The plan for this day is basically what was referred to in my fycomp class as a diagnostic essay. The purpose of a diagnostic is supposed to be for me to see what their writing skills are like and for them to get a little bit of an idea concerning what kind of things I will be looking for when I grade their "real" essays. So anyway, today was supposed to consist of approximately fifty minutes of in-class writing. I had come up with a pretty good writing prompt, but I found myself unable to simply stick to that. I gave them a choice, they could write from the original writing prompt or, if that didn't interest them, they could choose instead to write about what they would choose if the had to choose between the ability to fly or the ability to become invisible.
This is an exercise that I came up with last year and several of my office mates used it as well. I got the idea from an episode of This American Life, and it is an excellent way to get students to start talking. I found last year that fifty minutes seemed to be stretching it a bit for the diagnostic exercise. So, this year, I spent about the first fifteen to twenty minutes having a class discussion about the super-power choice question. This really worked out well, because the super power thing also seems to be a little too much for a whole class time (although I should point out here that one of my colleagues has an hour long exercise that calls for dividing the class up into two sides depending on which power they would choose and having them come up with a good argument for their own super power and against the other super power. I have sat in on a class where he did this and it was quite effective)
so anyway, I am writing this on Saturday and I was going to look over my student's essays today but, quite frankly, I had too much to drink last night and I have had a raging headache all day. So, I have decided to put the essay's off until I am in a more neutral state of mind to read them.
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