Week 7: March 8 - 14
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Read The Partials a Dystopian Novel
by Dan Wells
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This week we will be responding to the book The Partials by Dan Wells. We will be thinking about how we could use a novel like this when teaching writing. I use this book in my English 130 class as a way to see how social issues are in the pages of dystopian novels and how they relate to our world. This becomes the place they begin to formulate ideas of possible research topics. I connect this back to Melissa Ames's article "Engaging Apolitical Adolescents...” and talk about how we can investigate her claims.
I am asking you to read this book so you can begin to see how the curriculum scaffolding can work for a class. Soon we will be looking at my course and seeing exactly how this works. I am hoping that you will be my mini-students and play along with the syllabus so that you can think about how to layer materials in your own writing classrooms.
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Everyone will complete a Blog or Vlog for this reading. For this blog/vlog, I think what would be interesting is to pretend to be my English 130: Academic Writing student. What social issues do you see in the book and how could that be turned into a research paper? The blog should be at least 150 words or 3 minutes long if you are working on a vlog.
You can choose to complete a microtheme paper for this article. You will need to complete 3 microtheme papers during this course. In this paper, you should consider a more formal approach. Organizational aspects of the paper are important. I'd like you to think about how Ames's article connects with the Partials. How could you use the book and article together in a classroom to create writing assignments? What would those assignments or activities look like?
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These papers are 4 pages long in correct MLA or APA format and should cite all of your material properly. Spelling and grammar count, too. You should be quoting and citing in these papers and they should include a separate (not counted towards the 4-page minimum) Works Cited or Reference page.
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Upcoming Assignment Alert!
Mid-Term Video Response
Due: Sunday, March 14 by midnight
At mid-term each of you will create a 6-minute video that highlights one of our course materials and how you conceptualize using the ideas in that source in your own classroom. This video should analyze and synthesize how the pedagogy we have read informs us about the classroom. You should be able to think of possible directions for this video through the Microtheme Essays and the daily blog/vlog postings.