College Essay Work Day #2

1. Opening moment: Pam
2. College Essay work
3. Make sure you check the calendar for when you are meeting with me in the library.

College Essay Work

1. Opening Moment: Peter

2. First Lines: Rate them

3. College Essay Rubric

4. Conference College Essay- folks who completed a peer review last time will be conferencing with me today. Everyone else will be completing a peer review or continuing to work on a draft.

Writing Goals and Peer Review

1. Opening Moment: Ramsey & Wynne

2. Blog Posting #2: Set 3 writing goals for yourself that you would like to accomplish over the course of the year.

3. Peer workshop the college essay: Make a copy of the Peer Review Sheet in your Quarter 1 folder. You will be filling this out for your partner and sharing it with them.

Peer Review Protocol:

• Read the essay (either out loud with your parter or to yourself)
• Using the comment feature in google docs, make comments or suggestions as you are reading 
• Fill out Peer Review Sheet (make sure this is shared with your partner!) 
• Take turns discussing what you noticed on peer review document

When you are finished conferencing, you will be revising this essay in preparation for your conference with me next class. For homework, you will complete the College Essay Review Sheet -this must be finished before conferencing with me!

Friday's Agenda: Second Essay!

1. Opening Moment: Wynne
2. Submit your first draft of your first personal narrative/college essay into your first name/last name folder.  Label it: Narrative #1
3. You are going to spend the period today writing a second first draft of a personal narrative/college essay.  Also put this in your name folder.  Label it: Narrative #2. Choose another prompt from the common app to write on (see tab at top of page for the prompts)
• Consider one of the following ways to put a spin on your narrative:
• Tell your story in the third person
• Tell your story from the perspective of an inanimate object
• Keep considering how the mundane could be the jumping off point of a great essay.
• Start writing...from the end of your story
• Start writing...from the middle of your story
• Begin a story with dialogue
• Begin with a shocking statement

*By the end of class today you should have TWO rough drafts in your name folder in Googledocs*

College Essay Checklist & Writing Tips

1. Opening Moment: Faith

2. Activity #1, Group work: Admissions Committees

• Look at the college essay checklist and discuss what you're looking for in a college essay; hard copy also given in class. http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/studentactivity/20090423a.pdf

• Choose an essay to review from this site, fill out the checklist: http://www.conncoll.edu/admission/apply/essays-that-worked/

• Group chat: Read a few more essays.  Which students would you accept? Which would you reject?  Be ready to report out.

3. Now, we are going to consider and evaluate advice about how to write a good college essay. Choose one of the following articles and answer the three questions below in your group. Type your answers in a response to today's post on our class blog.

• Your Comments on Admissions Essays
• Tip Sheet: An Admissions Dean Offers Advice on Writing a College Essay
• An Applicant’s Perspective on the College Essay
• Treating a College Admissions Essay Like a First Date
• Admissions Essay Ordeal: The Young Examined Life
• The ——– That Changed My Life

1. What are the top three pieces of advice you glean from this piece?
2. From whose perspective does this advice come?
3. Do you find this advice compelling? Why or why not?

HW: Use the advice given in these articles to write the first draft of your college essay. Try writing on one of the free writing prompts we did last week....build off of one that you already did, or feel free to start over. We will be working with these drafts next class.

Narrative/College Essays

1. Opening Moment: Josh 
2. Groups: discuss article analysis

• what were the highlights?
• what would you recommend modeling from the articles?

3. Blog posting: what makes a good college essay?

• http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/essay/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

4. Documenting the mundane...activity 

5. (If time...) Group work: Admissions Committees

• Look at the college essay checklist and discuss what you're looking for in a college essay; hard copy also given in class. http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/studentactivity/20090423a.pdf

• Choose an essay to review from this site, fill out the checklist: http://www.conncoll.edu/admission/apply/essays-that-worked/

• Group chat: Which students would you accept? Which would you reject?

Example Essays

1. Opening Moment: Julia
2. Three pieces of info...article from last blog entry
3. Example essays:
1. Read 1(+) essay from each category in small groups (Link: Click here)
2. Fill out form as you read: Model Article Analysis Sheet
4. Gulf Motel prompt
1. Video link: Write about a place that has meaning to you and that you wouldn’t want to see changed. Try to use the same types of details that Blanco uses in his poem.
5. First draft of first essay due: Friday, September 19th

Free Writing

Tuesday, Sept 9th

1. Opening Moment: What is it?
2. Still need your blog address:
• Nichole
• Hannah
• Josh
• Pam
• Jake
• Demetrius 
• Hailey
3. Free Writing Activity
1. Step #1: Writing Prompts
2. Step #2: Discussion
• Which of these topics did you find the easiest to discuss? Why?
• Which of these did you find difficult? Why?
• Which of these prompts did you want to continue talking (or writing) about?
4. Read examples and answer the question: What makes a strong narrative essay?
1. Link: Click here
5. Blog Entry #2:
• NYT article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/education/09guidance-t.html
• After reading this article, what are three pieces of information you'll take away from this article that would be helpful to you or a friend?  Explain why the resonate with you.

Welcome to Journalism 2014-2015!

Today's agenda:

• Collect permission slips & read articles from last class

• Set up shared google folders (share with petersonb@rsu5.org)
• Title of folder: "Last name, first name"

• Set up blogger account and page 
• Add your blog account address to this google doc.  

• How are blogs assessed?

• The first post to your new blog is to explore what journalism means to you.  Some directions you can take this prompt include (but you are not limited to):
• What does journalism look like?
• Is there "good" or "bad" journalism?
• Where do you see journalism in your life?
• Talk about journalists you pay attention to.
• Why are you interested in journalism?
• What are you curious to learn more about in terms of this class? Journalism in general?

150-200 words.

• College/Narrative Essays: What makes a strong essay?  Respond to this thread with your answers.