So, this week students are beginning what, normally in a 16-week course, represents my approach to the back half of the Composition 2 course – the Writing Workshop Phase.

 

Writing Workshop – Part 1

 

This begins with having students look at constructing and putting a MS Word document in proper MLA format. This may seem tedious, but it can prove necessary and helpful to help students out by making sure they clearly understand the basics of formatting (this can and often does go overlooked). So, we address this up front as our FIRST step.

 

Here is the first Outline Students are shown to help them visualize the layout:

 

Once the general formatting, heading, and header is attended to, we move on to the process of creating a TITLE and then returning to our THESIS STATEMENT (already formulated) in preparation for creating our INTRODUCTION to our paper.

 

 

The THESIS STATEMENT comes at the point of the tip, in this case, the bottom of the INTRODUCTION.

 

 

With their THESIS STATEMENTS (now revised after instructor feedback), students were encouraged to construct an INTRODUCTION paragraph followed by a BACKGROUND grouping of paragraphs, or as Colbert and others refer to it as, a NARRATION section of the paper.

 

 

This was ALL that was to be submitted before class met at the beginning of Week 3.

 

The material presented to me in Part 1 by my students has demonstrated the presence of strong writing that I look forward to seeing what it produces going forward. Conferencing with the students, most of the things needed attending to reflect some basic formatting issues only, no lack of content was present.

 

During the first classes of Week 3 students were given material to look over and to begin moving into their next part of the Writing Workshop Part 2.