Today’s Agenda:

• Warm Up​

• Genre Workshop

• Homework

 

Today's Goals:

Learning Outcomes​

• Demonstrate your ability to use your analyses of rhetorical situations to identify options and to make appropriate choices that will enable them to use writing to achieve specific purposes

• Demonstrate their ability to collaborate effectively as members of diverse teams/groups of writers

Habits of Mind

• Engagement is fostered when writers are encouraged to find meanings new to them or build on existing meanings as a result of new connections

• Creativity is fostered when writers are encouraged to take risks by exploring questions, topics, and ideas that are new to them

Key Terms

• Rhetorical Situation: audience, purpose, context, exigency

• Composing processes: planning, researching, drafting, sharing and responding, revising, editing, publishing, reflecting

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Warm Up

On your Warm Ups document, respond to the following questions:

Early voting has just begun. Connect voting to a threshold concept or ACRL framework. Why is voting important?

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Genre Planning Activity - Practicing Audience and Rhetorical Situation: Midterms Edition! (Elections, Not Exams!)

Today, in groups, you are going to practice looking at a particular rhetorical situation, finding an audience, deciding how to target that audience, and then creating a plan for how you can use writing to reach that audience to get them to do something - what genre would you use, what information would it contain?

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The Issue: Voter turnout for midterm elections (and actually, all elections in the United States) is low. Your goal is to use writing to increase voter turnout.

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Your Task:

In groups, create a plan to engage voters of particularly underrepresented demographics or demographics with historically low turnout.

 

-First, search online for reputable sources to see how the composition of congress does or does not reflect the composition of the American public.

 

-Also, search for statistics on what demographic groups vote and do not vote. (You are not looking for who votes for who - we just want to know who votes. The goal is to increase the number of people who vote, regardless of who they vote for, for the purpose of this exercise.) Choose an audience based on the statistics you find.

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-Then, considering the following questions, create a plan (mind map, outline, notes, whatever) for a genre through which you could communicate to a specific audience to get them to vote.

• Who is your audience and why? 

• How do you think your audience perceives voting? Find evidence/support for your opinion.

• How does your audience get information? What kind of media do they consume? What kind of technologies do they use?

• How will you reach your audience? What genre of writing will you use? What information will you include? What motivation will you suggest for voting?

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Looking Ahead:

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Discovery Log #9

This week's discovery log will follow the conversation you cite in Discovery Log 8 - Find a source cited in the scholarly source you chose. In your scholarly source, find quotations from another source. How is your DL #8 using the other source? What does it say?

Take notes from the new source, connecting it to the first source (synthesis).

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Portfolio Practice 2.1

Choose a learning outcome that you did not use for your midterm portfolio, or choose one from your midterm portfolio that you want to revise.

If choosing a new learning outcome: follow the process steps for that outcome.

• Try to find three specific pieces of evidence for that outcome. Thoroughly explain those pieces of evidence.

• What do you need to do going forward to make sure that you are achieving this outcome?

If choosing to revise a learning outcome from the midterm portfolio:

• Follow the process steps again

• Include three pieces of evidence. You may re-use one piece of evidence you used on the midterm. Find two additional pieces of evidence.

• How does each piece of evidence show work toward achieving the learning outcome?

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Homework

Read/Resources for Success:

What is a Scholarly Source?

Evaluating Online Sources

 

Write:

Discovery Log 9 due Sunday at midnight 

Portfolio Practice 2.1 due Sunday at midnight

No reading response this week - as such, your Discovery Log needs to be longer. Your priority should be making sure you have the information you need to successfully produce your genres.

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Ask questions about any of this now, don't wait until the day before a due date or deadline.

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