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Oops, science is POWERFUL!
ENGL 390, 390H, and (sometimes) 398V Class Journal
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Week three: sentences and paragraphs
in the context of your rain garden memo. Some of this is review for you but consider this strategic review. You can use sentences not only to carry content BUT as designed structures to help your reader enter the material, take up information easily, and leave the document better for having read what you wrote.
Let's look at examples of topic sentences useful in the rain garden memo:
Rain gardens, or bioretention ponds, are a kind of low impact development. Low impact development....
Rain gardens have two components: layers of percolation material and carefully chosen plants.
Rain gardens protect the local environment by absorbing water run-off from impervious surfaces and by sequestering pollutants.
Dr. Allen Davis studies rain garden effectiveness. Davis, a civil engineering professor, has been studying bioretention for more than twenty years.
Let's also think about sentences generally. General advice to you? Write shorter sentences than those you are familiar with in literature and many of your textbooks.
Now, let's think about sentences (MS Word docs (1 pagers) that will likely download to your machine, depending on how your browser is arranged):
MONDAY's OHitS/AMA link here. As ever, I host from 9-12. Show up and ask a question. Lurk to see what others ask. If you are busy, you can look at that document later. If you have a question off hours, you can ask me the next class day in the new OHitS/AM document. You can also email me. In this way, we are trying to be together apart. In Testudo, this class is identified as synchronous, as in we would be f2f in real life. I am trying to honor that structure and give all of you more control over your days.
Hint: are you unclear about the level of the detail you need about rain gardens? Visiting today's document will help you. In the sentence types we try out, you can see detail. And, you can ask about the level of detail and I can answer in sample sentence structures. Learning contextually is more powerful than having you do ten pages of sentence worksheets.
Other tasks for you (labor grades in effect): how is your reading going of your chosen article? Recall Raul Pacheco-Vega's guidance on reading? Here is a Google doc I made for you to copy to your drive to keep track of reading this article. The frame is a bit simpler than the one he advises and previews the content I need for you to prepare for your March/April assignment of reviewing the article.
By the way, read his entry on cognitive overload in online higher ed courses. I feel similarly. Consequently, I am trying to design for this. Read your article in bits and parts all this month. This means that you will have a head-start on meaning before you write that third assignment.
Marybeth Shea
Good morning. We will stay in the same OHitS/AMA google doc and work on sentences, especially topic sentences and transitions. Here is a good reading by Raul Pachego Vega on the combined technique of thinking about topic sentences and paragraphs. You can skim and parse that blog post, dwelling on the images.
I am preparing a short table of practical take-aways from this reading. Note the citation style of Pachego Vega in that blog post: he notes the work of Patrick Dunleavy in this link. One additional writing/reading frame we use all year is that of the power of hypertext. That readers can choose their own adventure in many digital occasions of reaction.
Another person that he recommends and acknowledges is Eve Ewing, who uses the five-paragraph essay as a familiar structure to many writers. You may know this genre as the (famous) Extended Constructed Response.
Note: I like that RPV -- Raul Pachego Vega -- gives you the ethos clue that Dunleavy and Ewing both hold PhD degrees. THat is a kind of credibility move but I wish he would preview the platform too.
For example, how about this way to introduce linked material:
Dr. Eve Ewing is a Chicago-based sociologist who speciazes in learning and cognition, as well as cultural critique of education. One of her projects concerns writing from k-12 but extending that frame into college and career. She also writes comic books for Marvel. Here is Outlawed.
Marybeth Shea
Happy Friday. Here is the inaugural post in Eli Review for your first assignment, due Monday at 11;45 PM. Between 9-12, I host in this OHitSAMA.
The link to Eli Review is in your ELMS calendar, too. I am checking/rechecking the rest of the semester and will post links soon. Subscribe to that feed in ELMS so you can have pingy reminders.
Happy Lunar New Year. Wish we could celebrate in class with moon cakes or some other treat. Cooking gear goal, link in picture to Amazon.
Like a cookie press but for moon cake darlings
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WEEK 2: learning our
tech platforms
- You need to make a Google folder of my documents that I will use in the semester: Office Hours in the Sky/Ask Me Anything (OHitS) documents that will be hosted by me on all MWF between 9-11. You can type anonymously and I will answer in real time. The docs will be locked midday but available for you to read. In this way, my class is synchronous but not required AND asynchronous of shared knowledge for you to read as you will.
- Learning a bit of writing composition pedagogy helpers
- Cognitive wedge (one-page Google doc) praxis (TBD Monday and all week)
- Stasis theory overview (2 Google slides)
- Follow-up on audience analysis slides, two of which were discussed in WEEK 1 below.
- Checking out these resources here on Squarespace: set of language helper links, to see the range of digital sources on language choices
Looking ahead? Wednesday and Friday we will prep for the invention phase of memo 1: understanding what rain gardens are and preparing to define and describe. If you want, read ahead for ten minutes a day or so. You can look at the Wikipedia entries or do a google search (think critically about what you find).
TL:DNR? Try this:
- squarespace for weekly, MWF guidance and links to learning content (WEEK with updates)
- OHitS/AMA docs on MWF for you to ask me questions openly (from the discussion I will calibrate what we do next.
- ELMS calendar to be linked to specific tasks later this week
- ELI Review (will will register for this in Week 3).
What we do in these spaceds:
- Squarespace, where I present short, targeted lessons on writing and link to our discussion spot on
- Google Docs, where you interact with me MWF 9-12 and can "see" what is there
- Eli Review, where you interact with each other to write, review, revise --> toward excellent writing (and learning) for three major assignments: Memo 1, Memo 2, Article Review.
Promise to you: I will work hard to curate links to what you need for the day, the week, and the month.
Recall the labor grading approach: I will grade you on three papers, each accompanied by four labor grades for your reading, drafting, commenting, revising, and generally being part of our learning community.
Arrive alive, together.
Marybeth Shea
First assignment: short, definition memo. Here are a few remarks that give you context. Then, move over to the OHitS Google doc (me, hosting between 9-12).
There, I preview the size of the document and the arrangment and size of paragraphs. This will help guide you in your recursive step on what sources you need. Recall this context: Boss says, "I need backgrounder by 11. Driving to Baltimore to meet with Hogan on rain gardens and bioretention."
We will write for Jane Austen Powers at Leaf it to Us. Wh is she?
Answer: SHE IS THE BOSS and your primary audience for the memo.
Source: Dover Pictoral Archive -- Office Clip Art collection
LESSON 1 to review: Topic Sentences, to open each paragraph: A list of qualities for you to strive for
Usually a short direct sentence (think announcement)
- Signals the topic in the paragraph (think preview)
- Hooks the reader by 1) raising a question or 2) provoking thought
- Can be placed anywhere, but early on in the paragraph is the best default strategy for most professional documents; in other words, at the beginning of the paragraph
- Contains an element of transition from the previous paragraph
The memo assignment connects to stasis theory. We will write an in-class set of four short paragraphs that expand the definition stasis, using the cognitive wedge strategy.
- Para 1 opens the 2nd Stasis: Definition (what is a rain garden, briefly, by two functions)
- Para 2, adds detail and places in context: Classifying (what type of technology is this? Hint: green infrastructure, sustainability, low impact development and storm water management)
- Para 3, elaborates further by painting a picture: Describing (Illustrative; give some functional detail on the layers of soil and also look at the plants and mulch at the surface)
- Now enters the evaluation or quality stasis, that you can write as an evalution paragraph (is this technology good or bad? Note, we are making a claim. Claims must be supported with evidence. Use these two sources to support this claim: Low Impact Development Center (founded by Larry Coffman who invented rain gardens) and some of the slides in this presentation by the "grand wizard' of bioretention, Allen Davis, PhD.
Marybeth Shea
Friday, we will work in a new Office Hours in the Sky/AMA doc. There, we will connect stasis theory to your readings about rain gardens/bioremediation/low impact development (a view-only Google doc). See those three words? They are your search engine words to sift through some Google results to get clear on these terms. Note: we need to learn how to use Google well and ethically.
I will place the link for Eli Review in an ELMS email to you. Go to EliReview.com and register. No tasks there yet. However, you can view some short videos to see how this works. I promise, this system is better than using any of the options, including long discussion threads to work with each other reviewing/revising your documents.
Still building the ELMS calendar, which will always link to your tasks in Eli Review.
For the next two weeks, you are reading critically:
- your review article to prep for our late March/early April assignment #3
- Google based reading and my suggested links about rain gardens/bioremediation/low impact development
- and, I assume, tons of reading for your other classes.
Therefore, here are a few links to that will support you in your heavy reading loads
- Policy expert and professor Raul Pachego-Vega's wonderful website about academic reading, writing, presenting (all linked by critical thinking): This link, which includes a template for note taking, is really good
- My reading guide, based on ecologist K.E.'s approach (1-page Google doc/outline)
Meta-analysis terms (concepts that will help you now)
- last mile problem, described here briefly in Business Insider
- rain gardens are a last mile solution
- our mask distribution project to each other also has last-mile qualities
Meta-technique option in modern digital communication:
- do you see in this post and my other teaching materials that I try to help readers move through hypertext with efficiency and support?
- links are curated (type of information, sense of platform, and length of document/hypertext space
- where possible, I help you see ethos (business journal, ecologist, etc.)
- also, I try desperately NOT to send you to pay walled information
- how about you adopt this meta-technique in YOUR writing?
Welcome to Spring 2021: WEEK 1 RECAP
Good morning. This Class Journal place is the primary way to keep track of how this class works. This portion of my teaching website is a blog scroll, meaning that each new entry appears higher in the feed than those previously.
I will POST WEEKLY, with follow-ups as needed for Wednesday and Friday. I would check in MWF and use the links to resources and lessons.
Tasks for Wednesday and Friday of WEEK 1: (most of you have done these tasks already)
- Read the syllabus and syllabus rationale so you are aware of my teaching strategies
- Add a slide to this introduction set, so I we can "visualize" each other
- Visit Eli Review and spend ten minutes on the site. Note: you are not logging in yet. Just scoping out.
- Look at this padlet on diversity and inclusion/peer editing/classroom climate. We will look at these links on Friday during our Google Meet (9AM, 10AM) so have this interactive resource in a browser tab when we meet.
- Quick tech test for Monday in GoogleMeet (complete by Wednesday AM so we can look at this Google Jamboard together. This jamboard has three pages. You only need to do one of the three prompts. Try to help each other fill up the three pages on COVID visualization, masking directions, and humor to del with COVID stress and cognitive overload.
Links to save:
For now, this Google Meet link will be used repeatedly for our class meetings. Here is our GroupMe also. These links are also in the Welcome to Class announcement in ELMS. Here is a template for a notes capture sheet.
MONDAY! December 1 Papers due OR Paper for one last Eli Review
Good morning. I will be in the same old OHitS/AMA of last week linked here. On Wednesday, I will post a new OHitS/AMA document about personal statements for professional school and graduate school. On Friday, I will consider at 12Noon GoogleMeet session about these importation career documents. Interested? Discuss on GroupMe and get back to me about this possible talk-session.
Today, I hang my metal Christmas cabbage "wreath." And, I sort out some of the holiday items. If you want me to post some of my little observances this next two weeks, let me know. I assure you that some of my holiday joy is silly and even a bit odd. I wish you all success this semester, safety from the virus, and rest over December and January.
Happy Thanksgiving/STAY SAFE PLEASE
We will meet here today, if you need guidance on Paper 3. After December 1, I will offer advice/guidance that is optional: concerns personal statements for jobs, grad school, professional school.
Positivity rate in PG County is now over 8 percent. Very serious. Be guidance by science, please.