Writing Groups & In-Class Writing
WHAT:
This term I'll set up a Google Drive Folder where you will have editing rights. We will use this to collaborate on daily class discussion by doing short responses in class. Don't try to share your personal docs with me. Put your work in this folder even if you draft it elsewhere.
You will learn a key to how we teach literature at UR: close reading.
It matters in other fields, such as the legal-writing and business-writing I have taught over the years. Reading for detail and re-reading reinforce another goal of our class, practicing longer argument-based essays.
You will do one response each day and at week's end, each student decides which of the two to submit for a grade. Your group will pick one of the group's responses to share as well in class discussion.
If you are a slacker and don't do the reading, you'll likely get a D-range grade. If you miss both days in a week, you'll have a Zero for that week's response but don't panic. I will let you drop the lowest response grade of the term. Reason? You cannot participate if you are not in class.
HOW:
Each day, one person in the group should create the Google Doc. You all will add your own paragraph to it. Before we begin discussing the responses, you should also download a copy of what the group did locally onto your laptop.
Name the group document by group number and date : Group 1, 1/17/23 (for instance)
Each of you should produce a paragraph or two in the group document, but DO NOT start counting words. That's a childish habit. Say what you mean, dig deeply, and you'll not need padding.
EACH of you should pick a passage from the day's reading (as short as a line of dialogue or a short bit of text). DO NOT retype it. Just give us page number and the first few words. You may bring in a few other short direct quotes to provide evidence for your claims. Analyze then, in as much detail as possible, why and how the passage reveals an important idea about symbolism, a larger theme, or patterns of language. Point to other spots in the text where this idea matters.
An abbreviated example:
On page 163, Frodo says "first part of quote..." and this introduces an idea I find important because it distinguishes good from evil in Middle Earth. . . we see the theme of self-sacrifice repeated, as in when Sam Gamgee decides to. . . that pattern of putting oneself last occurs for all the good characters in Fellowship of the Ring, even for Boromir, who despite his greed and violence, in the end fights to save the Hobbits from the Orcs. As he dies, Boromir says "quotation," (201), yet Aragorn reminds him "quotation" (202) reinforcing the idea that. . . Saruman, on the other hand, looks for power and forgets his friends. Thus The Dark Lord is able to seduce him. When Saruman tells Gandalf "brief dialogue" (73) we see the theme of self-sacrifice once more. Saruman has forgotten it, and that forgetting makes him turn to darkness and betrayal.
Yes, these responses provide a fine occasion to use "I."
As you write, think about how to DIG DEEPLY when reading closely: do you see an author constantly using the same descriptive words for a certain character? Do lines of dialogue repeat themselves in different places? Are their key instances where a sound, a color, a single image repeats? Does a character reveal something important about herself that matters to the entire story or novel?
We'll do this group writing for 20 minutes. Then for the rest of class, I'm going to say "Pick one to share!" so the group will tell the rest of the class why the passage they chose is worth further discussion in front of all of us.
I'll give you about 5 minutes to choose, then say "shut laptops" except for the person who authored the group doc. I don't want you diddling around with screens when you should be paying attention to your peers. You might actually learn something to use in a paper!
That laptop might be passed around among the group. Group members will tell the rest of us why the chosen passage matters.
When you present, I want a few of you to talk. I don't want to hear the same folks every time. I'll call upon silent folks directly (and frequently).
WHY?
While these exercises provide good practice for longer essays, they also give you the chance at informal presentations and pitches, something you will do frequently in the real world beyond our sheltered campus bubble (itself something out of the science fiction of the 1950s-70s).
I will not grade these responses as hard for grammatical mistakes. Try to make the writing formal, and when you quote from a text or paraphrase, add appropriate in-text citations. See this link for my advice on citations.
Pet Peeves will be flagged and you'll have a week to get some or all of the 10 (perhaps 20) points I dock you for them. The point is to learn in stages how to improve your work for me and, generally, for other professors.
You will find some effective close-reading responses here.
Groups:
1: Eli, Butch, Regina
2: Robby, Elijah, Frishtah
3: Jordan, Ben, Vir
4: Freya, Sherry, Alex