Important Dates

Office Hours During Finals Week

Noon on Thursday, may 5
If you would like to turn in your essay early for a chance at a rewrite, please place them outisde my office by this time. Do not give me rough drafts - they must be final drafts of yours that I can grade and give comments on - I will not edit.


U P D A T E
All early-turn-in papers are outside my office door - unless you handed in a final without option of rewrite. They have been graded and commented on.


Midnight on Monday, May 9th
All final papers are due by midnight. No excuses will be accepted. If it is turned in after, it will be -10 for every day. Make sure the final absolutely follows MLA style - in all format - otherwise the grade will lower on account of extra spacing, larger text size and other non-MLA format changes.


Midnight on Wednesday, May 11
Late papers will be accepted until this time. The grade will be an automatic F if turned in afterwards.

Presentations Friday, Monday and Wednesday

*Presentations will begin today and I will ask those listed for the other two days if they would prefer to go today.

Before presentations begin
*Turn off all computers - gets rid of noise and distraction
*Take out a piece of paper and pen - you will put your names on these and for each presentation you will write down comments and questions.
*A reminder that the presentations are mandatory for the participation, presentation and attendance grade.

Rough Draft Activities

*Attendance
*Quoting in text
-underlining (books) vs Quotes (short works)
-ellipses [...] - for omitions
-block quotes - 4 sentences or more in a quote
*Citation List and details
*Glossing Exercise
-make sure there are no repetitions
-if there are too many main points, look at puling them apart and elaborating more individually
*Highlighter Activity
-Highlight all quotes in your rough draft. 20% quotes, 80% you.
-Discussion of paraphrasing and its uses vs Summarizing and its uses
*Top Ten Mistakes Handout

The Details

*Attendance
*Reclaiming your topic: Steps 1 - 3.
*Introduction to Beginning your essay
-Hand out
-Choose 3 and compose in your wiki in your reasearch notes page
*How to end the essay
*Outline Exercise (1 piece of paper and 10 or more post-its
*For Wednesday, bring in your full rough draft for revisions and discussion. Also, bring in your works cited page - we will work on MLA

This Weekend

Reminders
*Final Product of the ResearchProject will be due on Monday, May 9th by midnight. Early turn-ins are welcome if you would like to be free for finals week. If paper is turned in late, each day is -10 points from the final grade of the paper. However, if it is not turned in by Midnight on the 11th, it will receive an F - I need time to evaluate these papers to get a grade in.

*Presentation Sign-Ups were handed out today (if you were absent you will only be able to sign up for a spot that is free). Please check the page and add your name to a spot that you would like.

*Rewrites will be due on Monday in class. These will be handed back to you on Wednesday.

*Over the weekend, get a good start on a rough draft. Have your research done and your ideas out for you to work with. We will begin working with organization and main ideas/thesis on monday.

*By Wednesday, I will want to see that you have a rough draft completed and are working on revision. I will then check your name off and we can work on MLA documentation format and putting it all together.

Day # 6 (Days left)

Conferences went wonderfully! If you have missed your conference time, it will be dealt with in the same manner as a late paper - the conference will lose 10 points per day. Conferences were on the class wiki, on the door of my office and discussed ahead of time: there is no exception.

Any rewrites that I asked for on the Research Proposal are due after class today. Other rewrites will be due in class on Monday. No exceptions will be made - the end of the semester is coming fast and I need them before we begin working on the drafts of the Research Project.

Today we will be discussing the presentation and the sign up schedule.

Also, I have an example of what you can do with the wiki for the presentation under JoeSchmo's Wiki page. Feel free to "edit the document" and see how images and URL's were inserted.

I will also go over what I will expect from your final paper which is due on May 4th in class.

Conference Week begins

Reminders:

• The conference has a large impact on the final grade. Come to the conference with what you have!
• If you sign up for the conference late or it isn't showing on the online conference schedule (you only signed up at my door) please leave a comment on this blog or send me an e-mail.
• Bring A final copy of your research proposal - MLA style with 4 annotated sources.
• We will also be looking at the symbolism paper and all past papers, grades, and attendance. This should help you figure your grade.

Last day of class before conference week

• Reminder - no class during conferences
• Reminder - I will be checking the Messageboard throughout conference week for questions and concerns
• Reminder - Project Proposal is due at your conference time
• Don't let this happen to you - get the work done as we go
  

1. Attendance
2. Sending out conference sign-up sheet again
3. Research Strategies Discussed and handouts given for your time in the library
4. Research Proposal Example
5. Library time for those that are confident in their choice - need to clear with me before you leave.
6. Time in the Messageboard for those that are still not finding their topic or focus questions.

Finalization of Topic

*Attendance
*I will go over the GradingTemplate
*I will also be handing out the sign-up sheet for conferences. This will be posted on my door and filled into the wiki as a reminder (ConferenceSchedule).
*We will go over the Example essay handout and discuss what the proposal should look like when you come into conference.
*We will then work on a topic exercise in the message board. This will be a step by step process in which you and your classmates will help each other focus your topic. All notes will be put into your /ResearchIdeas page when you are done with this exercise.

Exploration of Possible Topics

*Attendance
*Exploration of possible topics in groups : I'll be putting everyone into groups of 3-4 and assigning you numbers that correspond to the Research Topics. Each group should take 5-7 minutes on 6 rotations and add what they think could work.
*We will then talk about the Focus Questions that can help you choose a topic.
*The focus questions will be due for all three of your topic choices before class on Friday. Write at least 2 sentences per question to get a good start on what you'd like to research.

Final Project Begins

*Attendance
*Discussion on grades - you can see your attendance record and major paper grades at the end of class. Also, I have hard copies of your Disney Comparison papers if you would like to see my comments - They will be in my office and we will look over it together. These were graded using the rubric I handed out a couple weeks ago. During the conferences I will have the hard copies for our use in finding weak and strong points of your writing.
*I will hand out the Research Proposal and Research Project as I cover any questions
*We will discuss the next few weeks timewise and look at what needs to be accomplished
*We will then have an exercise about the research paper and some concerns students may have.

*Also, as you may have noticed, our Enchantment Quiz is due midnight tonight. Early Tuesday morning I will begin looking at the posting dates and see if you have been keeping up or doing the work. Readability is essential - please run it through a spell check.
**A-On time
**B-Late on one or two posts
**C-Late on most
**D-Only half done
**F-Not even half done or missing
This will be a fair grading to those students who have been keeping up with the assignments.

*A reminder for absences - 4 is the most I allow before it begins to lower your final grade. It is -5 points of your final grade in the class for every day you have missed (this was covered at the beginning of the semester and is in my Syllabus).

*Through the rest of the week I will be looking for participation in the wiki-ized version of the Enchantment Book.