English 505

Today we went over the 3 musketeers of Rhetoric (though I didn't call them that). We discussed the reading at length, and really dug into some (I think) heavy concepts. Also, we did the excersize that I designed during our orientation, and it went pretty well. Next week we are getting into the Portrait Playlist project. I am using Andy's version, which I think builds really well upon our "Paper 1" project, and will segue nicely into Paper 2. We are going to spend 2 weeks on this project, but I don't think I'll be taking them through the same activities that we did with this last project (i.e. narrowing down a topic, and constructing a thesis statement). I'll have them do that stuff at home. We'll be digging more into the text during the next 2 weeks and probably won't deal too much with the inner workings of their projects until at least the 2nd week. Having that said, I've got 20 3-5 page papers that I have to grade now, and I'm a little nervous about that. It took me 5 hours to grade 20 2 page papers, so I've got to try and work a little faster this time around. Oh and I should also mention that several of my students have visited the Writing Lab, as well as my office hours. I love that.