Assignment #4: Effective Composition Blog

Causal Analysis / Literature Analysis
So far, we have explored the keyhole template for essay writing, have worked on sentence and paragraph development, grammar issues (dangling modifiers, parallelism, inference use, etc), have wrote personal expository essays, an informational (teaching) essay, a professional narrative paragraph, weekly blogs and daily journals. Our next project paper is a Literary Analysis Report/Essay.  For this essay, you will use the library book you have been reading every Friday and develop a paper around it.  Using the criteria discussed in class, you will develop an essay which analyzes at least two elements of the story.  While this is not a full blown “persuasive essay,” a literary analysis does use some persuasive techniques to convince the reader about your perspective on the elements you are exploring in your paper.  This is sometimes also referred to as a “causal analysis.”

    ·        Read in your textbook (Writing with a Purpose) pages 459 to 468.

    ·     Pick one of the following questions to answer for this week’s blog:

    1) How do Judith S. Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee
demonstrate that the "trickle down" is not relevant to parent-child relationships?

    2) How do the authors illustrate some of the effects of divorce on children (e.g., fear, rejection, anger, loneliness, guilt, and grief)?

    3) How do the authors use the metaphor of "tapestry of many threads" to suggests the complex, long-term effects of the postdivorce period on children?

·    Also, for full credit, respond to at least one other student’s blog. 

·    This is due by Wednesday, October 24, 2012.

Assignment #3: Effective Communication Blog

Planning an Essay:

• Read your text (Writing with a Purpose) pp. 26-42.
• It will discuss strategies for writing, how to write journals, free writing, speculating, interviewing, reading, and evaluating each of these types.
• Summarize your reading in one paragraph highlighting the most important parts of the reading.
• After you have submitted your "blog" answer. Write at least a one sentence response to at least one other person's blog answer.
• Your blog response is due by Monday, October 15th at 9AM.

Assignment #2: Effective Communication Blog

Toward Purposeful Writing

• Read the readings in your textbook "Writing with a Purpose" pages 19-23. 
• After reading, CHOOSE JUST ONE of the following to respond to.
• You receive full credit for writing a minimum one paragraph response AND at least a one sentence response to another person's blog paragraph.
• Your second blog is due by next week Monday at 9 AM (10/8)

1) RESPOND: Respond to Wallace Armstrong's "Brandon's Clown" by trying to remember some words of wisdom that your parents or a trusted friend passed on to you as guidelines for giving your life a sense of purpose.  Then describe an incident in which you tried to follow those guidelines.
                                                             OR
2) EVALUATE: Make a list of the explanations Howard Gardner uses to interpret Mozart's claim that he could hear an entire piece of music in his head at one time.  Then evaluate which of Gardner's explanations make the most sense.  Give your reason's why or why not.
                                                             OR
3) ARGUE: Consider what you have learned in this chapter about the ways in which various professional writers work.  Next consider the differences between the writing they do and the writing you have done as schoolwork (this class and others).  Then develop an argument in which you demonstrate in some detail why their advice helps or hinders the "school writer." 

Assignment #1: Effective Communiation Blog

Paragraph Structure:

• Read your text (Writing with a Purpose) pp. 166-181.
• It will discuss topic and supporting sentences, unity, completeness, order, and coherence. 
• Summarize your reading in one paragraph highlighting the most important parts of the reading.  
•  After you have submitted your "blog" answer.  Write at least a one sentence response to at least one other person's blog answer.
• Your blog response is due by Saturday, September 29th at Noon.

Effective Composition Blog

We will start our "Effective Composition" Blog on Monday, September 24.  You must respond to the blog and then check back during the week to respond to at least one other person's response.  That is a total of two responses each week: one to the teacher and one to another stduent.  I will be recording your number of total responses at the end of the month for your grade.  I will publish a new "main" comment every Sunday night or Monday morning of every week.  Keep-up.  You don't want to fall behind.

The Excitement vs. The Fear

Well, we have just one week and another school year begins; but it really never ended for most teachers.  Through courses like we have been taking for the past two months (online teaching certification), we have really had “school” on our mind all summer.  Summer definitely gives us the opportunity to evaluate and reflect on the past school year and the opportunity to recharge and re-energize us on news ideas or topics.  For me, all I have thought about is technology.  We were told last semester that students could bring and use in class phones, kindles, iPads, and laptops for 2012-13.  So this summer, I have been thinking predominately about when and how I am going to use these new technologies in my classroom this year. 

 

Frankly, I am constantly amazed at how innovative the internet has become.  I remember using my first TI-99-4A in my classroom back in the early 80’s.  I remember how excited I was when I got my first 5” floppy drive – no more cassettes with the obnoxious scratching sound as it loaded my data.  I remember the excitement of writing my first basic program which allowed me to test my students for their learning modality.  That excitement continues today as I discover new applications and programs which use more visual, sound and collaborative concepts.  I am especially excited about the BYOD (bring your own device) has become the standard for WAWM classrooms. 

However, my excitement also brings some worry – will I be able to “keep-up.”  As technology changes so quickly today, I fear missing or falling behind. More than ever, I need to maintain and surpass my natural desire to learn.  It is critical today for a teacher to not only maintain their content area; they must also be proficient in “how” they teach it.  Using technology to engage students is no longer an option it is a requirement.  I worry about falling behind.

Second Course: A Rocky Start

Steven Curtis Chapman in his song Pray sings “when you say ‘Amen’ just start up again.”  That is how I feel about these summer online endorsement courses; I just get done with one and I have to immediately start again with another one. Unfortunately my start has been rather rocky.  Literally, I went camping at Devil’s Lake state park and unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) had no access to the internet, or moodles, or blogs, or blackboards.  So, I am now behind and trying frantically to catch-up.

This weeks focus on the e-learning pedagogy seems to be in contrast to normal upper-level and adult education.  Pedagogy has long been associated with the concept of “telling” our kids what they have to know; whereas andragogy has always been our goal in older youth and adult education.  We want to have our students become “self-motivated” by the learning so they will want and desire to learn more.  It seems to be an oxymoron to say we are really discussing the pedagogy of andragogy, but in essence that is what we have been doing.  We have been discussing the requirements for creating an e-environment which will motivate our students to be intrinsically motivated to learn.  E-learning to be effective requires this internal motivation to be successful.  Students who have no motivation would find it hard to take on-line courses such as Waukesha’s Q program.  The balance of internal and external motivation is really the crutch for e-success.  The real discussion after setting the technology stage is knowing when to let go of the bike and let the student ride and possibly fall by themselves. 

 There is no real perfect pedagogy to learning anyway as all students are unique. The studies we read about are based upon a general consensus and very few kids are really “normal.”  As teachers we will still have to tweak and modify and prescription our student’s e-experiences in order to make them proficient and profitable. 

Well, that is all the ramblings I can do for now.  I have to read some of my cohort’s blogs.  Until next week…