Hello everyone,

Just a quick note about partners and fieldnotes. You are doing such a great job with tracing your workshop sessions, which I know is not easy when you’re also trying to be a productive participant. Seriously great work with these notes. As you give feedback to each other, I’m hoping you can start noticing more what is similar or different between the two sessions: how the workshop gets started or how it ends (are their differences or similarities between the mentor approaches?); how Zoom is used; what the mentor decides to spend the most time with; how many students talk. Are there structures that seem more useful than others for supporting writers? How might you keep track of that for your future teaching designs?

I might also look this week at the writing the students in your workshop are producing by going into their Currents community. Link here or on the front of Dr. Sparks course page if that doesn’t work. You can see your workshop number and mentor name in the categories on the left. This will help you to see the student writing from the workshop you are interning in. You’ll gain more insights into how the students are taking up the writing tasks, which you could also include in your fieldnotes.

Here is the link to Dr. Sparks week 4 plan too in case it’s useful for getting situated for your workshop this week.

Thank you for all the work you continue to do in these *gestures wildly* “unprecedented times.”

Appreciate you all.

Kim

Hello nice people!

Really enjoyed reading your fieldnotes this morning; thank you for jumping in. You did a great job with this first set of notes and I know they’ll just get better and better. You might check out Ceaira and Lumi’s fieldnotes if you’re wondering about other ways of keeping track or what to notice. They both had a nice level of detail in their notes that you might find helpful as a model. Also, Tabitha and Lumi already gave each other feedback on their notes and they are a nice example for how to do that. Thank you! You can’t do any of this wrong…you’re learning how to collect data and comment on data; you are doing great. Things you might consider adding to your notes: time on tasks, names of students, and perhaps some way to keep track of any writing they do (like keep the link to any google docs handy for yourself). You might keep this question in mind this week as you’re deciding what to trace: how does the session support writing?

You can find the tasks for weeks 3 & 4 under the Do The Thing page in the drop down menu.

This week:
—Read and comment on Nelson article in Perusall
—Find quotes and add those quotes plus short reflection about the Nelson reading in Currents (under your name). Hannah May already added hers and it’s exactly what I was hoping for if you want an example. Check under her name in our Currents community. Thanks Hannah May. The point of this “quote gathering” each week is so you can trace the readings over time. We’ll be writing a paper later called “what I know so far..” and I hope that keeping track of the quotes will be helpful for that assignment.
—Respond to partner’s fieldnotes. Your partner list again:

Lumi and Tabitha
Isaiah and Caleb
Matthew and Hannah S
Ceaira and Paytyn
Alaina and Hannah May

Again, I appreciate how you participated with the workshops this week. You are already great mentors for the freshmen. Thanks everyone!
Kim

Hey nice people,

As promised, here is a slightly longer video update that attempts to explain the course routines and plans for week 1. If you have not taken the survey yet that asks you to find an internship time, now would be a good time to do that: LINK HERE.  You can find other information on the Weeks 1 & 2 page. <–Linked here but also in the drop down menu above.

I look forward to working together! Hope you are safe and healthy!