Week 4

Plans for Today:

• Warm Up
• Group Discussion on "Authority is Constructed and Contextual"

Warm up:

Take a few minutes and write down what you think this ACRL means. Also, be specific if you have any confusions about what this ACRL means.

Group up, share, discuss:

In groups of three you will discuss this ACRL concept. Stay on topic and don't use this time to chat and distract other groups. This is only 50 minutes of class time, you have plenty of time for chatting outside of class.

Examine the following quotes and break them down into simpler terms to describe what they mean. Use personal examples or examples you can think of from media, school, books, etc.

• “Experts understand the need to determine the validity of the information created by different authorities and to acknowledge biases that privilege some sources of authority over others, especially in terms of others’ worldviews, gender, sexual orientation, and cultural orientations”
• “novice learners come to respect the expertise that authority represents while remaining skeptical of the systems that have elevated that authority and the information created by it”

After that choose two knowledge practices and two dispositions to explore and relate to personal experiences.

Homework for Wednesday, September 19

We will discuss Naming What We Know 3.0 “Writing Enacts and creates Identities and Ideologies” and 3.2 “Writers’ Histories, processes, and Identities Vary” over Wednesday and Friday's classes depending on how much time they take to discuss. Review these concepts before class and make sure you have started working on CT_3.

Start writing RJ_3 using the template.

Class Plans for Today:

• Warm up
• Discuss Threshold Concept 3.0, "Writing Enacts and Creates Identities and Ideologies"
• Research Proposal Activity

Warm up:

In your warm up today, write what you think it means that writing enacts and creates identities and ideologies. You may use the following quotes to help you work through your ideas:

• "Writing is always ideological because discourses and instances of language use do not exist independently from culture and their ideologies" (p. 48)
• "Writers are not separate from their writing and they don't just quickly and seamlessly adapt to new situations. Rather, writers are socialized, changed, through their writing in new environments, and these changes can have deep implications" (p. 49)
• "When lawyers write effective briefs, or engineers write technical reports, the genres, conventions, and vocabularies they use reflect the ideologies of their professions and settings" (p. 49)

Research Proposal Activity:

In your groups, research (by research, I mean you can google templates online, but try to rework the template so it is appropriate for our class' context) and discuss the following:

• What is a research proposal?
• Who is your audience?
• What does or doesn’t your audience know?
• What information should one include in a proposal? Is it the same for every person in class?
• How should that information be presented? More importantly, why should that information be presented in any specific way, or particular manner at all?

Each group must create one template for a research proposal by the end of class. Save it in the folder I created specifically for these research proposal templates with all of your names somewhere on the document. I will look over these templates and, using your suggestions, create one for you all to use for the midterm portfolio by Friday.

Homework for Friday, September 21

• Make sure you've started your RJ_3 and CT_3, and RR_2 as they are due this coming Sunday. I'm giving reminders now, but keep track of the weekly plans to make sure you don't forget any assignments.
• Look back over Threshold concept 3.2 to be prepared to discuss.
• We will look at a few examples of reading responses on Friday.
• We will discuss the template I choose based on the ones you turned in today.

Class Plans for Today:

• Discuss Threshold Concept 3.2
• Research Proposal Assignment
• Reading Response writing examples (if time permits).

Announcement: I won't be holding office hours today, but if you need me I'm only an email away! Also, I will be on campus next week and if you want to meet but can't make it to Monday office hours we can always set up an appointment.

Group up, share, and discuss:

In threshold concept 3.2, “Writers’ histories, processes, and identities vary”, Yancey (2016) states the following:

“each writer begins a lifelong process of balancing individual perspectives and processes with the opportunities, demands, constraints, and genres of specific rhetorical situations and contexts of the larger culture. The ways in which individual writers do this, however, are influenced by their individual histories, processes, and identities” (p. 52)

• What does Yancey mean by “constraints, and genres of specific rhetorical situations and contexts of the larger culture”?
• How are individual histories, processes, and identities important?
• What is your understanding of genres?
• How is this concept troublesome? Hint, it’s in the book.

Use personal examples to explain the text.

Research Proposal Assignment

How does this template follow the conventions of a genre? How does it speak to a rhetorical situation? Simply put, how does this template encourage you to not simply write but create a piece of writing that will DO something and how will your proposal relate to your identity?

Reading Response Writing Examples

When looking at these pieces of writing, how does the genre of Reading Responses differ from the CT's? Or the proposal and RJ? (Link to RR Writing examples found in Blackboard under "writing examples")

Homework for Monday, September 24

I'll look over your folders this weekend to give you a bit of feedback.

Read and write:

Finish Research Journal 3 (I assigned it on Monday). You can go ahead and get started on RJ_4 if you wish, it'll be assigned Monday.

Reading Response (RR_3):

• ACRL: “Scholarship as a Conversation.”

Crossing Thresholds (CT_4):

• Naming What We Know, 1.3, “Writing Expresses and Shares Meaning to be Reconstructed by the Reader”
• Naming What We Know, 2.0, “Writing Speaks to Situations through Recognizable Forms”

Start Drafting Research Proposal [Click here for the template]. A draft does not mean it needs to be a final product. You will have time to revise and get feedback before the midterm.