Peer Review Thursday
LIB 110 Scripts Thursday
No Class Tomorrow: Open Office Hours
Attendence reports/class confernces
Library Day
2. Review. Review blog comments
Check your blog to see if an ENN 195 student left you a comment. If they did not, email me at jrogers@lagcc.cuny.edu to say so. If they did, write a comment beneath their comment, which does the following: thanks them, summarizes their advice, and reports what you will do to revise the blog.
3. In-class blog: producing a paragraph about Untouchable. Return to all your notes on the novel, going back two weeks - specifically, class yesterday, class last Thursday, and the class the previous Thursday. Assemble all the keywords you've found helpful and update a list of them in today's notes.
Now return to your free-writing from yesterday. We're going to practice "filling in the templates" for a college paragraph on the novel. Let's work like this:
[summary] In the novel Untouchable, we see a world where...Over the course of the novel, [say what happens in 2-3 sentences; these are 'plot points,' or the major plot episodes]. The main character, Bahka, experiences...[summarize what you believe to be his main experiences].
Now remember: claims about the novel don't repeat what happens, they explain the signifiance of what happens, they explain the importance of what happens. For this assignment, they explain what the novel helps us to understand about issues of racial formation. Remember, claims are not facts. You must be able to disagree with a claim for it to be an argument.
topic sentences
[topic sentence 1: claim 1] The novel Untouchable narrates colonial Indian racial formation in the 1930s by showing us...
[topic sentence 2: claim 2] Based on Bahka's behavior, we learn that...
[topic sentence 3: claim 3] The novel Untouchable highlights the issues of...by showing us that...
[topic sentence 4: claim 4] The conflict in the novel between ... and ... demonstrates to readers the importance of ...
Topic sentences are great locations to add keywords. If you use one, define it in the next sentence. You may want to give it a "general" definition, or what it means in all cases, and also a "specific" definition, or what it means in this novel.
Tweet your claims
When you're sure you have a couple solid claims, Tweet them. Use the hashtag #untouchable
Look over your sentences and notes
Now look over the sentences you've written. Take one claim and turn it into a revised paragraph, with a quote sandwich. Locate your notes on college paragraphs and critical thinking strategies.
Note: Essays do not write themselves. They are built like puzzles, and the "pieces" of the puzzle are your ideas. You must first figure out your best ideas, or claims, and then arrange them into the puzzle of your essay. Notes based on passages, ideas based on notes, keywords based on ideas, claims based on keywords, paragraphs written to support claims. (Use Keywords from cluster courses?)
And then? A cluster of claims can be a thesis.
And then you look at a "cluster," or group, of claims together. What do they have in common? Ideally, you can find something. That commonality might be a thesis.
Or? A really strong single claim be can turn into the thesis.
Or you look at your best claim, and you think, can I expand this into the thesis of the essay? Then you think of other supporting claims you could make that would expand it. Then that one claim becomes your thesis, and you invent new claims to support it.
Done?
Look over these blogs about Twitter and respond to them in three sentence comments. The comments address whether you agree with a claim made about Twitter and why.
Done with that?
Follow the following Twitter handles and figure out what they're up to. Read a few Tweets and "favorite" a couple, or follow a few links.
@MovetoAmendNYC
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