Detailed assignment prompts and requirements for each assignment are available on the syllabus.
Interactive Syllabus and Slack Tasks
In the first week of class, you’ll complete this interactive syllabus and these five Slack setup tasks. This will help me get to know you, your goals, the things that you need, and how to best support you this semester. It will also teach you about this class.
Journal assignments and note-taking guides
Throughout each unit, you will complete shorter “journal” assignments and note-taking guides for each day. You will submit the journals through the Assignment Submission Form and receive feedback on them. I will periodically check the note-taking guides, but you’ll only turn them in if you miss class that day. These assignments are designed to help you to get feedback on small pieces of your major assignment for that unit to make them easier for you to write. They also help to introduce or reinforce things that we are learning in class and allow me to check in on your progress.
Exit tickets
When you are absent from class, or when you are more than 15 minutes late, you’ll need to fill out an exit ticket to “make up” for the time that you missed. These tickets will help me to help you to catch up and will allow me to know if you have any questions or confusion about what we learned that day. You’ll know that you need to fill out an exit ticket when I tag you in the #whatyoumissed channel on Slack.
Major Assignment 1: Narrative Description of a Problem
For Major Assignment #1: Narrative Description of a Problem, you’ll think of a problem that impacts you personally and that comes out of your own lived experiences (or the experiences of someone close to you): something that you find unfair, annoying, dangerous, disappointing, or wrong that negatively affects you or someone that you know. Using the narrative description techniques that we learn and practice throughout this unit, you’ll compose a persuasive text addressed to someone who can help you to solve this problem.
This text should be written from a first-person perspective (e.g. use “I”). Many students will write a letter, but you also have the option to compose something else: an op/ed for a newspaper, like the ones that we are studying, for example. You’ll work closely with me, and with your peers in the class, to gather and apply feedback on your work.
Major Assignment 2: Rhetorical Analysis
For Major Assignment #2: Rhetorical Analysis, you’ll analyze a persuasive text (e.g. a text that is trying to get an audience to take some kind of action) that relates in some way to the problem that you described in Unit 1. Using what you learn in this unit, you will write a rhetorical analysis of the persuasive text that you choose.
Your analysis should determine who the audience is, the text’s purpose (and its “call to action”), some information about the larger context in which the text is situated, the text’s medium and circulation, and how the text uses rhetorical appeals to persuade the audience. You need to use specific examples from the text to illustrate your claims. In addition to describing your evidence, you should also analyze and evaluate the text. Like in Unit 1, you’ll work collaboratively throughout this unit to develop a better understanding of how to edit and evolve your work.
Major Assignment 3: Annotated Bibliography and Process Log
For Major Assignment #3: Annotated Bibliography, you’ll research the problem that you’ve been studying all semester using reputable online sources and scholarly sources from the Queens College library. You’ll create annotated bibliography entries describing the research question or main idea of each source, its arguments or findings, the method or evidence that it uses to make its claims, how each source relates to helping you figure out your problem, and how the source relates to at least one other source on your list. You’ll be responsible for finding three scholarly sources and three reputable but non-scholarly sources. In addition to the annotations, you’ll write a process log: a brief reflection that shows how you located and vetted your information, why it would be persuasive to your stakeholder, and what else you want to learn about this issue.
Because this is our shortest unit, you’ll get less feedback from peers on this assignment. However, we’ll still work collaboratively toward finding your sources and building your annotations, and you’ll have the opportunity to meet individually with me to discuss your progress.
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