October 29

I. Opening Go-Around

1. How are you?  
2. Say it into the universe: Name at least one goal (academic, professional, and/or personal) that you have for this semester (as in: this WILL get done by December)?  We will ask you in December!
3. Tell us what book you started reading for today and why.  Would you recommend it?  Why or why not? If so, to whom?

The thinking behind this assignment:

• Give a bit of breathing room in the syllabus
• Detour from the usual style of assignments to waken us up at the end here
• Try and make reading pleasurable... or different from usual
• Interrupt Blue Book culture/anxieties

Welcome to the Blue Book & RR13!
(invented in the 1920s; click on words for sample student issues)

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II. The Blue Book Reading Response & Sharing
For today's assignment, you are creating a character analysis.  You are going to write something as the main character (or one of the main characters) of your text. 

1. What do she/he/they think about themselves?
2. What do she/he/they really want?  
3. How does she/he/they see and feel about the world?  Home?  Neighborhood? School?
4. What kind of things do she/he/they like to do?
5. How do she/he/they talk?  What kind of things do she/he/they say?
6. If this character could talk to one of the other characters in the course (i.e., the researchers/scholars we have read), which one?  What would she/he/they say?

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Jot/sketch/list some notes in your blue book first.  Then decide on a genre and fill AT LEAST 2 pages.  There are markers, crayons, and colored pencils in the room.  You will get a big chunk of time for this first Blue Book entry... try and have some fun wit it. This will be collected at the end of class.  This counts as RR#13!

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III. Conversations about the Pedagogies of Reading

• How do you introduce a new book/article to students? (either at the beginning of semester or for a new unit)
• How do you intervene in what most students typically experience as the drudgery of school reading?