Blog #20: Reflecting on today's experience

Today we started seriously reflecting about how to write our comparison or contrast essay about FaceBook and MySpace. We spent the first part of class reading through the instructions. Most students dread this part of the class, but I think it’s important because I am aware that if we don’t read it in class, it won’t get read. I wonder why I can’t get students to read the instructions. Anyway, we read the instructions in class and focused on some important things like how long the essay should be (5-6 paragraphs), how to organize the paper (create a pattern and stick with it), and how to make sure that each topic gets a similar amount of information (2-3 sentences for each topic in each paragraph).

Then we did some invention for at least 5 minutes. Every student got to do whatever type of inventing he or she likes to do. Some students drew Venn Diagrams, some made lists, and some created webs or did clustering. After we spent that time inventing and coming up with different ideas we could write about, students started talking about different topics they included in their invention strategies. This was particularly helpful because when we first started talking about the assignment, a good part of the class were complaining that they couldn’t think of anything to write about. While everyone was adding things that they wrote about, I told students to add these topics to their own lists. I told them they didn’t need to write about any of the topics mentioned if they didn’t want to, but if they couldn’t think of what to write about, they would definitely have a list to work from.