't be entirely separate from the information you've included so far in your paper. Including transitions between your paragraphs will help you maintain coherence and unity in your writing.

 
 

Depending on your writing situation, you may have two opportunities to transition: the first and last sentence of the paragraph. The first sentence in your paragraph is often the most important sentence in the paragraph. It sets the limitations or boundaries for the paragraph and states or implies the relationship between the ideas in the previous paragraphs (s). The last sentence in your paragraph may be important also, depending upon the length of the paragraph. In that final sentence, if you have a lengthy paragraph, you may need to sum up what you've said and suggest what's to come.

Your goal in transitioning from paragraph to paragraph is to maintain coherence; you can accomplish this through transitional words and phrases or key words and phrases.

 
 

Transitional Words and Phrases

You've learned already about transitional phrases in the first part of this handout. The list of transitional phrases is a list you can use also to transition between paragraphs. Let's consider this example of a paragraph and the first sentence of the next paragraph:

Chocolate does more than just taste good—it has psychological effects. Chocolate contains caffeine, which provides spurts of energy. It releases endorphins, which create a sense of relaxation and comfort. Chocolate also contains a cannaboid which, when consumed in very large quantities, can lead to altered states of consciousness.

Consequently, the FDA should regulate chocolate. . .

In this case, the writer wants to show a relationship between the last sentence of the first paragraph (altered states of consciousness) and the next paragraph (relating to FDA regulation of chocolate), so she uses the phrase "consequently."

 
 

Key Words and Phrases

You also can use key words and phrases to make transitions between or among paragraphs. With this technique you repeat key words or phrases from the last sentence in one paragraph in the first sentence of the next paragraph. Let's look at an example:

Women and men vary in the way they interpret each other's nonverbal communications. To a woman, a sigh represents an indication of melancholy, frustration, or anger--depending on the "tone" of the sigh. Women will often ask men what is bothering them based on the enunciation of a specific word, a particular sideways glance, or a specific body stance. Men, on the other hand,
tend to be oblivious to nonverbal cues, both the ones they are exhibiting and the ones women are giving.

 
 

This "obliviousness" of men extends from nonverbal communication into verbal communication. Women's conversations often discuss problems they are experiencing in their lives. Women also expect a sympathetic ear when discussing these problems with their male counterparts. Men interpret this discussion as a complaint and, in turn, offer solution scenarios. Women often become alienated by these suggestions, believing that the men in their lives just do not grasp the significance of their problems.

In the example above, the writer uses the words "oblivious" and "nonverbal" to link the ideas between the two paragraphs.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Links for Essay 3

This will be updated as I can get to it over thanksgiving, but here are some places to start:

Immigrants similarities:
Once they arrive: Minutemen, and here. and here. Grassroots Yakima and here, too.
Try "Working conditions in Mexico" or Mexico poverty in search engines for reasons for leaving.

Here's one on a farmworker camp in the Valley.

Here's one on the difficult journey from Mexico to US.

Housing issues here, here and here

More on housing from a link sent by a student:
http://evans.washington.edu/research/psclinic/pdf/00_01dp/Oettinger.PDF

State of the State for Latinos here.

The Robots are coming. or search for "automation in orchards and packing lines"

Corporate farming.

Snokist Strike, here too.

Teamsters in Yakima, here, too.

Stemilt and unions.

Small Farmers! WSU site.

Always, Proquest and NYTimes are both good databases.

Day 39

English 101 Day 39

  1. Thesis statements on the board:
  2. Six quotes (1-2 sentences long) from GoW that support your thesis/comparisons.
    1. Okies/Mexicans (or SE Asians or Chinese or…)
      1. Reasons for leaving
      2. Difficulty of the journey
      3. Treatment upon arrival
      4. Housing
      5. 2005 protests as sign of Grapes of Wrath ready to be picked?
    2. Corporate farming v. small farmer
      1. Packing houses? Canneries?
      2. What do we know about this?
      3. Rainier Fruit, for example
    3. Farm Labor contractors
      1. Global Horizons, Express Personnel
      2. Book "Nobodies"?
    4. Robots/Machines in the orchards and packing houses
    5. Labor Unions v Owners
      1. Snokist, Washington Beef, Washington Fruit, Congdon, Teamsters in 1990's
  3. Quiz GoW 23-30 returned
  4. Essay 2 returned.
  5. Rough Draft of Essay 3 due Tuesday after T-Giving.
  6. Tests back next week.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Day 38, Lab

English 101 Day 38


 

  1. Two things from the news.
  2. Quiz GoW 23-30
  3. Oral Reading Essay 2 cont.
  4. Homework: A thesis statement for essay three.
    1. The reasons we are studying Grapes of Wrath in the Yakima Valley are________________________________.
  5. Homework, part two: Six quotes (1-2 sentences long) from GoW that support your thesis/comparisons. We will share these tomorrow in class.
  6. Rough Draft of Essay 3 due Tuesday after T-Giving.
  7. Essays back tomorrow. Tests back next week.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Day 36

English 101 Day 36

  1. Arid Lands?
  2. Tonight: Parker Room 7pm--History of Farmwork in Washington State
  3. Final Drafts of essay 2 due
  4. Oral reading? Yes= +5 No= +/- 0
  5. Essay 3 Assigned. The trick will be to work on your own and bring me questions/drafts/problems that I can help with. Rough draft due in about two weeks. But number of classes between then and now=4. Happy Thanksgiving.
  6. Preview of GoW final: Essay/Short answer Friday; Chapter 22-30 on Monday
    1. I won't be here tomorrow. The room will be open. You can come for "study group" discussion of essay/short answer preview. Or pick another place?

930: Brief survey from YVCC

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

The Pieta

Tom Joad's Last Words

Day 35

English 101 Day 35

  1. Final Drafts of essay 2 due tomorrow, bring 2 copies, NO LATE WORK ACCEPTED.
  2. Chapter 28
    1. Short clip of the film
    2. Importance of the cave as symbolism
  3. Chapter 29
    1. Importance of the rain as symbolism
  4. Chapter 30
    1. Discuss the ending of the novel.
      1. In what ways is the ending incomplete?
      2. In what ways is the ending pessimistic?
      3. In what ways is the ending hopeful?
    2. Groups of 4—Choose a scene to dramatize—must have at least three parts (two speakers and narrator) and be less than a page long. You can skip around in your pages, but try to keep it going. Practice once. You'll be in front of the class, so try to figure out how you'll sit/stand etc.
      1. 436-440
      2. 441-445
      3. 446-450
      4. 451-455
  5. Final essay/short answer test on Thursday/Friday—Preview Tomorrow
  6. Also, Essay 3 assigned tomorrow.

Friday, November 9, 2007

Grapes of Wrath

Day 34

English 101 Day 34

  1. Peer Review completed
  2. Chapter 22: Weedpatch as Utopia
    1. Physical
    2. Societal
  3. Chapter 23: A ray of light, folk culture examined.
  4. Chapter 24: The Dance
    1. Three most important events
    2. Two important quotes
    3. One important question
  5. Chapter 25: Rotting on the Vine
  6. Chapter 26: 350-376; 376-405
    1. Three most important events
    2. Two important quotes
    3. One important question
  7. HW: Chapter 30 + Critical Essays on GoW (in class essay will deal with one of these three essays)
  8. HW: Read and comment on essay from another class 9:30
  9. CHANGE: Final Draft Due Wednesday. Bring Two copies.
  10. We'll cover 22-26 tomorrow. 27 to end on Tuesday.
  11. This month goes fast. Get ready for third essay: Why Here?
  12. Final exam Gow Thurs (In class essay/short answer) /Friday (Chapters 22-end)
    1. Preview of in class essay Tuesday
  13. No class November 21st
  14. Advising? 102? Creative Writing?

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Day 33

English 101 Day 33

  1. Peer Review continued
    1. Kind Honesty, especially this time.
    2. Thick skin, especially this time.
  2. HW: Chapter 29
  3. HW: Read and comment on essay from another class.
  4. CHANGE: Final Draft Due Wednesday. Bring Two copies.
  5. We'll cover 22-26 tomorrow. 27 to end on Tuesday.
  6. This month goes fast. Get ready for third essay: Why Here?
  7. Final exam on GoW Thursday/Friday
    1. Preview Tuesday

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Day 32

English 101 Day 32

  1. Peer Review
    1. Kind Honesty, especially this time.
    2. Thick skin, especially this time.
  2. HW: Chapter 28
  3. HW: Read and comment on essay from another class.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Day 30

English 101 Day 30

  1. Rubric points?
  2. Chapter 22: Weedpatch as Utopia
    1. Physical
    2. Societal
  3. Chapter 23: A ray of light, folk culture examined.
  4. Chapter 24: The Dance
    1. Three most important events
    2. Two important quotes
    3. One important question
  5. Chapter 25: Rotting on the Vine
  6. Chapter 26: 350-376; 376-405
    1. Three most important events
    2. Two important quotes
    3. One important question
  7. HW: Chapter 27
  8. HW: Rough draft of Essay 2 Due Wednesday bring 4 copies.

Monday, November 5, 2007

Day 30

English 101 Day 30


 

  1. Time to work on Essay 2
  2. Time to ask me questions.
  3. HW: Read the rest of 26.
  4. Rough draft of Essay 2 Due Wednesday bring 4 copies.

Friday, November 2, 2007

Day 29

English 101 Day 29

  1. Chapter 20
    1. Ma Joad
    2. Jim Casey
    3. Tom Joad


  2. For your second essay
    1. What is your main idea?
    2. How will your story's details support this main idea?
    3. Rough Draft Due Next Wednesday bring 4 copies
    4. 3-6 pages
    5. Departure, Journey, Arrival
    6. Experience
      1. Moves, roadtrips, psychological?
    7. Observation
      1. Your parents/grandparents coming to the valley, state, country
      2. Other
    8. Imagination
      1. Muley, Willy Feely, Ivy Wilson, Connie, Noah, One Eyed Man,
      2. Now?
      3. Future? What if GW plays out like Gore says? I'd like to keep it on Earth, and without wizards, I'd say.


  3. Read Chapter 21
  4. For your third essays 18, 19, 21,
    1. Second largest population of DB migrants are in the YV
    2. Okies/Mexicans (or SE Asians or Chinese or…)
      1. Reasons for leaving
      2. Difficulty of the journey
      3. Treatment upon arrival
      4. Housing
    3. Corporate farming v. small farmer
      1. Packing houses? Canneries?
      2. What do we know about this?
      3. Rainier Fruit, for example
    4. Global Horizons, Express Personnel , farm labor contractors
    5. Robots in the orchards
    6. Labor Unions v Owners
      1. Snokist, Washington Beef, Washington Fruit, Congdon, Teamsters in 1990's


  5. Weedpatch
    1. Utopia, "no place"—perfect place, ideal society.
    2. What makes Weedpatch a Utopia?
    3. Why not end here?
  6. Monday—I'm not going to talk. You should bring something to type/save to

H/W: Chapter 24, 25, first half of 26

Thursday, November 1, 2007

Day 28

English 101 Day 28

  1. Return Quiz GoW 13-20
  2. Finish llustrated GoW

    1. Chapter 18

      1. 201-210;
      2. 211-221;
      3. 221-230
    2. Chapter 19

  1. Chapter 20

    1. Ma Joad
    2. Jim Casey
    3. Tom Joad

      1. Find a passage for each that shows their thinking at this point in the book.
      2. Find a passage for each that shows their actions at this point in the book.

  2. For your second essay

    1. What is your main idea?
    2. How will your story's details support this main idea?
    3. Rough Draft Due Next Wednesday bring 4 copies
    4. 3-6 pages
    5. Departure, Journey, Arrival
    6. Experience

      1. Moves, roadtrips, psychological?
    7. Observation

      1. Your parents/grandparents coming to the valley, state, country
      2. Other
    8. Imagination

      1. Muley, Willy Feely, Ivy Wilson, Connie, Noah, One Eyed Man,
      2. Now?
      3. Future? What if GW plays out like Gore says? I'd like to keep it on Earth, and without wizards, I'd say.

  3. For your third essays 18, 19, 21,

    1. Second largest population of DB migrants are in the YV
    2. Okies/Mexicans (or SE Asians or Chinese or…)

      1. Reasons for leaving
      2. Difficulty of the journey
      3. Treatment upon arrival: Border Patrols and Citizen Groups
      4. Housing
    3. Corporate farming v. small farmer

      1. Packing houses? Canneries?
      2. What do we know about this?
      3. Rainier Fruit, for example. Or Stemilt
    4. Global Horizons, Express Personnel , farm labor contractors
    5. Robots in the orchards
    6. Labor Unions v Owners

      1. Snokist, Washington Beef, Washington Fruit, Congdon, Teamsters in 1990's

H/W: Chapter 23