Honors Comp 3: Dr. B Writing Circle
As we get ready for our first in-class essay (this Thursday and Friday), I wanted to show you an activity I have often done with my students to illustrate how to approach an essay when writing in class. It's based on the idea that if you can "make your thinking visible," then others, too, can do the same.
Here are the instructions:
For class today, I will pick a rhetorical text, read, analyze, and write an essay on it in front of you. Your job is to watch and "live comment" about the process as it takes place. You might comment about...
- Anything that stands out,
- Anything that seems interesting,
- How I approach the writing task,
- What I think about as I write,
- How I revise,
- How I use rhetorical appeals,
- How you can use a similar strategy in your own writing.
For an example of how other students have completed this task before, see here.
GLHF--Good luck and have fun!
GLHF--Good luck and have fun!
Dr. B is pre-writing things that she finds interesting and might be useful in an essay.
ReplyDeleteI think peak is better than gaining traction, makes the sentence flow better
ReplyDeleteShe looks through the prompt/text and kind of annotates it to start getting more ideas about what she'll write, she also notes things she finds in the text that she wants to add to her writing.
ReplyDeleteDr. B rights in sections. When she has a conflict, such as what word she wants to use, she puts down 2 options and she will go back and pick the one she likes most
ReplyDelete*writes
DeleteShe is breaking up her essay into certain parts i.e. Intro, Rhetorical context, and Transition.
ReplyDeleteDr. B starts by going over the text and picking out information that she wants to include in her essay and what might be useful.
ReplyDeleteDr. B starts off the whole thing by talking about recent events, and how they relate to the text
ReplyDeleteI think you should put publishing and reporting because the news reported through videos and then publishes through articles.
ReplyDeleteIt may have been that way 10 years ago, but now a days, most news is Published, then Reported on tv(unless it is a live event).
DeleteThat is true but most people prefer to watch the news on he television so while some of the news may be a little old, it is probably the way most people receive their news,
DeleteShe writes a summary of the summary of the article so she wont have to go back and forth
ReplyDeleteDr. Bridgman begins by annotating and establishing a historical context for the paper, which can help to effectively introduce the reader to the subject of the essay. This also helps build substance for the essay.
ReplyDeleteShe uses quotes for her topic sentences
ReplyDeleteShe uses imagery which really describes about what the author is talking about
ReplyDeleteShe divides her document into potential quotes, potential topic sentences, an introduction/historical context, and a general annotation.
ReplyDeleteDr. B puts in ideas that she hasn't finished her thoughts about so she puts a blank, which reminds her to go back to that spot.
ReplyDeleteShe forms very rough sentences and leaves spaces for herself to go back in fill in later.
ReplyDeleteMakes new paragraphs in outline to establish order the the essay which is essential so the audience can follow and understand your essay.
ReplyDeleteShe plans on dividing her essay into different ways that the speaker is talking to the audience, not necessarily ethos, pathos, logos.
ReplyDeleteShe writes down the basic idea of what she wants to say in her essay, then will come back later to fully develop the ideas
ReplyDeleteMakes sure not to use a lot of quotes
ReplyDeleteShe extracts useful information and context from the prompt. She finds important devices on the text and how they work on the audience.
ReplyDeleteShe's dividing the essay into the speaker flattering the audience, the speaker criticizing the audience, and one more thing.
ReplyDeleteAs Dr. B reads through each section, she figures out what the author is trying to do, and how to incorporate it into her argument
ReplyDeleteShe organizes the essay and the basics of what she wants to say to later come back and revise.
ReplyDeleteInstead of reading and then writing, Dr. B does a rough outline/skeleton while she is reading it. I think she does this so the stuff she reads and thinks can be put directly into her outline. I think the outline while take longer to do than reading the passage and then writing the outline, but by doing what she is doing, it will make writing the full essay faster
ReplyDeleteShe is using a nice mix of annotation and quotation, but tends to prefer quotation with a small descriptive intro.
ReplyDeleteShe jumps around the essay adding things that she left out before. Which seems to work well for her.
ReplyDeleteShe's constantly reading, then writing immediately. Doesn't read the entire article first, just goes straight into annotation and content gathering.
ReplyDeleteCarefully reads article for evidence
ReplyDeleteShe connects the topic to much larger topics that are widely spoken about instead of this one specific point.
ReplyDeleteShe goes back and elaborates on her ideas or adds new ones
ReplyDeleteDr. B reads the piece in chunks and then writes based on the chunk that she read instead of reading the whole piece and trying to recall certain parts.
ReplyDeleteShe writes out a lot of her supporting facts before she does her thesis
ReplyDeleteShe is no longer going back to the article for information. She is now writing the essay based on what she wrote down when filing outline.
ReplyDeleteShe writes a very rough version of a section, goes on to something else, and comes back to revise and add to the section.
ReplyDeleteMakes sure to support her claim with evidence which is a basic knowledge among writers.
ReplyDeleteNow she is beginning to fine tune the essay by looking through it an making due changes.
ReplyDelete3 topic: Talks about how the article uses ethos pathos and logos but tries really hard not to use those specific terms
ReplyDeleteNot super polished, but a good way to generate lots of information and content very quickly.
ReplyDeleteOver the course of 30 minutes, she says she made a very, very rough draft. The time allotted for this is 40 minutes. She would have to polish, read over it, edit it, and then do a final run over in 10 minutes.
ReplyDeleteThis assignment is also for an AP Comp class. So granted the amount of time she used, she did pretty well.