15) Optional Student Choice: 500 words or 5-minute video. You author content that includes a title, category, and a reflection about your experiences in this class. Consider specific assignments, specific readings/films, specific conversations, and/or specific processes that helped you learn and grow.
Let’s Talk Part Two Here is more about Let’s talk. For the first of our final two challenges we had to piece together a couple pages of a book called The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr. Once again we were given ten minutes to complete this. This challenge was the more difficult for me and my group. We nearly lost it all for our class. We just could not seem to get the pages together. My hands began to shake and I was sweating. I did not want be the group that lost the big prize for all of us. By the way we still did not know what the prize was we were all working for. Finally, the show host Sabatino Mangini allowed us to look at another groups work. But we were only allowed to look for a minute. We could still not get it! Time was running out and I was freaking out. Once again the host gave us a break he let the other groups come over and help us. Finally, we got! Thank the Lord. The show has run out of time we would have to wait until our next class to start the final challenge, but we were let in on what our prize would be. We were told that if we do three optional blog post they would add half a letter grade to our grade. In our next class we returned to the show to finish our third and final challenge. For this challenge we went to the front of the room in groups and had to shit with our backs to the projector screen. On the screen was a group of words related to topics we have talked about in class. The groups left in the audience had to describe the words to us without saying the actual word. We only had two minutes to do so. Once again my hands began to shake. The first two groups went up and did well. They got through all the words with some time left. Then of course my group was called up last. The host was teasing us knowing I was nervous. “These are the hardest words. Erica has to try and answer them all first.” The timer started, I was shaking. We did pretty well but we just could not seem the get the last word. We ran out of time. Luckily we were given a bonus question. If we got this question right, we would be given thirty extra seconds to get the last word. We got it! We won the game show! We when then told on top of our original prize of an extra half letter grade, we were given a deadline extension. Below are the pictures from the piece of the chapter we had to put in order.
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14) Optional Student Choice: 500 words or 5-minute video. You author content that includes a title, category, and a reflection about your experiences in this class. Consider specific assignments, specific readings/films, specific conversations, and/or specific processes that helped you learn and grow.
Let’s Talk In our last couple of classes were on a game show called Let’s Talk. In this game show the game show host made it very clear “we lived and died together”. We were split up into the groups we were put into in the beginning of the year. Our groups were then given three challenges. Throughout this blog post I will be talking about our first challenge. We were given ten minutes, and an envelope with four categories and words or phrases that would go under each of them. These categories and the related words and phrases all had to do with the things we’ve learned over the past semester. The first category was Rhetorical Modes, which describes the variety, conventions, and purposes of the major kinds of language-based communication, particularly writing and speaking. The four words we placed under this were description, argumentation, exposition, and narration. These are the most common rhetorical modes. Our second category was Motives. Throughout this semester we were constantly talking about our process and what we want to do with our writing. Our motives are what pushed us to get there. Under motives we placed seven different phrases. One I think was most important was make meaning. From the start of this class make meaning has always been talked about. This class was not just an ordinary composition class. We did not just come in write and hand in a paper. We work as a class, we talk about our writing, and we were given time to work on and revise all of our work. We were taught how to make meaning with our writing. The third category we set up was Rhetorical Purposes. Rhetorical purposes seek to persuade an audience, seek to manipulate the way that audience thinks about the given subject. In class when we talked about this we were taught PIE, Persuade, Inform, Entertain. Our fourth and final category was Genres/Subgenres. In this category we put memoir, creative nonfiction, and reflective writing. We talked about many different genres and subgenres in class. We read, wrote, and learned about them too. Each week our blog assignments had to do with a different genre of writing. This class has really opened my eyes to the many different genres. After reading and writing about them I think it will be easier for me to recognize them. In my next blog post I will be talking about the second and third challenge of the game show if you would like to hear more about Let’s Talk. Below is a pictute of the categories and the words and phrases that go with them. 13) Optional Student Choice: 500 words or 5-minute video. You author content that includes a title, category, and a reflection about your experiences in this class. Consider specific assignments, specific readings/films, specific conversations, and/or specific processes that helped you learn and grow. Hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi
Reflecting on Where to Invade Next The documentary Where to Invade Next really opened my eyes to things going on in the United States. I always knew we as a country had issues but I guess I kind of always choice to turn a blind eye to them. I never really wanted to accept that maybe we are not as great of a country as so many Americans make us seem. Moore really opened my eyes to the injustices we are facing as Americans. We deserve better than what we are being given. Moore visited countries such as Italy, Finland, Germany, Norway, Iceland, and a couple of others. When Moore was in these countries he talked to people about things such as the work week, paid vacations, school systems, war on drugs, rehabilitation, and health care. My boyfriend and I always seemed to disagree on our opinions in most of these areas. I always defended the United States. I always believed were on top. I do not want to come off as ignorant to our problems as a country though. I am very aware of the social injustices going on. I guess what I always choose to ignore or to think we could make better were the issues with our school systems, health care, and the justice system. But over the past year and after watching this documentary I am not so sure. I know things are not going to change overnight but it seems as though we as a country are going in the exact opposite way we need to be going. The policies in the other countries would of course have to be customized to the United States but I think it would really benefit us to adopt some of them. As Michael Moore said throughout his documentary all of the ideas discussed started in the United states. 12) Formal Assignment #2. A Reflection. [Categories: Reflection]: Please complete the following:
Throughout this blog post I am going to be reflecting on my writing process for my classes second formal assignment. For our second formal assignment we had to write a research paper. We had to choose a topic that was discussed in the documentary Where to Invade Next. Before writing my last blog post and this one I watched a short video that explained the process of reflective writing. It made sure to point out the very three important steps. The first step was looking back on the event, but also making sure to remember to think about what you were thinking and feeling during this event. The second step is analyzing what happened. The third step is projecting into the future and seeing how this past event can be worked on or help you later. For my research paper I choose to write about America’s educational system compared to Finland’s educational system. I argued that we should try and model our teaching styles and systems off of Finland’s. For this paper I worked with the help of many academic journals and articles, Michael Moore’s Where to Invade Next Documentary, and feedback from my professor. With the help of all these sources I believe I wrote an informative and persuasive paper. I wrote this paper many different places. I wrote some at home in bed, some at school in between my classes and some during class. With a research paper I would love to just be able to sit down and write it all out but that just does not seem feasible. It is something that needs to be done over time and with a busy schedule like mine there not much time to do it in one place. I definitely still procrastinated with this project but not nearly as much as I did with the last formal assignment. I choose this topic because I myself would like to go into teaching and throughout my school years I feel I was taught with a “teaching to the test” approach. With this project I will continue to work on it. I believe learning more about Finland’s teaching style can help me figure out how I would like my teaching style to be. 11) Formal Assignment #1. A Reflection [Categories: Reflection]: Please complete the following:
For this fan-fiction I mostly worked by myself, but I did receive comments and ideas from my professor at our mid-term conference, and also some ideas from my mother. For my fan-fiction I think I used Drama as it's genre. I have always been a horrible procrastinator so of course I did the same for this project. I will be honest I did not start working on it until about three days before it was due. This was not a good approach. Although I did get the project done I think it could have been better if I had given myself more time. I usually hate working on papers or assignments like this in class, I’d rather be sitting in my bed typing a paper. But for this paper I completed most of it during in class work time. I found this useful because I was less distracted and could focus more on getting the work done. I choose to write this fan-fiction because I not only enjoyed the original story but thought it would be fun to make it somewhat my own. It was really cool getting to give a story I like my own twist. |
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Erica O'Brien
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December 2017
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