I hope many of you attended Tuesday’s High-PURCS (High Point University’s Undergraduate Research and Creative Works Symposium) at the Qubein Center. As I mentioned in the class notes for Tuesday, your attendance not only shows your support for other High Point students’ scholastic endeavors but also offers you an opportunity to view poster displays and hear discussions that may inspire ideas for projects of your own. And those of you who completed the High-PURCS assignment posted for attendees will earn bonus assignment credit!
Review the pictures above, and consider these questions:
- How might a project such as Leland Sanders’ develop from one that began with Allison Aubrey’s “A Break from Your Smartphone Can Reboot Your Mood. Here’s How“?
- How might a project such as Jackson Jones’s, Brooke Kozak’s, and Arielle McPhee’s, “Math, Writing, and Cognitive Profiles in Past and Present Student Athletes,” develop from one that began with “Back Story,” the opening chapter of Michael Lewis‘s The Blind Side?
- How might a project such as Madison MacDonald’s, “Break Type and Presence of Fidget Toys on Focus in College Students,” develop from one that began with Allison Aubrey’s “A Break from Your Smartphone Can Reboot Your Mood. Here’s How” or Maryanne Wolf’s “Skim Reading is the New Normal. The Effect on Society is Profound“?
The students’ projects featured above are notably different from the readings mentioned in my questions for consideration. Still, those readings that served as starting points for your research are tangentially related to High-PURCS and demonstrate how your readings for a freshman-level course can serve as both subjects and points of departure for future endeavors.
Next Up
Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website or the Merriam-Webster Scrabble Word Finder page, and review the blog posts devoted to Scrabble tips, including this one.
Looking Ahead to Your Individual Presentation
Monday morning in class, you will have time to plan and prepare the individual presentation that you will deliver during the exam period, 3:30 p.m., Monday, April 27. In the meantime, think about the major assignments you have completed and the skills you have developed over the course of the semester. Review your blog posts, your reflective writing, and your journal entries, and ask yourself, what accomplishments of mine in English 1103 best demonstrate the skills and habits of mind that not only benefit me as a writer and a student, but also in my life beyond the classroom?
Bonus Assignment
One of the components of English 1103 is well documented in both your journal and in photographs. Your last bonus assignment of the semester offers you the opportunity to earn credit for creating a blog post devoted to one of the assignments in that series.
Directions
- Compose a WordPress blog post that documents your assignment with a photograph and two paragraphs of prose, one of summary and a second of commentary.
- In your summary, include as many details as possible, such as when the assignment took place and with whom you collaborated on the assignment.
- In your commentary, analyze part of the assignment illustrated in the accompanying photograph.
- Publish your post on or before the afternoon of Tuesday, April 21. Email me no later than 5 p.m. on Tuesday, April 21, to notify me that you have published your bonus assignment.
Jane Lucas 