Week 7: rain garden wrap up/preview of coffee cup memo
Let's gather a few resources you have seen to refine your rain garden memo that is due this Friday in Eli Review. I will open up what I call a "parking lot," which will be open for a week. You have a week to turn in the rain garden memo to me for a grade.
Resources:
- Checklist!
- Google discussion guide here!
- Today and Wednesday, we will talk about your options for variations, should you choose.
- Break a very long paragraph into two, to help your reader. Take care with transitions so that your reader can see that the two paragraphs treat one larger topic.
- Divide classifying paragraph into the low impact/bioretention way to address the environmental problem of storm water and carried pollutants into local water sheds; and 2) answer the journalism Qs of who, where, when, (the what is in the first paragraph just described.
- Divide the illustrating paragraph into two, based on the above-ground and below-ground content, if you are wordy or offer many details to also show how the infiltration or absorption is accomplished by the soil media layers, within a natural or built depression. Then, you can note -- IF YOU WANT -- the phytoremediation role of plants that uptake heavy metals by hyperaccumulation as well as all plants taking up borh hydrocarbons and a good measure of N and P.
- For the evaluation paragraph, you may want to close the memo with a separate and brief optional paragraph on cost-effectiveness (we will discuss the differences in class re Larry Hogan as a republican and Wes Moore as a democrat.
- You can even offer the two examples of rain gardens, by curated links, as an additional short paragraph. We also will have another contextual way you can consider this that involves "playing" in our Leaf it To Us case.
- Break a very long paragraph into two, to help your reader. Take care with transitions so that your reader can see that the two paragraphs treat one larger topic.
If we have time, we will scroll back to last week and consider empty subjects again and even the way to revise away your its.
Samples:
It is important to schedule your fall 23 COVID vaccine immediately.
Schedule your fall 23....
It is useful to consider the origin story of rain gardens in Maryland. Larry Coffman....
Larry Coffman, former director of PG County Department of the Environment, invented rain gardens in the early 1990s.
It is essential that people use a green coffee cup when selecting a disposable hot beverage cup.
via GIPHY. And, this wave file (51 seconds and the sound may start, depending on your browser) to help you understand this image of Cousin It.
Reposted from Week 6 and earlier-->
- Empty subjects (there is/are; it) READ THIS ENTIRE PRESENTATION FOR WEDNESDAY
- BLUF?
- NO ITs in the document, period.
- No There is/there are subject
- BLUF?
- Shorter definition of dummy subjects (British term) with a case for when to use them (phrase subjects, often).
- Short google doc on empty subjects in science, whichh features a handy table of substituions.
Marybeth Shea
Happy Friday.
Variations = writing freedom for you. The above clip is from Braveheart (movie titles are in italics; free mini lesson for you). Caution: you can google other freedom clips from the movie but you will find an grisly British execution scene. Not advised by me or go in the peril knowingly. Is a classic movie but not as well done in the genre as Gladiator, says me. Other lesson: that type of argument cannot be won. You just have preferences here and you try to persuade others. Ultimately, we are able to choose our own favorites, which is a kind of critical and aesthetic freedom.
Here are some possible variations on your memo, primarily options that address two goals of some writers:
- If you want to add extra detail but not overwhelm Jane as you understand her specific stresses in the context.
- Perhaps want to follow up with Jane in am imagined context after the meeting, as we do in real life.
You can write this memo per original directions without these details. Yet, I want to reward the thoughtfulness and offer freedom to writers who do want to try variations that fit their preferences.
First, for the two curated links of local rain gardens, you can place them
- as a small separate paragraph after your Evaluation-Davis paragraph. Introduce them with a good topic sentence that says Here are two visual examples from Takoma Park and UMCP, respectively... OR This Blue Baltimore short PDF shows a cross diagram with brief notes on how the layers work....or as you wish.
- if you are concise, you can place earlier in the document at either the Classification or Illustration paragraph similarly.
- NEW: you can add a note to Mb at the end of your memo, saying one of two approaches. 1) Perhaps you want to talk to Jane in a staff meeting or in the hallway and want to mention something like the military uses a variation of rain gardens at their latrine pits or Some EPA clean sites use rain gardens in thee and five year plans to remediate heavy metals from a site near water or cropland.
- 2) Pretend you will write a follow up email after Jane writes to thank you and note a detail or two she is intrigued by.
Details on assignment are found in the ELI REVIEW Writing Prompt linked here, on your ELMS calendar, and noted in a group ELMS email to all of you. YOU HAVE A WEEK TO TURN IN, hence I call this a parking lot. Imagine being able to drop off your car at the airport long term lot.
Suggestions:
- Use GroupMe to ask each other questions
- Review these posts to re-aquaint yourself with details
- Study the Eli Review prompts to recall what you learning be comparing your writing to peer partners and to see what comments peer partners offered.
Go forward in confidence. I see excellent work here by all.
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