Category: Check, Please!

As you make your final preparations for your group presentations, be sure to complete the steps below, which are also included on your assignment sheet.

1. If your notes are written in complete sentences, rewrite them to include only words and short phrases for your key points. If your notes are too detailed, you will risk relying too heavily on them and making minimal eye contact with the audience. Plan to make as much eye contact as possible and be sure to make eye contact with people throughout the room rather than fixing your eyes on one or two people.
2. Familiarize yourself with the presentation station. Each group is required to project a portion of its designated lesson on the screen and refer to it during the presentation. If you have not used the presentation station, I encourage you to devote a couple of minutes before the class period to familiarizing yourself with its setup.
3. Practice good posture. As you deliver your presentation, your ears should be directly above your shoulders. If you tend to shift your weight from one foot to the other—a distracting habit that’s sometimes called rocking the boat—stand with your feet perpendicular to each other. If you do so, you will not be able to shift your weight from one foot to the other.
4. Avoid filler words, such as uh, um, like, and you know. If you tend to use filler words, practice pausing at the points where you are likely to use fillers.

Time permitting, after the presentations, you will compose a reflection that addresses your group’s presentation as well as the presentation delivered by one of the other groups.

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Next Up

Group presentations. Afterward, time permitting, you will compose a reflection that addresses your group’s presentation as well as one of the other group’s.

As an exercise in reviewing one of the lessons in the Check, Please! course and also as an exercise in collaboration and oral communication, you and three or four of your classmates will deliver a short presentation that addresses the most significant points covered in one of the five lessons in the Check, Please! Course.

This morning in class, after you complete your Scrabble debriefing, you will receive your group assignments and begin planning for your presentation. I will give you a handout in class with directions for your presentation, and I am including the directions below as well.

Directions for Planning

1. Plan a presentation of five to ten minutes that addresses the most significant points covered in your group’s designated lesson in the Check, Please! course. (See pages 2-3 for the lists of groups and lesson assignments)
2. Include in your presentation (a) an opening in which you state each member’s first and last name, (b) a close examination of one segment of the lesson, and (c) a conclusion that provides closure and invites questions.
3. You are encouraged but not required to address how the lesson has been relevant to your other work in English 1103 and/or your other courses.

Directions for Rehearsing

1. In preparation for rehearsing, write your notes on an index card. If your initial notes are written in complete sentences, rewrite them to include only words and short phrases for your key points. If your notes are too detailed, you will risk relying too heavily on them and making minimal eye contact with the audience. Plan to make as much eye contact as possible and be sure to make eye contact with people throughout the room rather than fixing your eyes on one or two people.
2. Familiarize yourself with the presentation station. Each group is required to project a portion of its lesson and refer to it during the presentation. If you have not used the presentation station, I encourage you to devote part of today’s class period to familiarizing yourself with its setup.
3. Do not create a PowerPoint slide show or any other visual presentation. The focus of your presentation should be your designated lesson of Check, Please! https://checkpleasecc.notion.site/checkpleasecc/Check-Please-Starter-Course-ae34d043575e42828dc2964437ea4eed.
4. Practice good posture. As you deliver your presentation, your ears should be directly above your shoulders. If you tend to shift your weight from one foot to the other—a distracting habit that’s sometimes called rocking the boat—stand with your feet perpendicular to each other. If you do so, you will not be able to shift your weight from one foot to the other.
5. Avoid filler words, such as uh, um, like, and you know. If you tend to use filler words, practice pausing at the points where you are likely to use fillers.
6. Take turns delivering your portions of the presentation, and offer feedback to your group members. Offer both suggestions for improvement and words of encouragement.

Group Assignments

Section 19

Check, Please! Lesson One:

• Jon Carlos Altamura
• Nicole Edelman
• Annalise Lindsay
• J. J. Pollender

Check, Please! Lesson Two:

• Cait Bartlett
• James Emery
• Tai Marchese
• Stephanie Salters

Check, Please! Lesson Three:

• Willow Conelly
• Aidan Garcia
• Jed Negley
• Ananda Williams

Check, Please! Lesson Four:

• Bailey Dawkins
• Ryan Kelley
• Madison Kline
• Vince Nicholson

Check, Please! Lesson Five:

• Lindsay Dimenna
• Dalton Holbrook
• Leyla Oruc
• Lexi Painter

Section 20

Check, Please! Lesson One:

• Aiden Bazzell
• Moriah Evans
• Eva Kelley
• Zach Moellendick

Check, Please! Lesson Two:

• Cristique Duvall
• Chase Eller
• Kaitlyn Krause
• Bo Raitto

Check, Please! Lesson Three:

• Allie Early
• Noah Gordy
• Melody Smith
• Roshan Tamaddon

Check, Please! Lesson Four:

• Claire Farrington
• Lydia Henderson
• Steve Lee
• Brad Weiner

Check, Please! Lesson Five:

• Stella Galindo Haas
• Abby Jacavanco
• Mark McLaughlin

Grade Criteria

An A presentation includes all elements outlined in the directions for planning and rehearsing and demonstrates the group members’ poise and ability to avoid filler words.

A B presentation includes all elements outlined in the directions for planning and rehearsing but may be marred by group members’ lack of poise and/or inability to avoid filler words.

A C presentation includes most but not all elements outlined in the directions for planning and rehearsing and may also be marred by group members’ lack of poise and/or inability to avoid filler words.

A D presentation includes only some elements outlined in the directions for planning and rehearsing and may also be marred by group members’ lack of poise and/or inability to avoid filler words.

An F presentation includes few if any elements outlined in the directions for planning and rehearsing and may also be marred by group members’ lack of poise and/or inability to avoid filler words.

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Next Up

In class on Wednesday, you will deliver your group presentations. Afterward, time permitting, you will compose a short piece of writing that reflects on your group’s presentation as well as the presentation by one of the other groups.

This blog post features my version of the fourth Check, Please! assignment, which you submitted at the beginning of class on Wednesday. In preparation for submitting your worksheet for lesson five, review this post as well as the assignment notes that I posted on September 3.

Check, Please! Lesson Four

In the fourth lesson of the Check, Please!, Starter Course, Mike Caulfield, author of the course and a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, focuses his instruction on the third step in the four-step SIFT approach to determining the reliability of a source. Lesson four, “Find Trusted Coverage,” addresses these topics: (1) scanning Google News for relevant stories, (2) using known fact-checking sites, and (3) conducting a reverse-image search to find a relevant source for an image.

One of the concepts Caulfield introduces in lesson four is click restraint, which was given its name by Sam Wineberg, Professor of History and Education at Stanford, and Sarah McGrew, Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Maryland. Click Restraint is an activity that fact checkers practice regularly, but average people do not. Fact checkers resist the impulse to click on the first result, opting instead to scan multiple results to find one that combines trustworthiness and relevance.

Caulfield also considers the issue of false frames and offers as an example the miscaptioned photo of a young woman that circulated widely after the 2017 London Bridge attack. In the photo, the woman, who is wearing a hijab, is looking down at her phone as she walks past one of the victims lying by the side of the road, surrounded by members of the rescue team. Because the woman’s face is blurred, viewers of the miscaptioned picture cannot see the look of shock that is visible in her face in another image taken by the same photographer. Subsequently, her apparent lack of concern for the victim seems to confirm the caption in the infamous tweet.

Choosing a general search term over a specific one is a useful and unexpected tip Caulfield includes in his discussion of image searches. He explains that the benefit of such a bland term as “letter” or “photo” will prevent the confirmation bias that can lead to the proliferation of disinformation through false frames.

Work Cited

Caulfield, Mike. Check, Please! Starter Course, 2021,https://checkpleasecc.notion.site/Check-Please-Starter-Course-ae34d043575e42828dc2964437ea4eed .

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Next Up

Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website, and review the blog posts devoted to Scrabble tips.

Today’s blog post features my version of the second Check, Please! assignment, which you submitted at the beginning of class on yesterday. In preparation for submitting your worksheet for lesson three, review this post as well as the assignment notes that I posted on September 3.

Check, Please! Lesson Two

In the second lesson of the Check, Please! Starter Course, Mike Caulfield, author of the course and a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, focuses on investigating a source, the second step in the SIFT approach, which he introduces in lesson one.

One of the most useful practices presented in lesson two is Caulfield’s follow-up to the Wikipedia strategy, which he outlined in the previous lesson. After he reviews that strategy, Caulfield explains how to use the control-f keyboard shortcut (command-f on a Mac). Typing control-f (or command-f) will open a small textbox in the upper right of the screen. Typing a word you are searching for will highlight the first appearance of the word in the text. Hitting return will highlight each subsequent appearance of the word.

Lesson two introduced me to fauxtire, a term for websites such as World News Daily Report, based in Tel Aviv, that present themselves as satirical but in fact serve primarily to perpetuate disinformation.

Perhaps the most memorable portion of lesson two was the side-by-side comparison of the websites for the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Pediatricians. Though at first glance the two appear comparable, using the Wikipedia strategy reveals their profound differences. While AAP is the premiere authority on children’s health and well-being, ACP was founded to protest the adoption of children by single-sex couples and is widely viewed as a single-issue hate organization.

Work Cited

Caulfield, Mike. Check, Please! Starter Course, 2021, https://webliteracy.pressbooks.com/front-matter/updated-resources-for-2021/.

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Next Up

Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website, and review the blog posts devoted to Scrabble tips.

Tomorrow, at the beginning of class, I will collect your worksheets for the second Check, Please! lesson. If you were absent on the day that I distributed copies of the worksheet or you have misplaced your copy, download the file from Blackboard and print it.

In preparation for submitting your assignment, review the notes below.

• A summary is a third-person objective synopsis. In the first paragraph of your assignment, your summary, you should not use first- or second-person pronouns, singular or plural. In other words, “I,” “me,” “we,” “us,” and “you” should not appear in your summary. Your summary should also be free of commentary. If you use such words as “effective,” “useful,” and “instructive,” you have shifted from summary to commentary. Turn to commentary in your second paragraph.
• Check, Please! is a nonprint source, which means that you do not include parenthetical citations with page or paragraph numbers (because, after all, there are no paragraphs or page numbers). Think of citing a website such as Check, Please! the way you would cite a film. Any lines that you include verbatim are enclosed in quotation marks, and the reader knows from the context that the lines are spoken in the film. The works cited entry at the bottom of the text provides the reader with the necessary source details.
• Not all lists require a colon. Use one only if the clause (a group of words containing a verb) that precedes the colon makes sense on its own.

Consider the difference between these two sentences with lists:

• In lesson two, Mike Caulfield continues his instruction in the four-step approach to determining the reliability of a source, which he terms SIFT: (1) “Stop,” (2) “Investigate,” (3) “Find better coverage,” and (4) “Trace claims, quotes, and media to the original context.”
• The steps of SIFT include (1) “Stop,” (2) “Investigate,” (3) “Find better coverage,” and (4) “Trace claims, quotes, and media to the original context.”

The second example above does not include a colon because the clause before the list does not make sense on its own.

• A work cited entry has a hanging indent, which means its appearance is the opposite of a paragraph’s. The first line of a paragraph is indented five spaces or one-half inch, and the remaining lines of the paragraph are flush left. In a works cited entry, the first line is flush left, and the remaining lines are indented.
• Include concrete details. Specificity not only enables the reader to see your subject, it also demonstrates to the reader that you have examined your subject carefully.

Consider the difference between the two passages below.

• Lesson two includes two websites that show how similar two can be even though one is propaganda.
• Perhaps the most memorable portion of lesson two is the side-by-side comparison of the websites for the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Pediatricians. Though at first glance the two appear comparable, using the Wikipedia strategy reveals their profound differences. While AAP is the premiere authority on children’s health and well-being, ACP was founded to protest the adoption of children by single-sex couples and is widely viewed as a single-issue hate organization.

The two passages above address the same websites featured in lesson two, but the first example provides the reader with no specifics.

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Next Up

At the beginning of class on Wednesday, I will collect your worksheets for the second Check, Please! lesson and return the drafts of your literacy narratives. You will have the class period to begin revising on your laptops, and you will have an additional week to continue your revisions. The due date for posting your revision to Blackboard and to your WordPress blog is Wednesday, September 11 (before class); the hard deadline is Friday, September 13 (before class).

Tomorrow, at the beginning of class, I will collect your worksheets for the first Check, Please! lesson. If you were absent on the day that I distributed copies of the worksheet or you have misplaced your copy, download the file from Blackboard and print it.

My sample assignment for lesson one appears below, as well as on the worksheet, itself.

Check, Please! Lesson One

In the first lesson of the Check, Please!, Starter Course, Mike Caulfield, author of the course and a research scientist at Washington State University’s Center for an Informed Public, introduces the four-step SIFT approach to determining the reliability of a source: (1) “Stop,” (2) “Investigate,” (3) “Find better coverage,” and (4) “Trace claims, quotes, and media to the original context.”

One of the most useful practices presented in lesson one is what the author terms the “Wikipedia Trick.” Deleting everything that follows a website’s URL (including the slash), adding a space, typing “Wikipedia,” and hitting “enter” will yield the site’s Wikipedia page. The Wikipedia entry that appears at the top of the screen may indicate the source’s reliability or lack thereof.

The most memorable segment of lesson one is the short, riveting video “The Miseducation of Dylann Roof,” which begins with the narrator asking the question, “How does a child become a killer?” Produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center, it documents how algorithms can lead unskilled web searchers down paths of disinformation. In the worst cases, such as Roof’s, algorithms can lead searchers to the extremist propaganda of radical conspiracy theorists.

Work Cited

Caulfield, Mike. Check, Please! Starter Course, 2021, https://webliteracy.pressbooks.com/front-matter/updated-resources-for-2021/.

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Check, Please! worksheets are designed to be handwritten, and I prefer for you to complete them by putting pen to paper. If, however, you wish to type them, you are required to follow MLA style manuscript guidelines. See the sample file posted in the Check, Please! folder on Blackboard.

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Next Up

Tomorrow’s class will be devoted to planning and drafting your literacy narratives. Next Wednesday, September 4, I will return your handwritten drafts with my notes, and you will have the class period to begin revising your narratives on your laptops and tablets. After that class, you will have an additional week to continue your revision work. The due date for posting your revisions to Blackboard and to your WordPress blog is Wednesday, September 11 (before class); the hard deadline is Friday, September 13 (before class).

As an exercise in reviewing one of the lessons in the Check, Please! course and also as an exercise in collaboration and oral communication, you and two or three of your classmates will deliver a short presentation that addresses the most significant points covered in one of the five lessons in the Check, Please! Course.

This morning in class, after you complete your Scrabble debriefing, you will receive your group assignments and begin planning for your presentation. You will receive a handout in class with directions for your presentation, and I am including the directions below as well.

Directions for Planning

1. Plan a presentation of five to ten minutes that addresses the most significant points covered in your group’s designated lesson in the Check, Please! course. (See pages 2-3 for the lists of groups and lesson assignments)
2. Include in your presentation (a) an opening in which you state each member’s first and last name, (b) a close examination of one segment of the lesson, and (c) a conclusion that provides closure and invites questions.
3. You are encouraged but not required to address how the lesson has been relevant to your other work in English 1103 and/or your other courses.

Directions for Rehearsing

1. In preparation for rehearsing, write your notes on an index card. If your initial notes are written in complete sentences, rewrite them to include only words and short phrases for your key points. If your notes are too detailed, you will risk relying too heavily on them and making minimal eye contact with the audience. Plan to make as much eye contact as possible and be sure to make eye contact with people throughout the room rather than fixing your eyes on one or two people.
2. Familiarize yourself with the presentation station. If you have not used the presentation station, I encourage you to devote part of today’s class period to familiarizing yourself with its setup.
3. Do not create a PowerPoint slide show or any other visual presentation. The focus of your presentation should be your designated lesson of Check, Please! https://checkpleasecc.notion.site/checkpleasecc/Check-Please-Starter-Course-ae34d043575e42828dc2964437ea4eed.
4. Practice good posture. As you deliver your presentation, your ears should be directly above your shoulders. If you tend to shift your weight from one foot to the other—a distracting habit that’s sometimes called rocking the boat—stand with your feet perpendicular to each other. If you do so, you will not be able to shift your weight from one foot to the other.
5. Avoid filler words, such as uh, um, like, and you know. If you tend to use filler words, practice pausing at the points where you are likely to use fillers.
6. Take turns delivering your portions of the presentation, and offer feedback to your group members. Offer both suggestions for improvement and words of encouragement.

Group Assignments

Check, Please! Lesson One: Elaina Blablo, Jess English, Teagan Murphy, Brian Sheridan

Check, Please! Lesson Two: Skylar Bollman, Jack Hutchins, Bella O’Donnell, Hannah Smith

Check, Please! Lesson Three: Annika Brown, Jahziah Johnson, Olivia Wall

Check, Please! Lesson Four: Bella Cataldo, McKenna Johnson, Isaac Satterfield, Skylar Varner

Check, Please! Lesson Five: McKinley Coles, Jack Madigan-Green, Larisa Shaw

Section 20

Check, Please! Lesson One: Courtney Faber, Lexi Harloff, Carter Pearse, Robert Sciascia

Check, Please! Lesson Two: Connor Garfield, Gracie Lare, Lily Murphy, Regan Shea

Check, Please! Lesson Three: Ava Gaudioso, Mason Hooey, Izzy O’Connor, Chaning Smith

Check, Please! Lesson Four: Santino Hall, Ella MacGlashan, Autumn Spaulding, Renae West

Check, Please! Lesson Five: Madison Harding, Brayden Krieser, Kenzie Van Cleef, Liz Wilburn

Grade Criteria

An A presentation includes all elements outlined in the directions for planning and demonstrates the group members’ poise and ability to avoid filler words.

A B presentation includes all elements outlined in the directions for planning but may be marred by group members’ lack of poise and/or inability to avoid filler words.

A C presentation includes most but not all elements outlined in the directions for planning and may also be marred by group members’ lack of poise and/or inability to avoid filler words.

A D presentation includes only some elements outlined in the directions for planning and may also be marred by group members’ lack of poise and/or inability to avoid filler words.

An F presentation includes few if any elements outlined in the directions for planning and may also be marred by group members’ lack of poise and/or inability to avoid filler words.

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Next Up

In class on Wednesday, you will have additional time to prepare for your group presentations.

Your fifth and final Check, Please! assignment is due at the beginning of class next Wednesday, March 13. If you were absent on the day that I distributed the worksheet for the assignment, or you misplaced your copy, you should download and print a copy from Blackboard.

Although the assignment isn’t due until Wednesday, I encourage you to complete it before Monday’s class. In class on Monday, you will begin planning your group presentations on the Check, Please! lessons. Since you may be in the group that will deliver a presentation on lesson five, you will be able to devote more of your class time to planning if you have already completed the lesson.

Be sure to bring your worksheets for lessons one through four, so you will have the corresponding worksheet to refer to as you and your group members plan your presentation. Also, you may find it helpful to review the blog post that features my model assignment for the lesson:

• Lesson One, January 23
• Lesson Two, February 2
• Lesson Three, February 16
• Lesson Four, February 23

Next Friday, March 15, I will publish a blog post devoted to lesson five.

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Next Up

In class on Monday, you and two or three of your classmates will begin planning for a short presentation on one of the five Check, Please! lessons. After your Scrabble debriefing at the beginning of class, you will receive your group assignments.