the lazy discussion and "scaffolding"

And don't forget...

You will want to inculude direct quotations with parenthetical citations for your Posts and Responses. As always, your posting should be around 300+ words and will be evaluated like an in-class essay often assigned in traditional classes. Responses should be about 200+ words each, and must add examples and ideas to the dicusssion. You will not earn points for casual chat

Reminder it is possible to earn a "C" (up to 15 points) with a solid posting and just one responses to other items on the board, bur if you wish to earn a higher score, be sure you have more responses on the board. To earn a full 20/20, you need two substantive responses along with a well-developed and supported posting.


 
 

This week is called "the lazy discussion," but not for the reason you are probably all thinking. This week I AM BEING LAZY :).

The topic for this week's discussion is, well, any topic for next week's Analytical Essay. To see those topics (and the readings involved), go here: Analytical Paper. You will answer the question on the discussion board as best you can, and then you will discuss topics and readings with the class.

The readings are all in this week's Reading Folder in the Files section on Canvas.

This will not be several pages like the essay, so it will not go into nearly as much detail. With luck, we will see a lot of the topics discussed by several people who have lots of fresh ideas.

so why are we doing this?

My face-to-face students actually build a lot of notes via activities and discussions and group work in class. Of course not all of the ideas are golden, but by looking over the works several times and in fresh ways, all of the students bring a lot more information to the writing assignments. They are not just staring at the topic and at blank paper and freezing. Building on prior notes is called "scaffolding," and there is no reason not to take advantage of some ideas from this discussion for next week's paper. So, yes, this is a pre-writing activity.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The paper has to be YOUR WORK. If you parrot someone's discussion in your paper, that is indeed plagiarism. But you can take some notes on fresh ideas you had not considered. Then you will need to back up ideas with your own observations and examples that you find/quote/document from the fiction. Still, this should help :)