As it did in Unit 1, Weekly Work in Unit 2 is designed to help you to keep up with the reading, develop and refine your analytical skills, get started on major assignments, contribute to our class community in a way that helps your peers, and / or refine your writing and editing skills and knowledge about the writing process.

In Unit 2, Weekly Work is additionally designed to help you practice composing in and analyzing unfamiliar genres of writing (or familiar genres that you haven’t closely considered) to give you some practice for composing your Assignment 2 portfolio.

Your weekly deadline in Unit 2 will still be Wednesdays at 11:59pm.

Where would you like to begin?

Click on any of the buttons below to be taken to a prompt that explains the weekly work assignments and requirements for each one.

Prepare for Teach What You Learned

Contribute to Our Class Community

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Write a Recap for Absent Students

What is this assignment?

We had this one in the last unit, so I will spare you my lengthy explanation!

Is this repeatable?

Please only do this once in a unit for credit.

Requirements:

1. Sign up for a slot on the sign-up sheet in the #whatyoumissed channel
   
2. Thread your comment for that day and don’t just add it to the channel!
   
3. Write a short description of what we did in class. Remember: you don’t need to capture every detail. Give us an impression of what your experience was like, what interested you, what you thought about, etc.
   
4. You do not also need to submit an assignment submission form for this.

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Tool Exploration

What is this assignment?

The purpose of this assignment is to incentivize your practice with some kind of digital composition tool (preferably one that you might want to experiment with for Teach What You’ve Learned.)

What will this help me to do?

This assignment will help you to prepare for Teach What You’ve Learned, and maybe to find or practice with a tool that you might want to use in a low-stakes way. This will eventually help you to choose among a variety of strategies to meet a communicative goal, and practice writing strategies to address a number of rhetorical situations, genres, and modalities.

Is this repeatable?

You can do this assignment once in Unit 2.

How much time should this take me?

No shorter than an hour, and no longer than 1.5 hours.

Requirements:

1) Choose a tool from our working Composing Tools list, or add your own tool to the list.

2) Using a piece of writing that you have already completed for this class or elsewhere, and thinking about the audience that you might want to try to reach for Teach What You Learned, translate the piece into something that uses this new tool. This will likely mean that you have to change the piece. Do not simply copy and paste whole paragraphs onto Google Slides, for example. Remain thoughtful about how this tool is actually used in the world.

3) Do not spend more than 1.5 hours on this task. Set a timer, and cut yourself off, and turn in whatever you’ve done when you reach 1.5 hours, even if it doesn’t look like much. It takes time to learn stuff, and it’s OK if this is not a beautiful masterpiece. The point is to practice rather than to achieve perfection. By the same token, please take time with this. It should take you longer than 30 minutes to do this.

4) Write a short statement telling me about what you learned in this process. What took you longer than you expected? What was interesting or more fun than you expected? Had you used this tool before? Would you use this tool again? How might you use this tool for Teach What You’ve Learned? What do you need to remember the next time you use it? Any words of advice for peers who will be composing using the same tool? (No word limit on this — just answer the questions as best you can)

5) Submit this using the Weekly Work Submission Form by (any) Wednesday before April 27th.

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Genre Exploration

This assignment is no longer eligible for submission. Please choose a different weekly work assignment to submit.

What is this assignment?

The purpose of this assignment is to help you to closely consider the features of a particular genre of composing that might be similar to the kind of composing that you want to do in Teach What You’ve Learned.

What will this help me to do?

Analyzing a text within a certain genre will help you to build the skills that are necessary for you to choose among a variety of strategies to meet a communicative goal, and to practice writing strategies to address a number of rhetorical situations, genres, and modalities.

Is this repeatable?

You can repeat this assignment (with different texts) as many times as you’d like in Unit 2.

How much time should this take me?

No shorter than an hour, and no longer than 1.5 hours.

Requirements:

1) Choose a text that is close to the genre that you might want to use for Assignment 2 (so, this could be a certain style of YouTube video, a video or two from a certain creator’s Tik Tok account, a podcast episode, a zine, an op/ed in The Knight News, etc. — reach out if you need help with this part.)

2) Briefly summarize what this object is, what it says / does, and where it was published. Link to it if it exists online. Say why this is the genre that you chose to explore. How do you think that understanding something more about this genre will help you to make progress on Teach What You’ve Learned?

3) Discuss the credentials of the writer / creator / composer of this text (“credentials” don’t have to be from a university — this person could have relevant lived experiences, for example) and why this person is (or isn’t!) qualified to make this argument.

4) Discuss the intended audience for this piece. How do you know based on the word or style choices, the venue where this piece is published and who typically reads this publication, how much or how little explanation the author gives, or any other clues that you have?

5) Make comparisons between this text and other kinds of academic writing that you’ve done. Does this piece have something that is similar to a “thesis” statement? Does it bring in and cite outside evidence? Is it organized similarly or differently? Are the language choices similar or different? What other comparisons between this genre and genres of academic writing that you’ve read or written in do you notice?

6) You can compose this response in any modality (so, you could record yourself talking about these things on video, you could make an audio recording, you could make a Prezi, you could write this up as a response as you’ve done in the previous unit). There is no word requirement, as long as you are answering ALL of the questions. Submit this using the Weekly Work Submission Form by (any) Wednesday before April 27th.

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Source Exploration

What is this assignment?

In this assignment, you’ll use the Writing Studies research database, CompPile, or ERIC, the education research database on the Queens College Library database page, or Academic Search Complete: a database dedicated to interdisciplinary academic research. Using one of these, you’ll find some sources related to helping you develop your ideas about Teach What You’ve Learned, summarize those sources, and talk about how they relate to your project.

What will this help me to do?

This assignment is mostly to help you prepare and get some feedback on sources that you’re considering consulting for Teach What You’ve Learned.

Is this repeatable?

You can do this assignment as many times as you’d like in this unit, but you’ll need to repeat it using a DIFFERENT source each time.

How much time should this take me?

It’s going to depend on how long it takes you to find a source related to your topic, but I would estimate that it would take you no shorter than an hour and no longer than 2 hours.

Requirements:

1. Fill out this form.
2. Answer each question in each box.
3. Complete this form no later than Wednesday, April 27th.

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Whole Class Conference

What is this assignment?

This assignment is similar to the Share a Draft assignment from Unit 1. If you choose this option, the class will use the Critical Response Process to give you feedback on something that you’re working on. It does not have to be Teach What You Learned, but it can be.

What will this help me to do?

This can help you to refine what YOU want from this piece, and to articulate what you want other people to notice about it, which can help to develop your own editing skills. It’s also a chance to share your work!

Is this repeatable?

You can only do this once for credit in this unit.

How much time should this take me?

The bulk of the time that this will take will probably be in producing the piece of writing that you want to share. The actual work of this assignment will be shorter, just as it was in Unit 1. It should probably take you no shorter than about 30 minutes to re-read your draft and think about your request for feedback. It might take you a little time to think about how you want to reiterate this request in the class.

Requirements:

1. Let me know by no later than Wednesday, April 13th that you want to do this. I will give you a date for when this can happen.
2. At least three days before your conference, post your draft and your feedback request to the #feedback channel on Slack. Ask us specific questions to consider as we look at your work so that we can prepare our responses in advance. Please specify the deadline for this project if it’s not for this class. 
3. Be present on the day that your review happens to give a short explanation of your project, to hear the feedback, and to give permission (or not!) for “permissioned opinions.” You will also be responsible for moderating the discussion: so you will call on people, and you are free to respond to them. This is not a “sit in silence and let people critique you” kind of thing.
4. Send me an e-mail after class reflecting on what you learned from this experience and how the feedback will impact the next step in this project.

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Shape a Future Class Discussion

This assignment is no longer eligible for submission. Please choose a different weekly work assignment to submit.

What is this assignment?

In this assignment, you’ll read ahead for a future class and then develop a few things to help me to shape the direction of our conversation that day. You do not need to “present” something to do this assignment: this is more about helping me to think about activities, discussion questions, and directions that would be interesting for us to take when we discuss the text for that day.

What will this help me to do?

Thinking deeply enough about a course text in order to help lead a discussion on it will help you to approach the material in a more substantial way than if you were participating in the class more passively. This will also help all of us to focus activities and discussions around things that you care about the most.

Is this repeatable?

You can only do this once per unit.

Requirements:

1. Choose a text that we have not already discussed and that we will discuss in a future week. Read it / listen to it.
2. Fill out this form.
3. Submit the form by (any) Wednesday before April 27.

Go to the Writing Center

What is this assignment?

In this assignment, you’ll take a piece of writing that you do for this class, or any class, to the Queens College Writing Center.

What will this help me to do?

Meeting with a Writing Center consultant can help to give you another reader’s opinion on your work. Like with peer review, conferences, or instructors’ comments, a Writing Center consultant can help to “dramatize” the reader for you and to help you notice things about your own draft that are difficult to see by yourself. Consultations can also help you to understand assignments, to make a plan, to get “unstuck,” or to manage your time.

What will this help me to do?

You can only do this once for credit in this unit, but you’ll be able to do it again in the next unit.

Requirements:

1. First,  make an appointment at the Writing Center
2. Read “How To Prepare For Your Writing Center Consultation” and generate a list of at least 3-4 questions that you have for your Writing Center consultant.
3. Show up to your appointment and be on time and prepared.
4. Once you’ve finished your appointment, fill out this form. Note: in most cases, you need to have completed this by May 16th, but if you are going to the Writing Center during Finals week and need to submit this later, just let me know.