Handout for Bazinga

A Call for Stories of Diversity

This is the original call for stories, one that I use as the basis for my first assignment in Freshman Composition:

 

Stories of Diversity: A Call for Your Story

As Washburn’s First Year Experience is revising its textbook, The Washburn University Diversity Initiative (WUDI) is helping with a chapter on diversity. It is our plan to feature stories from the Washburn Community as a way to introduce ourselves and our diverse backgrounds to first-year students.

As Washburn defines diversity broadly to encompass gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, age, religion, and national origin, our students make up a diverse community—each with a story to tell. In addition, we are also looking for students who “grew up” privileged to share their stories of when they first became aware of their privileged background.  

We encourage you to share your story!

All Washburn students, staff, faculty, and administration—the Washburn Community at-large—are invited to submit their stories for publication. In addition, these stories may be used for future FYE textbooks. All rights revert back to writers. Previously published stories will be accepted, with note of where the piece first appeared.

 

Please e-mail your story as a non-attachment text to WUDI Committee Member Dennis Etzel Jr. at ---. All stories will be considered for the next textbook or for future textbooks.

Deadline: December 7, 2012

 

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The Washburn University Diversity Initiative’s Mission:

To honor the Washburn University commitment to respect, embrace, enhance and celebrate diversity at all levels of the University and surrounding communities through faculty, staff, student and administrative efforts and community partnerships.

Women in Advertising

Here is my lesson plan for the Ad Analysis assignment:
 

EN101 Freshman Composition

Essay #2 (Ad Analysis) Assignment Sheet

Using the reading assignments “With These Words I Can Sell You Anything” p. 62 and “Propaganda: How Not to be Bamboozled” p. 71, write an essay analyzing how a personally-chosen ad from a magazine uses the advertising strategies described in the readings. Also, a fourth point should describe the ad in context of Jean Kilbourne’s Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising’s Image of Women.

Thinking of the two-example per point strategy for writing paragraphs, you should decide on which is the most effective for each case: describing the strategy from the reading assignment and moving into how the article utilizes the strategy or the other way around.

In the conclusion, you should offer your suggestion on how a change in the ad would help reach a wider audience and why.

In selecting an advertisement, find an ad you can successfully use for the assignment.

For brainstorming, complete the following Ad Analysis worksheet for your ad.

 

We will discuss further requirements in class.

 

Ad Analysis worksheet

“help”			name-calling
“virtually”			generalities
“new” and/or “improved”	Claims Baconator is somehow “new,” but implication is it already exists. Doesn’t say how it is new.		plain folks
doublespeak			“argument to the people”
“acts”			“argument to the man”
“works”			transfer
“like”			bandwagon
How a woman or women are portrayed: Killing Us Softly 4			faulty cause-and-effect
card stacking			false analogy
testimonial			begging the question
			false dilemma

 

Website for Jean Kilbourne's Killing Us Softly 4:

http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=241

Contemporary American Poetry

My lesson plan:

EN101 Freshman Composition

Writing Project #1 (Poetry) Assignment Sheet

Poetry in Freshman Composition?

You might ask, “What does poetry have to do with Freshman Composition?”  A lot!  In poetry, there is a detailed attention to words, the use of punctuation, lines, and concrete imagery.  Poetry also helps to accomplish the goals for students in Freshman Composition.

For this writing project, our class will develop both creativity and revision strategy and skills that are important tools for writing; we will do this by using a shorter form of writing—poetry.

 

Assignment

Responding to Poetry

Read Missing You, Metropolis by Gary Jackson.  In addition, select two poems you were intrigued with during your reading and write responses to them. Each response should answer these questions: 

• What is the title of the poem?
• What is the poem generally about in both explicit and implicit terms? 
• What are your favorite passages and/or uses of language and why?
• How can we, as poets, borrow from the rhetorical strategy of the poem?

Be inspired by Mr. Jackson for one of the poems you will write.

Poetry Writing

Write three or more poems (which we will have time to do in class). 

Your poem analysis and finished poems will be turned in as a poetry portfolio, along with your inventive work.

Any other requirements will be discussed in class.

Using the list of pop culture references, could you develop a list of poems you could write of your own?

Persona or not?
Or begin your own poem?

Television and Diversity in Culture

 

 

 

EN101 Freshman Composition

Essay #3 (Television and Culture) Assignment Sheet

 

“All essays should be, not trials, but celebrations.”

—Theodore Roethke

  

A Cultural Analysis Research Essay

 

When someone hears about a research paper, they might roll their eyes and sigh with the thought of reading or listening to a dry essay.  However, research essays can be interesting when they have information that goes beyond the expected to a certain audience.  They are especially interesting when the writer is connected to the topic, and has a personal story to how they are connected to what they are presenting as a research paper.

 

For this assignment, you will write an essay that examines a television show and analyzes it for cultural readings and significances. You will also surprise your audience by including points that challenge a common view of the show.  You will first research and create an annotated bibliography to work from. Then you write the essay using your own words with a personal story or connection to the television show as part of the introduction.  Then the research information will serve as examples to support what points of cultural significance you want to inform and surprise your audience with, and include explanation to how the research connects back to each point you are making.

 

Assignment

 

Write an essay with an informative and surprising thesis statement with tension. For an example, “Some might think Buffy the Vampire Slayer is…; however, it….”

 

Include how you are connected to your topic in the introduction.  You may also want to include a personal story in the conclusion.

 

Each point should be a surprising point and/or describe the show’s cultural significance.

 

Write your essay with an audience to appeal to.  For example, an audience that believes Family Guy is only out to insult Americans.  How can you write your essay to appeal to them?  Include your audience in the upper-left hand label of your essay, after the date.

 

Include several well-developed examples to support each point, which supports the thesis.  Use research to “back up” your examples.  Include copies of all research in your manila file folder, highlighting the quotes or sections you used.  Xerox the pages used out of books and magazines, and print out online journal articles and websites.

 

Integrate research effectively.  You must have at least four electronic database articles need to be incorporated. Also, you are free to use non-web page sources (books, research articles, magazine articles, etc.)  For web pages, please check with me.

 

Important notes: At least four sources must be from an electronic database. If you cannot find one, please talk to me. You might need to change your topic.

 

Your essay needs to be new, so you can explore this method of doing a research paper. Please DO NOT use a topic you have previously written about, as a fresh topic will allow you to learn the steps we will go through for class.

 

Make copies of or print out the sources and indicate where the information came from by highlighting the used information. You must include this in your portfolio.

 

Feel free to include relevant personal examples and explanations.  Define terms readers may not know.

 

Use a logical organization that makes the paper easy to follow.

 

Use MLA format.

 

Include a Works Cited page using the correct format.

 

The assignment should be no more than four to five pages in length.

 

LSH pages covered: 68-92, 93-135 (MLA), 136-169 (optional APA).

 

Topic Brainstorming

 

Use a television show you already know more about that others may not know about.  Formulate a question about your topic.  What might people expect the answer to be to this question?  With this common view, how will your essay surprise them?  For example, when you think of the Big Bang Theory, what do you think of?

 

For more ideas, look through newspapers, magazines, and, of course, watch television.

 

Page 34 in LSH might be handy, too.

 

Use clustering to brainstorm things about the shows you have in mind.