In my meeting with Delanie on Monday, she turned in a short paragraph that she wrote about a scene from Doctor Who (The Widow and the Wardrobe, 55:00). Her observations were great, and we edited some passive sentences and some that were too vague (dangling modifiers and “his emotional response”). In class, I had her summarize another scene in five sentences and then in one sentence, to work on concision and pulling out the most important aspects of a scene to introduce pieces of analysis. For next week, she is watching the documentary Home and writing a thoughtletter to plan her first paper.
With Estefania on Thursday, we went over her paragraph on Eleanor Roosevelt’s chapter “How Everyone Can Take Part in Politics.” Her sentence clarity and flow were very good, and she has a strong personal voice in her writing. She made two claims, however, without any textual support, so I had her go back and add this evidence during class. She did the same summary exercise (5 sentences and then 1 sentence) for the chapter and did well. I assigned her a thought letter as well, that in this case will work as a sort of essay proposal and research plan for her first paper, about some part of San Antonio’s history.