Friday's Work (8/5/11)

Today, I want you to read the feedback on your plan of inquiry and write up a brief plan for what you need to do before you're ready to start making some choices about what you're going to make for your 'thing" on Monday (you can write this at the bottom of your plan of inquiry, and I'll go back in and check it later today for a grade). You should have comments from me since I've looked at all the plans that were turned in as of last night, and you may have feedback from your peers as well. I've taken grades for 1) the plan of inquiry itself (counted twice as a daily grade) and 2) for the feedback you're giving one another (one daily grade), though I'm not going to put the grades directly on those docs since others can access them.

Homework for Monday: You need to work on finishing up your research. That means finding all your sources, but also reading and analyzing them. Several of you had found sources for your plan of inquiry, but I assume you hadn't had time to read them since you didn't have annotations for each. So, read, read, read this weekend and use your reading matrix to help you keep track of what you're reading (I'll check those Monday morning to see if you've made progress and give you a daily grade for that work). As you read, think about the following questions as a way to help you navigate your sources: What’s the rhetorical situation for the larger context of the debate about your question? What are the major ideas that come up as you look at your research? What are the rhetorical situations for each of your sources? What are your source writers’ values, motivations, and constraints? How do your sources of information compare on these fronts? On Monday, we'll do some brainstorming about your purpose, audience, and genre for your "thing." Remember that the "thing" will likely not be an essay, certainly not your typical "research paper" as most people never read such things:).

If you have any questions this weekend, email me at jcharlton@utpa.edu. There are no bad questions; just make sure that you've re-read the assignment itself if you have questions about that part of it before you ask me a question, ok?