10.30 Peer review

Peer review.  In class today you did your peer reviews.  We talked about how the first time around the object was just to get used to the system - and make sure everyone was positive and supportive.  If you posted your peer review, you got full credit.  The protocol and the groups are posted on the previous blog.  

What to post for your peer reviews: This time, as you compose your peer review feedback for members of your group, continue the positive supportive tone established in the first set of peer reviews, but also work on making sure that you provide constructive feedback to support the author in writing a stronger paper.  I will be looking to see how well you respond to your authors, whether you identify the most important revisions the author needs to work on (for example, genre issues are most important = writing to the assignment; then focus, organization, and development).

The format for your peer reviews is your choice.  In general, it is useful to begin with what is working, and then moved to suggestions to strengthen the essay.  Be sure the author knows which particular section of the paper you are referring to (the introduction, a particular paragraph, the first example, etc).

From what I could here of the work in your groups - you did a great job on this!

Assignments for the poetry unit.
Here is the list of what to include in your portfolio for the poetry unit (posted 10.23).   In addition to the below list, I will look for the final draft= the essay you want me to grade.  This will include changes made after the peer review and will be posted by Nov 3.

line by line analysis (10.8)
writing about poem choice (10.20)
brainstorming for essay (10.23
rough draft (10.27)
final draft for peer review (10.30)
peer review feedback (10.30 in-lass writing, posted on peer review page)
Final draft (Nov 3)

The poetry unit writing is due Monday, Nov 3, by the beginning of class.  I will do my best to have the comments back by the following Thursday, if not then, by Monday, Nov. 10.

What we are doing for the rest of the term
The "final" calendar is posted (to the right), though we may be making changes to it as we go along, so be sure to check the blog.

For next class:
Read: Chapter 16 on reading plays, and as much of Othello as you can get through.   Plan to have the whole play read and to have spent some time thinking about it by class Thursday.   On Monday, we will talk over any problems, confusions you had reading the play, identify some key (famous) scenes/quotes, and work out the overall arc of the story.
Write: Peer reviews for your group; final revised essay for poetry unit.

Happy Halloween!

10.27 Getting ready for peer review on Thursday

We spent today reviewing the criteria for the poetry essay, outlining a list of talking points for providing peer reviews for this essay, and practicing giving feedback using the list.  We only managed to get through one essay (thanks to all who volunteered) - but I think that provides a general idea for how we will work through the essays.

For you to provide feedback to classmates in your group => you will need to read and think about the two poems they have chosen BEFORE you come to class.  The plan is that each of you will email the names and pages for the poems you have selected to your peer review group.   The groups will be the same as were established for the short story unit, and are as follows.

Peer review groups:
Jayshawn, Jeen, Melannie

Maddie, Sarah, Alycia, Melissa

Cynthia, Rute, Justin, Krysten

Julia, Zulema, Stephanie

In term of a protocol for the workshop, I suggest that you review the steps set up for the short story workshop (listed below):

Roles:
Facilitator, is the "emcee" for the group, makes sureall the points in the protocol are covered for each participant, fields questions, keeps the group on task.

Timekeeper:  makes sure the time for discussion of each piece is allocated in a way that ensures that everyone gets equal attention

Overall Protocol:
1. Facilitator and participants decide on the order.

2. Authors then present in the decided upon order.

Protocol for feedback for an individual author:
1. Author  introduces piece by stating what s/he wants feedback on.
2. Author reads his/her essay.

Readers then:
1. Comment on strengths
2. Say back the main point (thesis/focus) + name the supporting points(ask questions if necessary)
3. Talk through suggestions regarding genre (writing to the assignment); focus; organization; & development for the essay
4. Answer/ attend to the author's request for feedback.

Facilitator then asks if there are any further issues to talk about for the author, if not, move to the next speaker.

Workshop (listed below): Make sure to take notes throughout this process so that you can post complete and useful comments for each author.  Think about the kind of discussion we had in class today.  Look over today's class notes and the blog on organization to review what  kinds of comments will be most helpful in terms of genre, focus, organization, and development (points listed on the board).

Your first posts for peer review were assessed primarily in terms of going through the protocol.  For this set of peer review comments, I will be looking to see whether and what kind of constructive feedback you have provided for your peers.

Good class today, and see you on Thursday.  

For next class:

Read: Poems for classmates in your peer review group

Write: Finish Draft Poetry essay

10.27 Workshop

Bost, Jayshawn  https://sites.google.com/a/kean.edu/bost-eng2000/home

Gomes Maddie  https://sites.google.com/a/kean.edu/gomesenglish2000/

King, Melissa  https://sites.google.com/a/kean.edu/eng-2000-portfolio/

Svenson, Alycia  https://sites.google.com/a/kean.edu/svensonenglish2000/

10.23 What to include in your portfolio, and the overall organization for a comparative analysis assignment

What to include in your portfolio
line by line analysis (10.8)
writing about poem choice (10.20)
brainstorming for essay (10.23
rough draft (10.27)
final draft for peer review (10.30)
peer review feedback (10.30 in-lass writing)

Overall organization,
You did some writing to "outline" the points you would make, and after you had some of that in front of you, we talked through a general plan for writing a comparative essay.  I hope I made clear that the particular organization for your essay depends on your topic, and the approach you take to analysizing it.

Introduction: In general, you want to provide a set up for your essay which includes a statement of the general focus (something to answer the "why should I read this? question;  the names of the poems and authors you will be writing about, an overview of the points you will make through your comparison (what you will show through your analysis), and enough background on the poems so that the reader can understand why it makes sense to compare these two poems (the basis for comparison).

The particular order of these four moves will depend on your style, and the "flow" of your discussion.  If you are making a particularly detailed point, you will definitely want to set up your general focus FIRST, so that your reader has something to go on.  In general, you need to name the poems + poets before you begin writing about analyzing them.  Background comes next, and then you want to re-state your general focus in terms of the specific points (features of the poem you will analyze) as a transition to the body of your essay.

Body: For the body of a comparison essay, you can choose either a subject by subject comparison or a point by point discussion.

For a subject by subject comparison, you write everything about one poem, a transition, and the everything about the other, followed by a comparision of the points you discussed for each poem.

For point by point, you write a paragraph (or two) for each "point" you want to make about the two essays, and describe how they are similar and different, then transition to the next point.

We decided that Alycia's comparison of My Last Duchess and My Ex-lover might work better as a subject by subject comparison, because the second poem depends on the reader's familiarity with the first.  And we thought maybe Justin's comparison of The Moth and Billie Collins poem about literature students, might work better as a point by point, where he could discuss the following points:the similarity of focus, the similarity of the way the poem's achieved their effect (by having the addresseee go ahead in their old patterns - and leaving the reader to think about that); the differences presentation (one is dialog, one is monolog). poetic form (one is a sonnet the other is ??); and perhaps one other point?

When writing either a subject by subject or point by point comparison it is important to keep both references to poems and the order of points "in the same order".  If this is confusing - I will explain it more in class.

Good writing!

Plays. . .
Also, we talked about the plays in your textbook, and the majority of the class chose to read/write about Othello.  I will have the assignment sequence posted for you by Monday, and get started.  This should be fun!

For next class:
We will go back to the assignment sheet, make a list of what we would look for if we were evaluating this as a teacher = and then take a look at a couple of sample drafts.

Volunteers to have their drafts reviewed include: Jayshawn, Julia, Maddie, Melissa and Alycia.

Have a great weekend and see you on Monday.

10.20 Poetic structure

The book covers the language for discussing poetic structure, and we reviewed the terms used for rhythym, rhyme, line arrangements (stanzas), and syntax, and then we (briefly) considered why/how you might use these classifications in writing an essay.

I didn't write down the notes from the board, but some of the points I remember from the discussion of rhythm suggested that you might characterize the poets use of feet and line length:

• to characterize to tone or mood of the overall poem (as we did in our dicussion of cummings poem);
• to note correlations between particular meanings and rhythmic patterns and  (where the poet used a repeating rhythm to signal something = as cummings signaled the passage of time);
• to characterize/contrast the feeling/tone/meanints of different parts of a poem
• to identify connections to particular poetic genres (eg Elizabethan sonnets with their iambic bongos)
• to describe the musicality/effect of a poem

In the discussion of rhyme, we noted alliteration, consonance and assonance , and again, we noted that types of rhyme, as well as specific rhyme schemes, are often associated with a particular historical period and/or poetic genre.  We also noted that rhyme can contribute to emphasis, mood/tone, musicality, and as a result => the way the poem means.

We discussed e.e. cummings poem with hits "poetic syntax" and noted how he used just about all of the elements discussed to "remake" the way language means.

At the end of class we started to talk about choosing your two poems for your essay.  Most of you sounded like you are on the right track.  Be sure to identify your basis for comparison, check back to the assignment sheet, and start thinking about what you have to say.


For next class:
Write: Brainstorming for poetry essay.  Keep working on choosing your two poems, only this time do some writing to decide what you have to say about the two poems.  Pick out specific form features which you can compare - and think about how the different ways these features are used works to produce each poem's meanings.  Go back and re-read the assignment sheet sometime during your brainstorming process to make sure you are making the right kinds of points.

In class you will work on turing your brainstorming notes into an essay.  We will review the overall form for this kind of an essay, do some peer work, and have one-on-one conferences for those of you who request them.

Have a good week  and see you Thursday.

10.16 is Poetic language and Poetry assignment

We spent most of our time talking about August, though we took a quick run at Shall I Compare Thee?  - paying attention to the words the poets chose, the images/symbols they evoked, the personification, metaphors & similes.  All these poetic devices work together to create a connotative meaning alongside the denotative meaning; this connotative part of the poem is the place where we connect to associations, sensual experiences, cultural meanings and the endless way words mean not one thing but many at the same time.

August. Your work on August was outstanding!   You came up with at least 4 readings that could be supported by the language in the text.  As noted in class, the way teachers tend to evaluate "readings" is on the basis of how much of the poem's language/form a particular reading accounts for.  For example, A reading that August is about "ripeness" and the poet's celebration of feeling/"harvesting" the fruits of her maturity might be supported by the title and much of the first half of the first sentence. But we would be left with questions about the rest of it, the references to her body, the creeks, the happy tongue.  This language suggests a focus that perhaps includes this celebration, but is also something more, where the "more" is in the doubleness of the language  to describe her experiences.

From class discussion it looks like you are good at this!

Shall I Compare Thee.  In the quick discussion of Shall I Compare Thee, we noticed that Shakespeare used the word "this" in the closing couplet to refer to and celebrate the poem itself.  Poetry that writes about itself (as in Billie Collins sonnet included in the next chapter) is almost a genre of poetry all on its own.  Some self-references are clear and direct (as in Collins), some clear but not so extensively developed (as in Shall I Compar), and some are possible readings but not directly declared  (as in August).  In any case, this move is worth watching for.

Poetry assignment.  We spent the last 20 minutes of class going over the assignment for the poetry essay.  The paper requires a comparative discussion of two poems on a similar topic, which use similar forms, which evoke similar effects, or etc.  As pointed out in the assignment, you will point out the basis for comparison (the similarity) and then discuss in depth how they do this similar thing, differently.  Hopefully, this discussion will make a not trivial point about the way the poems work.  The assignment also makes clear that you are NOT to write about a pair of poems we have discussed in class.  I allowed that, with permission, you may compare one of the poems we discussed in class to a second poem of your choosing from your textbook.

Your textbook is more or less set up to facilitate this kind of assignment, as it has both paired poems, and sections which features a set of poems written on particular themes.  Also - there is an uncategorized anthology (chronologically organized) from which you can choose your own pair of poems.

Thinking about the right two poems for you.  In addition to comparing poems on a similar subect, you might choose a pair of poems with other features as your basis for comparison (the similarity).  For instance, you might choose to visual poems, two sonnets with exactly the same form but from different periods, two self-referential poems,  or two first-person narrative poems.  There are many pairs of poems that would work as discussions of the different ways poets use persona and storytelling in poetry.  Or you might choose two poems where the rhythm contrasts with the "literal" words (like My Papa's Waltz) to add an extra dimension of meaning.  Two poems that are ironic or funny could support a discussion of how the poets use humor similarly/differently with their different subjects.  We will talk about this more in class.

For next week:
Read:  Chapter 15
Write:  Start thinking about which two poems you want to choose.  (See Thinking about the right two poems for you - above) You might begin this process by jotting down some notes about what it is that most interests you about poetry.  Are you most interested in the way poetry sounds? feels? looks? means?  how it works?  What kinds of poems do you like?  What makes you like them?

In class we will go through the forms discussed in the chapter, and spend some time talking about how/what you want to choose to write about for your assignment.

Thanks for the good class today and have a great weekend!

10.8 Poetry: Persona and Tone

Feedback on Short Story Unit.  We started class with a review of what the points on your feedback sheets will mean (see previsous post).  I wanted to talk to you before I sent you the numbers.  Writing feedback ended up being a much more writing intensive task for me, and I feel like this first time around it is important to give lots of support.  So it took longer than I expected.  I'm hoping to have everything done by Friday, but it might be Saturday.  If you have any questions, be in touch.

Persona and tone.  You worked in groups to develop a short presentation on how persona and tone worked in the poems from Chapter 13.  Presentations included:

• a one or two sentence of the "literal" meaning (what the poem was about)
• a more in-depth statement of what the poem did and how/what kinds of meanings it evoked  in the reader
• the importance of tone/persona in both meanings.

Maddie, Alycia, Melissa & Sarah: My Papa's Waltz
You noted the distressing, confused, almost dangerous (not described matter of factly) content in the "literal" meaning - the smell of the father's drinking, the mother's frowning face, the beating of the belt buckle on the child clinging to the shirt = and how it contrasted to the steady, predictable rhythm in line after line=> the waltz presented by the child narrator.  As it was in the child's voice, we might take this crazy juxtaposition as one way of representing the kind of double-seeing required of children in homes with alcoholism or other difficulties.  They can see literally what is happening, and it is scary and even dangerous = but they "normalize" it (because they have to) into the regular mundane rhythms of life.

Julia, Zulema, Stephanie, and Chante: the Rose poems
This group pointed out, correctly, that this is a courtship (seduction?) poem where the speaker asks the rose to point out to his reluctant (resisting?) mistress that he things she is "sweet and fair" ; that unless she let's herself be seen that she will be "uncommended"; she needs to get out there (make herself available to the speaker); and that if she doesn't do it soon, it will all be over (she will die).

The persona in the poem is the impatient lover.  He is condescendng (tell her that's young) and even rude (tell her that wastes her time and me).  Do we imagine that he loves this woman?   How do we receive this poem in light of this bullying tone, a tone which sounds like thinly veiled anger?  Do we perhaps receive him differently than the audience in the 17th century?

After directing our attention to the male-centered interests and the speaker's authoritative tone in this poem (as if he is speaking to a child who doesn't know better),we raised the question of how a 20th century woman might respond to a poem with this tone, and wondered whether the real audience for this poem was other men (who might be similarly vexed by women who wouldn't do what they wanted?) and not the recipient of the rose?

We noted the ironic tone in Dorothy Parker's "One Perfect Rose" - and how it played off the expectations set up by the rose poem genre.


Jayshawn, Jeen, Sha'nae and Melanie (Sins of the Father) and Cynthia, Krysten, and Rute (The Ruined Maid) also made excellent (if rushed) presentations on how persona and tone shaped the "effect" of the poem (the reader's experience of it).

For sins of the father, we noted that the first person voice of the father contributed to our sympathy (unreflective forgiveness?) at his sudden realization of the consequences of his past behavior - and maybe even a failure to question the last sentence that "there was nothing I could do" (which I said I felt might be read as glib and a cop-out => yah, that is a little harsh, just raising the idea and reflecting how persona can sucker us in, get us to agree with things that in real life we might not buy in to).

For "The Ruined Maid" which we really did not take fair time for, we noted the ironic tone => presenting prostitution as superior to country labor, and, if we had spent more time analyzing it, might have discussed how this allowed Hardy to comment on the circumstances of women's lives in rural communities (even if he did clearly distort what it was like to be a prostitute).

Great class!  That was fun.

For next class:
Read: Chapter 14, Writing about Poetic Language.  Pay special attention to Mary Oliver's poem, Shakespeare's sonnet, and Donald Hall's "My Son the Executioner".

Feedback on Writing about Short Stories

This is what is posted in your syllabus for the distribution of points for yoru grade:

Grades (we may re-negotiate point assignments as we work through the term)

1.  Contributions to group brainstorming, conferencing, and peer review 150  points

2.  Drafts & exploratory writing for essays on: short story, poetry, drama & novel 150  points
3.  2 polished essays [resulting from extensive revisions to 2 drafts] 200  points

4.  Portfolio  [reflective intro, 2&3 above, writing from group work & peer reviews] 350 points

5.  Contributions to class discussions, 150 points

Total points for course 1000 points

My grading scale is a little different from the University's suggested scale. I use:
Above 90=A, 90=A-; Above 80=B; 80=B-, and so on.

The breakdown for time spent on each unit is as follows:
Short story: 10 classes
Poetry: 7 classes
Drama: 6 classes
Novel and finishing portfolio 7 classes.

Below is the scoring used for the feedback.

Participation credit (50):

Exploratory writing (50 points total):

• brainstorming precis (9.8):
• realization essay brainstorming (9.11):
• notes on Say Yes (9.15):
• brainstorming/notes setting (9.18):
• brainstorming/notes structure (9.22):
• brainstorming draft (9.25):
• draft (9.29):

Draft (50 points):

Peer review/group work (Uncle Rock or Boys & Girls 9.22) (40):

Total “grade so far”:  /190

10.6 Poetry - getting the "literal" meaning

Finishing the short story unit:   You posted your finished drafts for your short story. I will be reading through them the next couple of days, and hopefully I will have them (and your homework) back to you with comments by next class or shortly after.

Poetry.  We started class with some observations about how reading poetry correlates with reading fiction.  The idea here was that you could think about which of the strategies we worked with in the short story unit you might be able to bring to this unit on poetry.  You noted the following features of poetry.

uses stanza & lines/form is important

uses images

more interpretation is required

more metaphor/symbolic

language can have special meanings

sound of the language more of a focus

can have  empahsis on emotional/felt response

shorter=>meaning more condensed

So poetry seems like it is more intense/condensed in its meaning making, more connected to the sound/music of language, and more likely to work at multiple levels of meaning making. At the same time, when we took a close look at short stories - the form and language were absolutely important to the story's effect.

How poems mean.  The poem I was trying to remember about how poems "mean" was by Archibald Macleish - and here it is - with the punchline being "a poem should not mean but be."  Which raises questions about why we spent most of class practicing/thinking about strategies for finding the "literal meaning" of a poem as a starting place for creating an interpretation/exploration of its possibilities.   In defense of the suggestion offered by your text book - and our current approach - we aren't really finding a literal meaning, but doing a line by line analysis of the possibilities raised by the sounds, language, allusions and associations the poem brings to us as we read it.  After this close reading we are able to talk about what the poem does and says in a way that will allow us to think about it as a whole.  

We spent most of class talking about The Second Coming. Some of the strategies we used as we read line by line were as follows.

• Paying attention to the title (which persents a preview/overview of the poem)
• Listening to assonance or repetitions - which can make connections between words, syllables and phrases (falcon=> falconer); or create emphasis (turning and turning)
• Listening to the rhythm of the words- phrases that went slowly word by word ('things fall apart' or 'what rough beast') add emphasis and draw attention to themselves
• Associating to particular words/phrases for cultural significance 
• Thinking about the poet's larger body of work/beliefs/the time when s/he wrote
• Wondering why the poet chose particular words or phrases ("troubles my sight," "pitiless," "stony sleep" "vexed to nightmare")
• Wondering about meanings and connections  ("blood-dimmed tide" =>"ceremony of innocence is drowned")
• Connections to larger cultural beliefs, religion, interpretations of history (the concept of the Second Coming from Chritianity, the Book of Revelations, the idea of the Anti-Christ. . .)

We then worked on coming up with a sentence or two (or several different sets of sentences!) to give us a starting place for what we thought the poem was "about" => keeping in mind that it was about MANY things, and that if we could reduce it simply to one sentence we were probably missing something.

We took about 2 minutes at the end of a class to analyze a poem which on the surface seems to report more concrete events.  Hanging Fire  seemed to be a description of a series of events which always ended with the phrase referring to the narrator's mother in the bedroom.  But - like the short stories - it has an urgent aboutness created through the repetition of the question about dying coupled with the mother behind the door of the bedroom and the idea of "hanging fire" that the structure and language and feel  of the poem creates, and this meaning is more than the words.  (And clearlyone thing we needed to do was look up "hanging fire"!)

So - for next class you will be reading about persona and tone, and each of your peer groups is going to take a poem from the "sample" poems in the chapter so you can be the "expert" on the possible meanings.  

Poems by group are as follows.

Jayshawn, Jeen, Melannie, Krystal: Sins of the Father

Maddie, Sarah, Alycia, Melissa: My Fathers Waltz

Cynthia, Rute, Justin, Krysten: The Ruined Maid

Julia,  Chante, Zulema, Stephanie: The Rose poems at the end

We decided you would each write up a line by line analysis, similar to what we did in class for The Second Coming, and post it, and that we would take a minute at the beginning of class for you to pull together what you would say about your poem.  You are not responsible for the analysis of persona and tone and how it shapes the reader's response.  We will talk about that in class.

For next class:
Read:  Chapter 13: Writing about Persona & Tone, 492. 

Write: do a line by line analysis to establish the "literal" meaning for your group’s poem

In class we will begin with the group explorations of the poems - and then talk specifically about how persona and tone contribut to the way the poem evokes a response from the reader.

10.2 Peer workshop

Class on Monday  10. 6 will be in CAS 236

On Thursday, I started class by drawing your attention to the new calendar - (revcalendar posted to the right) which now includes the assignmenets for the poetry unit.

Peer review.
Pretty much the rest of class was devoted to your peer review workshop.  We began by working out the roles and protocols for peer review.
Roles:
Facilitator, is the "emcee" for the group, makes sureall the points in the protocol are covered for each participant, fields questions, keeps the group on task.

Timekeeper:  makes sure the time for discussion of each piece is allocated in a way that ensures that everyone gets equal attention

Protocol:
Facilitator and participants decide on the order.

Authors then present in the decided upon order.

Protocol for feedback for an individual author:
1. Author  introduces piece by stating what s/he wants feedback on.
2. Author reads his/her essay.

Readers then:
1. Comment on strengths
2. Say back the main point (thesis/focus) + name the supporting points(ask questions if necessary)
3. talk through the focus, organization + development for the essay
4. answer, attend to the author's request for feedback.

Facilitator then asks if there are any further issues to talk about for the author, if not, move to the next speaker.

We suggested that participants take notes as they are listening to the author read, with particular attention to any issues the author requested feedback on.

Discussion
From the post-peer review wrap up talk it sounds like you did some good work in your groups - and that you got some constructive ideas for re-working your essays.  You said that you followed the protocol, more or less, and that you are good with keeping these same groups for the rest of the term.  Unless I hear differently (by email) that's what we will do.

What to include in your peer review feedback:
Purpose:  The purpose of this write up is to provide the author (and me) with a written version of what you communicated during class.  This writing is important because: there was a lot of talking all at once and the author might have missed some of your feedback.  Also, this written record will give me some insight into the way the group gave feedback - which in turn might help me understand how better to work with you on your writing.

Content: Say what worked, what you heard as the author's main point + how s/he supported it, and any points you might like to make about focus, organization, development, and answer the author's questions (since I was not in your group, you might need to re-state these for me).


For next class:

Read: Chapter 12: How do I read poetry?, 488; and Yeats, The Second Coming, 607; 

Frost, Birches, 611; Lorde, Hanging Fire, 647; Eady, The Supremes, 657; Espada, Bully, 660

Write: 1) peer reviews for your group members (on the peer review page, on the sub-page for short stories.  We decided you would attach your peer reviews for each group member as a separate document, attached to the short story peer review page.  Name documents AuthorSSReview.

2) Put the final touches on your short story essay, and make sure you have posted your work for the short story unit (you can check the homework assignments at the end of the blog posts).

In class Monday we will start on poetry, and make sure everything is set/wrapped up for the short story unit. After class, I will look through the work you did for the short story unit and write up some feedback along with the points you earned for homework and participation for this unit.