Monthly Archives: September 2014

Library Visit and Practicing MLA Works Cited List

Last week, you had the opportunity to visit the City Tech Library where Ms. Cranshaw showed us how to do research in the library using the computer resources available through the City Tech Library website. Before class on Wednesday, I would like you to add a comment to this post with  your typed works cited list of sources that you found through the library’s website and databases. Order your comment in this way:

Book

Scholarly Periodical (journal article)

Popular Periodical (magazine or newspaper article)

Refer to the notes that you made in class on Monday and section MLA-4b in A Writer’s Reference.

John Medina’s Brain Rules: Survival

Before class on Wednesday, add a comment to this post with your typed and edited beginning of class writing from our meeting on Monday. When you type up your handwritten beginning of class writing assignment, think about how you can improve the way you express yourself in writing. How can you make your writing better now that you have the opportunity to edit it before you post your comment?

Project 1: Thinking in Writing

Before class on Monday, add a comment to this post with your day of thoughts.

First, you should type up your day of thoughts in Microsoft Word or another word processor program. You might choose to include the time that you recorded your thoughts or you might not–I will leave this up to you. Save your typed thoughts on your computer/flash drive/cloud storage.

Then, copy-and-paste your list of thoughts into a comment on this post.

Library Visit and Research Assignment, Monday, Sept 22

On Monday, September 22, we will meet outside the entrance to the library on the 4th floor of the Atrium. Library Instructor Betsy Crenshaw will introduce you to the library and how you can use the library’s resources for research.

For our class, you will rely on the library’s research resources for the second major project, which gives you an opportunity to learn more about your major and plan what contributions that you would like to make in that field.

It’s never too soon to begin thinking about the second major project even though we have just begun working on project one, because if you prime your brain to think about something that you will be engaged in at a later date, you give your brain a “heads-up” that enables it to work on the problem in ways you might not be consciously aware. Priming your brain for a task or a problem has been shown to improve performance.

It is with that in mind that you will do some research during our library visit to help familiarize yourself with the library’s resources and to prime yourself to think about project two. During our visit to the library, I would like you to find three sources–a book, a journal article, and a magazine/newspaper article–related to your major. Using your copy of A Writer’s Reference, write into your notebook the information that you need for an MLA works cited list from each of these sources. Before Monday, look over section 4b beginning on page 398 of A Writer’s Reference to see what general kinds of information that you should record. After writing down this information in your notebooks, bring that to class on next Monday, September 29, when we will spend some time formatting it for a basic MLA Works Cited list. Remember to bring your notes and A Writer’s Reference to class on that day, too.

John Medina’s Brain Rules Introduction and Chapter 1, Exercise

For today’s class, you began reading John Medina’s Brain Rules. To help you dive into the material that we will discuss in Medina’s nonfiction book, I asked you to read the “Introduction” and chapter one, “Exercise.” During the first ten minutes of class, write a summary of your reading from these two chapters in your notebook. Before our next class, type up your handwritten summaries and post them here as a comment on this blog entry.

Michael O’Shea’s The Brain, Chapter 1

For today’s class, you read the first chapter from Michael O’Shea’s The Brain. The book from which this chapter was taken is “A Very Short Introduction” published by Oxford University Press. These books are meant to give readers a brief introduction to major subjects. In this case, the subject is the human brain.

During the first ten minutes of class, I would like you to turn to a clean page in your notebook and write a summary of what you read. You may look at the chapter while you are writing your summary, but it is not necessary. This is meant to help you organize your thoughts and give you some practice with writing in complete sentences. I will not grade this writing in terms of content. I am looking for your best effort to use all 10 minutes for writing. If you run out of things to write about from the reading, you can write about what you have planned for today, what you are doing in your other classes, what you are doing this weekend, etc.

Before our next class, I would like you come to our OpenLab site and type up your in-class writing as a comment to this blog post. When you do this, I would recommend that you revise your writing–make it better–when you type it up. This might involve improving your sentences’ structure, correcting grammar, choosing a variety of words (diction), etc. In addition to helping you remember your summaries, this extra writing–typing instead of writing by hand–will help you improve your writing ability overall!