This morning in class you will plan and draft a short midterm reflection essay that documents your work in the first half of the semester, focusing on what you consider your most significant achievements and the feature or features of the course that have benefited your development as a writer and a student. Features to consider include the following:
- Planning, drafting, and revising your literacy narrative or your analysis
- Keeping a journal
- Completing Check, Please! assignments
- Studying one of the readings examined class, including “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” “The Day that Language Came into My Life,” “Back Story” (from The Blind Side), “The Falling Man,” “The School,” the sample literacy narrative (“A Bridge to Words”), or one of the sample analyses
- Writing for an online audience beyond the classroom/creating and maintaining a WordPress blog
- Collaborating with your classmates on in-class writing assignments
- Playing Scrabble/Collaborating with your teammates on Wordplay Day
- Writing longhand
- Limiting screen time
Focus on two, three, or four features of the course (but no more than four), and include in your reflective essay the following elements:
- A title that offers a window into your reflection
- An opening paragraph that introduces your focus and presents your thesis
- Body paragraphs that offer concrete details from your work to support your thesis.
- A relevant quotation from Writing Analytically or a relevant quotation from one of the texts that we have studied in class. Introduce your quotation with a signal phrase and follow it with a parenthetical citation.
- A conclusion that revisits the thesis without restating it verbatim
- An MLA-style works cited entry for your source
Sample Works Cited Entries
Bartheleme, Donald. “The School.” The Best American Short Stories 1975, edited by Martha Foley, Houghton Mifflin, 1975. pp.8-11.
Junod, Tom. “The Falling Man.” Esquire, vol. 140, no. 3, Sept. 2003, pp. 176+. Gale Academic OneFile Select, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A106423422/EAIM?u=hpu_main&sid=bookmark-EAIM&xid=ce48797f.
Keller, Helen. “The Day Language Came into My Life.” Chapter Four. The Story of My Life. https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/keller/life/life.html.
Lewis, Michael. Chapter One: “Back Story.” The Blind Side. 2006. Norton, 2009. pp.15-16.
Lucas, Jane. “A Bridge to Words.” Jane Lucas, 11 Sept. 2023, https://janelucas.com/2023/09/11/eng-1103-a-bridge-to-words/.
—. “Rockin’ the Boat: Iron Maiden’s Metal Mariner.” Jane Lucas, 3 Oct. 2023, https://janelucas.com/2023/10/03/eng-1103-rockin-the-boat-iron-maidens-metal-mariner/.
—. “The Strange Fruit of Sosnowiec.” Jane Lucas, 2 Oct. 2023, https://janelucas.com/2023/10/02/eng-1103-the-strange-fruit-of-sosnowiec/.
Rosenwasser, David and Jill Stephen. “Analysis Does More than Break a Subject into Its Parts.” Writing Analytically, 8th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. pp. 4-5.
—. “Distinguishing Analysis from Summary, Expressive Writing, and Argument.” Writing Analytically, 8th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. pp. 5-8.
—. “Integrating Quotations.” Writing Analytically, 8th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. pp. 231-33.
—. “Writing on Computers vs. Writing on Paper.” Writing Analytically, 8th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2019. pp. 124-25.
Sedaris, David. “Me Talk Pretty One Day.” Me Talk Pretty One Day. Little, Brown, 2000. 166-73.
Next Up
Wednesday’s class will be devoted to planning and preparing for your group presentations on the Check, Please! course. At the beginning of the class period, you will receive your group assignments, including which of the five lessons will be the focus of your presentation.
Jane Lucas 