I began class with Ashley on Tuesday by asking how she felt about the final draft of her paper on The Street. She said she felt it was an improvement from her first paper because she used more quotes without leaving them to stand on their own. I agree; I think in this paper, she had stronger analysis and better organization, which were the two areas I was most worried about in her first paper. I had her look over my comments again, and I also printed out her paper to look at the organization of the last two paragraphs. In these paragraphs, she discusses a place called the Junto Bar, and her thoughts are almost separated into a) the people at the bar and b) the physical environment of the bar, so I highlighted a few sentences that needed to be moved to stay in line with this organization, and asked her to make the distinction more clear in her topic sentences. Also, she has a good sense of the need for transitions between paragraphs, but tends to lean on the narrative for these links, instead of linking her analytic arguments. I pulled out a few sentences with grammatical problems that she was able to edit. Overall, we’re both happy with this second paper. I answered some questions about her two potential research paper topics and she formally proposed her final topic to me over email on Thursday night. She is writing about Augusta Savage, a sculptor who spent her most artistic years in Harlem. Ashley drew some interesting parallels between her life and her work that would serve as great thesis statements. I wrote back approving the topic, but asked her to do some more research because I didn’t think the sources she sent me would provide enough information for the paper. She will turn in a working thesis and outline by Sunday night.
My class with Qi was rescheduled from Monday to Thursday. On Sunday, she sent me a list of sources and their summaries for her paper on the Eurozone Crisis. She will be analyzing the crisis with three different lenses: competition, banking, and politics. She seems to have a good grasp on what she wants to do in this paper. She’ll be writing a two page thought letter outlining her paper’s organization for Sunday night. During class, I decided to do a writing exercise to practice incorporating evidence. I asked Qi to read two articles about Bitcoin, a virtual currency now on the market, and write a paragraph response using three quotes from the articles. She did well and we made some minor revisions. We talked about how to choose quotes that will add to an argument and the importance of a variety of quotes vs. paraphrasing. I spent the last part of class introducing the final portfolio assignment.
I hope everyone is doing all right after this week and take care!