Category: Weekly Assignments (Page 4 of 8)

UNIT THREE: NEW AUDIENCE, NEW GENRE

What does this mean???

Maybe you wrote about the effect of Covid in the Bronx for Unit 2, and you think New York politicians should know about what you wrote. Maybe you wrote about young women skateboarding in the Olympics and you want girls in grade school to know how awesome those athletes are to boost their self-esteem. In this unit, you’ll think about a specific audience that should know about your unit one discourse community or your unit two article (and why). You will then “repackage” or “re-vision” your research to reach that audience.

First, choose from ONE  of the following five audience groups:

• Fourth graders
• City Tech Freshmen
• New York City Council members
• Your grandparents or older relatives
• Activist groups (like BLM or LGBTQIA+ Youth, etc.)

RE-VISION

Once you have decided who your audience is, you will decide how best to reach them.  In other words, you will have to choose the best genre for your project.  For Unit 3, this genre must be multimodal. We’ll talk more about what this means, but for these purposes, it means you need to have words and images or words and sounds or words, images and sounds.  In other words, you cannot write a simple essay– this is time for either your Unit One or Unit Two research to come alive!

Remember, you are trying to reach a specific audience here. So you don’t want to choose a genre arbitrarily. You want to choose a genre that is going to speak to the audience you have in mind. Fourth graders probably aren’t going to want to watch a TED Talk. Likewise, you probably shouldn’t make a comic book for the City Council. An Instagram page, with well-curated stories might be a great way to reach high-school seniors, though!

A note: we’ll brainstorm possible genres in class, but there is one restriction now: No PowerPoints!  The reason for this is that PowerPoint  isn’t a genre–it’s a tool, a slideshow, basically. You would never just send a slideshow to City Council and say “here you go!” You might use a slideshow when you give a speech (and you can use a PowerPoint in any speech or lesson plan you give) but the speech is the product, not the PowerPoint. You should also be aware that PowerPoints are famously boring, so it’s best to rely on them sparingly and to rely mostly on what you have to say.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Composers of all sorts often write an Artist’s Statement for their audience that explains their inspirations, intentions, and choices in their creative and critical processes. It helps the reader understand the process that led to the final product by providing insight into what the author set out to do, how they did it, and what they might do to further improve the piece. You will write a one to two page Author’s Statement that reflects on your finished Unit 3 Project.

A successful Artist’s Statement should:

• Discuss your specific rhetorical situation and related choices:
  –your purpose: why you composed the work on that specific topic, in that specific way
  –your audience: what you understood about your readers and how this affected the compositional choices you made

• Explain your choice of genre and how you worked with its conventions. For example, maybe you created a photo essay. An accompanying statement, in which you explain why you found the photo essay to be the best way to communicate your ideas about gun control, for example, would go a long way toward helping your viewers get the most out of your work.

• Reflect on your composition, discussing successes and limitations. Use this as an opportunity to look back at your composition and evaluate the extent of your achievement as well as note what you would have done differently or better.

*Note: This should be a fluid, cohesive document that reflects on and justifies the rhetorical choices in your Unit 3 Project. Do not just merely answer each question in list form.

Grading Criteria:

You will largely get graded on: Appropriateness for your audience, effectiveness of message, and care. What does this mean?

1. APPROPRIATENESS FOR AUDIENCE: Well, first of all, a puppet show is not appropriate for a city council meeting any more than a brochure is appropriate for a preschool class, so, in part, I’m talking about what genre you choose. But I am also talking about topics and diction. If we take the examples of the preschool and the city council meeting, it’s pretty easy to think about. Learning how to use crayons isn’t a real city council topic, and commercial zoning laws aren’t a real preschool topic. Likewise, you would use different diction (and fonts, and pictures, and so on) with kids and with politicians. Usually.

2. EFFECTIVENESS OF MESSAGE: This one is simple to explain, though not always simple to DO. Does your point get across to your intended audience?

3. CARE: This sounds pretty vague, because it’s going to vary by genre, but basically, this is how much of a finished product you turn in. If this is a more formal paper, or a children’s book, or a brochure for the city council, it should be relatively free of grammatical “error.” If you are writing in Brooklyn English, that’s fine (if it fits your audience, of course,) but you still need to be consistent and free of typos and your project needs to look good. In other words, you need to be able to explain why everything that’s on the page (or in the video, or on the webpage, or in the recording, etc) is THERE.

4. ARTIST’S STATEMENT: A fluid and cohesive Artist’s Statement that explains the rationale behind the rhetorical choices made in your Unit 3 assignment.

1. Read “Using Sources Ethically” by Marcia Muth and respond to the Questions below. 

• Choose one to two pieces of information that you found interesting or learned from reading this piece? Why was it interesting? Explain!
• How can you use what you learned to help as you begin to write your feature articles?

2. Choose a Mentor Feature Article! (Remember it can be one of the class texts!)

3. Begin to find information to Quote, Summarize and Paraphrase from in your sources. You have already written some summaries, you may want to write more!

QUOTE

• Look through your sources
• Think about your Research Questions  (Your KWL Chart!)
• Find AT LEAST one quote from your sources that you think meets the criteria of what to quote. Highlight it!
• Introduce it using a signal word (he argued, she said, etc).
• Think about WHY you would quote from this source and not paraphrase or summarize the section.

PARAPHRASE

• Look through your sources.
• Think about your Research Questions. 
• Find at least one place in one of your sources that you would like to try to paraphrase and then paraphrase the section!
• Explain WHY you would paraphrase this section (not quote it or summarize it).

HOMEWORK DUE Wednesday, MARCH 30th Complete the sheet below for AT LEAST 2 Sources (preferably ALL 4!) 

PROJECT 2 – Source Analysis and Evaluation Sheet! 

Analyze EACH SOURCE

Write a Brief Summary / Description 

Write a short (2-3 sentence) summary or description of your source. A summary describes what the source is mostly about– its thesis or main idea. 

You should: 

• Captured the author’s ideas accurately and succinctly
• Avoided inserting your own ideas/ opinions (we want to hear what the AUTHOR thinks/says)
• Avoided plagiarism (borrowing words/ ideas that are not your own)

Identify and Analyze Genre and Rhetorical Situation (audience/ purpose)

Genre: What is the GENRE of the piece. Be VERY specific (ex. not just article, but feature article)

Audience: Who is the intended audience? Explain. How does the author hope the reader will react? Is the genre or format of the source the author chose the appropriate format to reach the intended audience?

Identify and Analyze Rhetorical Appeals (ethos, pathos, logos)

How does the author establish their credibility (ethos)?

How does the author appeal to the audience’s emotions to help persuade them

(pathos)?

How does the author use logic (facts, data, statistics) to help convince the audience (logos)?

Analyze Author’s Craft (how the author presents the message-tone, style)

An analysis of the author’s craft looks carefully at how and why the author presents the information.

• What is the tone of the piece (formal, academic, serious, humorous, scientific, etc.)
• What is the author’ style (for example, does author use figurative language, descriptions)

Evaluate EACH SOURCE for Credibility

WHO

• Who is the author?
• Is the author recognized as an expert on the topic? 
• Is there a bibliography? If so, who is listed? Are the sources listed reputable sources?

WHAT

• What is fact or opinion in the text?
• What are the main ideas and arguments ? Are the arguments backed up with sound reasoning and evidence?
• Do you agree with the ideas in the text based on your own knowledge?
• Is it a primary, secondary, or tertiary source?
• Can you find other credible sources that confirm the same information?

WHERE

• Where does this information come from? Where was it published? (website, organization, magazine, newspaper, etc.)
• Did a reliable source link me to this site? (For example, did you find it on Google or on the CityTech Library?)

WHEN

• When was it published?
• Is it up to date?

WHY

• Why did the author/ producer publish this? (Think PURPOSE)
• Does the author / text appear to be selling something?
• Is there an obvious agenda or bias?

HOW

• How is the material presented?
• Is the text well edited and free of errors?
• Is the formatting well designed and professional looking?
• How is the subject described?