first a quick note on scaffolding

If you have looked ahead to the Upcycling Paper (you are looking ahead, right?), you will see that this is actually a short pre-writing activity that leads up to that essay; likewise, the Discussion from last week may actually be used as notes for the opening of this very short paper. This building up a larger paper from smaller activities and exercises and pre-writing assignments is called "scaffolding," and it is how you should write college/university papers whenever possible. It is how real writers write. It is rare to just sit down at a computer, stare and a blank screen, start typing from beginning to end in one sitting, and producing something that is fully thought-out and really well-developed. Effective papers are built, modified, then polished. It is how we will approach ALL papers this semester, ; you will be able to use some material from the Discussions that precede them, and here we are taking an added step before the Upcycling essay is due next week.

This exercise is designed to get you started writing, to set up your paper in MLA-8 format and to produce a very short Works Cited page (also in MLA-8 format). This is important because any papers you submit that are not done in MLA-8 format will not be accepted; they will have to be re-done as late papers, and late papers lose points.

The assignment will be submitted the same way you submit your essays--as .docx, .pdf or .rtf files you save on your computer or a thumb drive and attach to your e-mail and sent to me at JRCORBALLY@GMAIL.COM; if you have any questions about How to Submit Your Work or how to set up a paper in MLA format, please review the Information on Writing Assignments page for our class. If you are unsure how to set up your document or do a Works Cited page in MLA-8 format, go back and review this week's readings (one was a reference called MLA Sample that you were to print out, and one was a video on How to Set up your Paper and Works Cited which you were asked to view AS you set up your paper. AGAIN papers not in MLA-8 format will not be accepted.

Note: this is the shortest paper for the class. The basic text is just about one full page, and it is worth up to 50 points (well, you did not have a lot of time, after all), and it has three basic parts that you must include (see below). All of this is very easy as long as you follow the directions. Oh, and that is another important goal of this assignment; it shows whether or not you are reading carefully and following directions; yes, this is a composition course, but it is also a READING course.

The first paragraph will be your opening. In your discussion you described a whole lot of stuff that is cluttering some space and which says something about you (or someone you know) and why you (or that other person) seems unable to let go of all of this stuff. Pick the top five-to-seven (only) items from that cluttered space (items that are very unique, distinctive, interesting, detailed) to copy into your opening. It will follow an opening line or two, something like this:

My room is a nightmare mess. I am a sentimentalist who can't seem to throw or even give anything away. My desk alone is covered with (and here is your list of five-to-seven things from your discussion, no more than that many).

After that long sentence, and it will be long if you included truly-detailed examples, you will need a transition that signals where the next part of your paper (your next paragraph) is going. It will be something like this (and, in fact, you may use this word-for-word if you like it):

If I ever have a chance of seeing my     desk (or whatever you are describing)     again, I had better do something about the clutter, something like upcycling.

That's all for paragraph 1

OK, now tie paragraph 2 to paragraph 1 with something like

Upcycling is a kind of repurposing that takes cast off or unused items and turns them into new and improved, useful items.

The next sentence will, of course, be about upcycling, and you will need to locate some information on the internet (you saw how in one of this week's videos). Look up one of the following two things (and you need to locate the sources yourself; do not use the readings I gave you; I looked those up):

  1. what are some of the earliest examples of upcycling?
  2. why is upcycling currently a popular trend?

Read the article and find a section with two or more lines (not just a short phrase or a few words) that have really interesting examples that you can quote word-for-word in your paper. If you looked up #1, then your next sentence will be this (or something very much like it):

Upcycling is not new; according to one article, it has roots that go back to, " ____________ " (Lastname).

If you looked up #2, then your next sentence will be this (or something very much like it) instead:

There are several reasons upcycling is currently popular; according to one article, " ____________ " (Lastname).

Whichever of those you choose, you will need to fill in that blank inside the quotation marks with the super-interesting direct quotation that you located in that article

REMINDER: you want to quote a detailed, interesting section, a couple of lines, not just a few words.

Next you will need to change "Lastname" inside the parenthetical citation (we always use parenthetical citations after direct quotations); it will be the last name of the author of the source that you took the quotation from. If no author is listed, that's not a problem. This week's readings (and videos) explain what to do in this case.

Then the final couple of sentences of paragraph 2 will look at one item from your list in paragraph 1 and think about how it might be upcycled. Follow that with a picture of something like it that has been upcycled.

OPTIONALLY: If you are inspired, you may write about BOTH "history of" and "trending" in Paragraph 2, and you may certainly expand those last couple of sentences on upcycling some item(s) from your opening into a third paragraph all its own.

OK, that is the whole writing part of this paper. If you follow the instructions here exactly, it should not take you long at all. Now you need a Works Cited page (Works Cited always starts on a new page of its own; that is shown in the videos this week).

Your Works Cited is required to have just one entry, the article you took the direct quotation from for paragraph 2. The entry must be done exactly correctly in MLA-8 format, of course. If you do not know how to do that, well, you did not print out, read, and refer to the file you were asked to, and you did not look at this week's videos.

And if you DO get quotations from two or more sources, then you will have two or more Works Cited entries. If so be sure you do the spacing and hanging indents correctly.

and that is it

That is the whole assignment. Future assignments will not be this short; this was just a warm-up exercise. Again, if you would like to see some correctly-done Student Samples, go to Canvas, click on the Files section, and open up this Week's readings folder again. They are there to serve as models for you.