• Week 5 Assignments

  • Each week, I will ask you to do four things:
  • 1/  Post an entry in your Learning Journal.  Entries in your Learning Journal (LJ) will most often be focused on Free Writing or Structured Free Writing, which is Free Writing in response to a specific topic, prompt, or question.  I will give you a weekly LJ assignment.  Please post entries in your LJ HERE.  This is a private journal that only you and your instructor can access.
  • 2/ Complete one or more Group Assignments (GA), which will require that you contribute either a BLOG POST and/or to our course Discussion Board.  These posts and discussions will be read by our entire class.
  • 3/ Complete one to two Reading and Writing Assignments (RWA), which, unless otherwise specified, you will submit as a separate entry/entries in your Learning Journal HERE.
  • 4/ Check in at least THREE separate times a week and respond at least ONCE to contributions by other student blog posts on the Home page of our course Web site AND to forums on the course Discussion Board

   

  • WEEK 5 ASSIGNMENTS:  DUE DATE:  MONDAY, OCTOBER 1  at 5PM.
  •  During our fifth week, we will begin brainstorming and drafting our personal essays, continue some group work from last week, and consider what “photographable moments” might be.
  • LEARNING JOURNAL 5
    
  • Please spend 5 to 7 minutes free writing about what you are liking and disliking about the City Tech Open Lab.  Feel free to include questions that you have about the Open Lab and/or describe features that you wish it had.  Please be honest!  I will not be at all offended by any comments/complaints you may have.

GROUP ASSIGNMENTS

• Group Assignment 9:  PLEASE READ RWA5 BEFORE READING THIS GROUP ASSIGNMENT.  I have placed each of you in one of the following four groups (see below).  Working with your group members, I’d like you to COLLABORATIVELY draft two paragraphs:   in the first paragraph, I’d like you to explain what you–as a group–liked and disliked about the Bunn essay (see RWA5 for an explanation of what the Bunn essay is), and in the second paragraph, I’d like you–as a group–to report on which personal essays were chosen by the various members of your group and why each member chose the essay he/she selected.  IF YOU ARE NOT ABLE TO COMPLETE THIS ASSIGNMENT BY MONDAY SEPT. 24, THAT IS FINE!  BUT PLEASE GET STARTED WITH THIS ASSIGNMENT ASAP.

To get you started with this assignment, I have e-mailed a Google Document to all of the members of each group.  Please complete this assignment by working together via this Google Document.  I know this may seem very confusing.  Do your best.  If you are having any problems or questions, please e-mail me.

Group Assignment 11:  Photographable Moments.  Please take a picture and post it to our course blog.  Here is one example:  https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/21stcenturycomposition/2012/09/24/photographable-moment-1/

Please also respond to at least two posts in which you reflect on why the image posted is a “photographable moment” (PLEASE NOTE:  I don’t have a set definition of a “photographable moment,” I am just using the phrase here in the hope that we will develop a definition based on what we discover via these posts!)

PLEASE NOTE:  If you need any help with how to include images in a blog post, please e-mail your classmate Zam via the Open Lab

• READING AND WRITING ASSIGNMENTS
• Reading and Writing Assignment 6:  Brainstorming Exercise and Exploratory Draft
  

Professor Rodgers
College Writing
Brainstorming Exercise, e.g., “Back of the Napkin” Assignment

First, please read over the Personal Essay guidelines below. Then, please spend some time writing about what you want the focus of your personal essay to be.   You can write many pages, a list, or just a short note, but please spend anywhere from a half hour to an hour thinking about this. If you prefer to bring in an audio file or video file of yourself talking about your topic, that is also fine.

Second, please spend one-half hour writing an exploratory draft of your Autobiographical Essay.  Before you start this, you may want to consult some of your Writing Journals for our class and/or some of the personal essays that we have read.

Personal Essay Guidelines
Professor Rodgers
College Writing
City Tech
BRAINSTORMING:  10/1
EXPLORATORY DRAFT DUE:  10/1
DRAFT 1 DUE: 10/10
DRAFT 2 DUE: 10/12
DRAFT 3 DUE: 10/15
FINAL DRAFT DUE: 10/17

The focus of our first essay is yourself, your life, and/or your interests and experiences!  Please choose some specific topic to write about.  This could be anything:  your childhood, your family, your educational experiences, your interest (or non-interest) in reading, your relationship(s) to technology, your love of animals, the place where you live, etc., etc.

The essay, which will be two to three pages in length, will be graded on the effort you have put into thinking about the personal essay as genre, your approach to this particular essay, and your presentation of your material to your audience. The essay should include a title, a thesis statement, well structured paragraphs, and writing that not only clearly describes and explains information, but also engages your reader. For MLA essay formatting guidelines, see http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/  or your English handbook.

Please make sure you write this essay for a specific audience.  This audience can be your instructor, your classmates, the students at City Tech, or the readers of a particular publication.  I ask you to choose and specify an audience so you know who you are writing to and tailor the content and style of your essay to that audience.