Journal V

This was an interesting week in that the students did not have much class readings to do and instead had to (or should have) focused their time on their first drafts. I think they were relieved about the lightened reading load. However, the one day in which we discussed Dawkins and Bryson reminded me of an ongoing issue I have with these texts. I assigned them dialectical notebooks for both with the addition of summaries and a synthesis, since that's what they need the most practice on. They prefer doing DNs to reading responses, and reading their DNs breaks the monotony i find in the responses; the dilemma is which tool is more effective for them understanding and retaining the main points of these articles. The jury's still out, I guess. It seems like the RR would garner the best retention and understanding, but oftentimes their responses are so generic and fill-in-the-blank-like that both methods seem flawed. Maybe next semester, I will revamp the reading responses.

Monday
     I went on a grading binge to get their Intros and Syntheses back to them Sunday evening. I kept a list of common errors to address to the class as a whole (MLA, quotations, punctuation (apropos for the discussion we were about to enter over Dawkins). I found out that they hadn't read my comments on their intros and syntheses yet. This, frankly, pissed me off and worried me about how they would do the rest of the week.
    We transitioned into discussing Dawkins first and then Bryson. We basically discussed raising/lowering and punctuation as a rhetorical device. I didn't have time to do a group activity like Javan suggested in class, but next time I think I will so I can see how they do using punctuation rhetorically. I think the students have figured out that these readings do not have consequences or are incidental; that is, they will not be tested over what we do so it is okay if they don't understand or remember the readings. I don't know how to combat this attitude. As I expected, the Bryson reading went better. We ended class discussing the fluidity of the English language and they were very vocal about examples of how it's changed, so I let them roll with it. They said that they vastly prefer the Readings on Writing book to Writing about Writing. Interesting.

Wednesday
     Their homework for Wednesday was to complete a peer review of the Due Today, Do Tomorrow essay. I told them to imitate what I had done on their own papers. Rather than bring in their peer reviews, I had them answer these questions and compose a letter to the peer. After going over some technical things like how to submit to SafeAssign (which not all students remembered to do or figured out-ugh! Why don't they write stuff down??) I split them into groups. each member was to share his/her letter to the peer and then as a group, they were to collectively write a letter and then share with the class. I was very impressed with how their letters turned out. They touched on all the important shortcomings of the essay and each group actually had different suggestions for how to improve the essay. I hope I didn't insult them by being so shocked and impressed that they did such a good job, but I was proud. The rest of the class involved getting through as much of the paper as a class as time allowed. They did pretty well on this, too. I left feeling satisfied they would do well on their peer reviews.

Friday
   All but 2 students turned their papers into SafeAssign on time. None of their reports were shockingly high. I think we will briefly go over the SA reports sometime next week since I didn't get to it this week. I let them know that their papers are only in the peer review stage and that if they wanted my input or comments, they'd have to schedule a conference with me, but I'd be more than happy to do it. So far, no takers. As an aside, the students were ROWDY today, apparently because of "10 fest." There was a lot of irrelevant chatter and talking over me, which I think is actually becoming a bit of an issue. I'm not a yeller, so I just continue talking until they stop, but I've had to employ more "guys...." or shushings than normal. I didn't nip this in the bud when it first started happening because they used to be so quiet I was just happy they were talking. But now it's something I certainly need to get control of next week.
    After I went over the homework assignment for Monday and told them exactly what was expected of their peer review (cover letter, cc me, etc.) we just workshopped an outside sample for the rest of the class. Even though they did so well with Wednesday's sample essay, this essay, they seemed to focus on surface level errors much more. I had to keep reminding them that that wasn't the focus of this peer review. Hopefully, they'll understand that.

Overall, I think they met my goals in terms of learning how to peer review. Areas of concern are my lack of authority in the classroom and the effectiveness of RR and DNs. I think that moving onto Project 2 will allow me to enact some changes (and become stricter over class discussions). I'm both incredibly excited and a little worried about how the hooks and X readings will go over. I'm highly sensitive to the issues of race, class, and gender that these readings bring up and from things I've overheard, I'm expecting callous attitudes. But I want to look at this as a learning opportunity. Unfortunately, when a privileged group first learns about their privilege, it does not usually go over well.