Debarati Dutta

Activity Plan: 29 August 2016

The purpose of our class period today is to understand our course syllabus,
become familiar with important course concepts, and begin to practice deep
reading strategies using digital tools of writing.

Activity 1: Guided Class Discussion Shiers Syllabus: Read Me! (about 30

minutes)
Daybook writing: What are your most important takeaways from reading
Shiers
essay, annotating it using an electronic tool, seeing how I had annotated the article?
Consider what you may do differently now and why? What reading habits and
practices do you think you need to work on? What are you reading goals in light of our
activities (reading, annotating, discussing)?
Share your insights/writing with your peers
Discussion about hidden values

Activity 2: Discuss Course Syllabus and Class Projects (about 20-25 minutes)
Group Activity: Work in groups of 4. Introduce yourselves. Select a discussion
moderator to ensure fair representation and equal participation. Also choose a notetaker who will maintain a record of the group discussion and reporter (the reporter will
share the highpoints of the discussion, questions posed by the group with the rest of this
document to note down your questions about any aspect of our course.
Whole-Class Discussion

Debarati Dutta
Activity Plan: 29 August 2016

Activity 3: Discuss Homework for Next Day of Class/Wrap-Up (last 5-8 minutes of
class)
Homework for 31 August (Wednesday)
Preparatory Work

If you have signed up late, were not present on the first day of class, or
have not yet gotten to it, please do all of the following before you return
to class on Wednesday
1. Purchase a lined composition book
2. Download a free PDF editor/reader such as Adobe
Acrobat Reader to edit and comment on PDF files (FYI, most
Mac laptops come with this). If you do not have this
editor/reader, it can be downloaded for free from this site.
Please download this reader before you begin doing your
homework for the next day.
3. Choose an image that you think will be appropriate as
your profile picture on our course Moodle. Bring an electronic
copy of this image to class on Monday.
4. Read our course syllabus, policies, and glossary. To
view and download these documents, view our Syllabus folder
in our shared Google Drive.

Reading

Review the handout Becoming a Critical Reader. This handout is

item # 4 in your Syllabus folder. Evaluate your own past reading
practices and identify those reading strategies that are new to you and
that you need more practice on.

Reading and
Writing

Download and save a copy of Samuel Kamaras Exploring

Marginalia: The Intersection between Reading and Cognition in
your personal class folder. This article is item # 3 in your Introductory
Readings folder.
Using your PDF reader, highlight and annotate Kamaras essay. Read
not only as an information gatherer, but as a knowledge-maker.
To annotate the article, you may want to:
1. Trace Kamaras main argument (thesis or primary
assertion) and secondary claims
2. Explore the relationship between Kamaras claims and
the evidence he uses to develop his main and secondary claims
3. Examine the overall architecture (structure or
organization) of the article (analyze both the textual and visual
layout of the essay)

Debarati Dutta
Activity Plan: 29 August 2016

4. Make connections between your own habits and

practices as an academic reader and the practices and theories
that Kamara is proposing in his essay
5. Note down your takeaways, what you have learned, what
you did not quite follow, what you have questions about.
Reading

Read Studio Project 2: What Writing Is, What Writing Does. This
project is item # 3 in our Online Studio Projects folder in our shared
Google Drive. This studio project is due before 5 pm on 3 September
(Saturday).
I will discuss the project at length during our class period on
Wednesday and show you how to use our class forum on Moodle. To
help our discussion move quickly, please be familiar with the project so
that we can use class time to answer any questions you have.

Please bring your laptop and daybook to class on August 31

(Wednesday). Also bring print or electronic copies of your course
syllabus, course glossary, Samuel Kamaras Exploring Marginalia:
The Intersection between Reading and Cognition(item #3) for graded
forum activities.
Tentative Activity Outline for 31 August (Wednesday)
Discuss Samuel Kamaras essay on marginalia (item # 3)
Introduction to course page on Moodle and forum writing
(practice)
Complete Studio Project 1: Genre as an in-class activity
Discuss Studio Project 2: What Writing Is, What Writing Does
Discuss homework for September 7