1. My goals for myself when writing this paper were to write something that wasn't a "yawn topic." When talking given education as a main theme for all of our papers, I just really wanted to stand out from the rest of the crowd. I think my essay sounds a little more like I'm headed for standardized testing and that's not what I'm striving for.
2. I had in my head the articles I wanted to talk about for awhile. I sat down the day before and just wrote everything out and pieced together connections between the articles. I felt like I had a lot of ideas, i just needed a way to get them to flow together.
3. My writing has grown a lot over the past year and I feel as though it is because I have changed over the years. I'm a lot more mature then I used to be, and my writing really reflects that. My peers gave me good advice that I took in writing the second draft of my paper. I never thought I'd like that before but it turned out to be completely in my benefit and definitely made my paper stronger as a result.
4. I wouldn't really say anyone helped contribute to my paper. I will say though that my best friend is my inspiration for the paper. She attended private school and it most likely the reason I feel so strongly against them.
5. I learned writing is something I'm good at if I dont fight it. In other words, I cant just put off writing something to do it in the last minute just to get a grade. If i just sit down and do it I can piece things together much better than I ever could before. Also others told me places I could improve my writing and things that were weird about my techniques.
6. I think the hardest part about this paper was not actually writing the paper. I didn't know what parts to put together and how on earth, I wasn't going to know what I was going to write about, until I wrote it. Does that even make sense? I was a little confused the whole time until I was actually finished. The ending was probably the easiest part cause I was able to tie all my thoughts in my head together.
7. I'm most proud of my argument about the girl who was a dancer, and didn't have ADD. I loved the story and I think it tied in well with where I wanted my paper to go. I just really wanted to prove people are different and that's I feel, is what did it.
8. I think I need to work on the standardized testing part. Maybe it doesnt belong? It just adds a good argument for the teachers who just teach to pass the test so I feel as though its still significant. I re-read it many times and decided it was better to have too much information that not enough.
9. My writing process is fairly simple. I just write and write and write. Then i put it together. and add my own opinions to add flow and tie everything together. I never every just start typing. I always write my paper by hand, then when I type it up I slowly go through it and understand where it might be that needs extra information, or what sentences dont make sense, anything like that.
I think JK had the best topic ever. I remember how we all thought his topic was so original and outside the box. I definitely agree with you that I didn't want a topic that everyone else would think of picking. When you read your paper aloud and talked about the girl who became a famous choreographer and created the Broadway musical "Cats" I thought it was a nice touch of pathos. Would it not have been easier to have had a brainstorm session or a pre-peer editing session where we could have bounced off ideas before we started to write our papers? I personally felt that it was rushed...
ReplyDeleteAMEN MC I felt rushed to. whatevs.
ReplyDeleteThat's not a bad idea. I would be open to doing something like that. How would that work? What would that look like? How do you keep people invested in the conversation? Would that replace workshop? If so, what would be the benefit of replacing workshop?
ReplyDeleteWe could bring in our ideas and research material (in whatever format- bullet points, thoughts and phrases, complete paragraphs, print outs of info, etc) and break up into smaller groups by umbrella topic (cost of education, hw, public vs. private, creativity, etc.) and share our ideas while the rest of the group writes down their feedback and adds on to what we have. We can bounce off ideas that way. Everyone in the group would HAVE to contribute like all of our peer editing sessions because it's right in front of them. They don't even have to speak up; they can just write it down. You can go around and see who wrote what and how much and count it as participation grade. I think that's how it should be with all our peer editing sessions in general. People get off topic way too much and some people don't get the critique they rightfully deserve. I think every group should have a leader to keep the rest of the group focused. Our group for example, get off topic sometimes, but it's still relevant to the paper. Like what is your writing technique? When did you write your paper? Did you give yourself enough time? We ask off topic questions like these, but they're still relevant to the assignment.
ReplyDeleteI don't even know what workshop is... I have a hard time remembering what exactly we did on workshop days... Technically speaking, this is what we could do as workshop. I wouldn't say it would replace workshop.
This is actually fairly similar to what we will be doing with panels. You will be breaking up by topic and creating a discussion together.
ReplyDelete