in -class composing: critical thinking

intro statement:

In Zeitoun we can see legal problems surrounding identification and authority regarding Zeitoun's innocence, especially when he gets arrested after unidentified men find him and his friends in his house. Eggers writes that "Zeitoun tried to figure out who they were, but there were few clues. Two or three of the men were dressed in black, with no visible patches or insignia" (208). At this moment, Zeitoun tried to figure out who these men were. There are a few ways to interpret this, such as who were these men who took Zeitoun against his will. We could imagine that these men were doing something criminal because of this. Another aspect to focus on would be the fact that these men had no proof of authority. The men may have not felt the need to show their identity since Zeitoun and the others stayed back during the mandatory evacuation. This lack of identification is a problem. This connects to a later scene where after showing ID, the men clearly don't care who Zeitoun is, either. At this moment of crisis, identity just wasn't important. Since they lacked authority, Zeitoun didn't trust them.Based on what he sees, he comes to the conclusion that this "arrangement" of the men detaining them was just for him and his friends.

critical thinking prompts

I think this is important because

In this passage we can see...This moment is interesting because...

The importance of ______ is that _________

The issues that come up here include __, __, and ___. 


 

Class Agenda 11-29

1. Announcements: New topic for assignment three, blog six assignment posted. 

2. Critical Thinking and Zeitoun.

Return to your class notes on critical thinking strategies.Have them in mind as we discuss Zeitoun's detention.

As a class, we will practice these techniques for one or two passages in the text. I may try and compose some of our answers together.

Then, you will compose an in-class blog where you select a new passage from the text and practice two of our critical thinking strategies on your own. You will have to begin with a quote sandwich.

Intro statement: Briefly introduce the text you're using and what it's about, and then explain to your reader about what's happening in the part of the text you're quoting from.

Direct Quotation: remember your signal phrase and correct citation.

Paraphrase: remember to say in your own words what the quote means, and highlight the parts you want to stress in your critical thinking if possible.

Critical Thinking: try out at least two strategies.

3. Class exercise: Thesis statements and topic sentences. Let's look at this intro paragraph and second essay paragraph together.

Money is crucial when it comes to natural disasters. In the year  2005, a deadly storm known as Hurricane Katrina, swept through  the Atlantic Coast. It ruined the lives of many and also took them. Most of the rich survived while people of poverty didn't make it alive. This was because the rich had transportation and the resources to survive and be protected while the poor wasn't given much attention and relied on their government to help. Even after the tremendous storm, the role of money is still important because people who have money are able to rebuild their lives once more while the poor can't do much about their loss. In the following paragraph  I will explain how the lower class people and the higher class reacted to Hurricane Katrina and what the Government did to help or rather make matters worse.

            Money is vital to our survival and it played as an important role during the Hurricane Katrina.  Some as such people that would know this would be from the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. As they were deficient in cash, a circumstance was  made where the people there had no helpful transportation or resources as they were trying to survive. Those who couldn't evacuate during the storm, stayed back in the Superdome which was used for shelter as last resort. Despite the plan of the Superdome being used as an evacuation center, the irony in it was that the evacuation center didn't supply enough food or water for the people there. There was no equipments or materials in the Superdome that is usually there when needed during a natural disaster crises. The people was even told to bring their own supplies if they were to evacuate to the Superdome. There were approximately 9000 people in the Superdome. To be in a crowded place with not enough food, water or even a toilet can be seen as a horrific moment. Other than that, there were rumor's on rape, vandalism, violent assault and many other crimes being started in the Superdome during the evacuation process. However, it was not confirmed. The poverty people of New Orleans that stayed back during the storm had to go through this much, even with an evacuation center that was supposedly to benefit you.

Now lets look at just the topic sentences for the rest of the essay, and see if they match the thesis. 

Paragraph Three

Meanwhile, some middle-class people in New Orleans had to face difficult choices also, such as whether holding their family business down during the storm or  to evacuate, leaving their wealth, business and home. The Zeitouns, from the book Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, had a interesting experience of Hurricane Katrina because they had to choose if they should leave all their belongings in the Hurricane or to evacuate and save themselves.

Paragraph Four

As victims of Hurricane Katrina, people were facing a difficult time and choice while The United States government however, who actually had money, chose to delay the aid that was supposed to be given to Katrina victims

Paragraph Five

In the way these information are given, It can tell that money truly took place a very important role during the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina and that it could have changed the disaster in many ways. From transporting people out to the very end of rebuilding the place back. People in the Lower 9th Ward had to face even difficult terms than the middle-class people such as the Zeitoun's

Next Class: Counter-arguments. Bring "They Say I Say" 

Blog # 6: Quick Research

For this blog, students will spend some time researching and summarizing information related to their third essay. Each of the topics below matches the topics for the third essay.

Topic One

1. For students who choose topic one, they will research more about climate debt and "reparations" for Jews and potential reparations for slaves. While students should discover some basic information about the subjects using Wikipedia and other such sources, they should pick one source on climate debt that they want to relate to their readers. In their blog, students should spend some time explaining any connections they see between climate debt and reparations, and introduce their sources whenever necessary. Then, they should write a brief paragraph explaining whether or not Zeitoun's detention could qualify as a climate debt, and why.

Topic Two

2. For students arguing about the future of climate change, they should spend some time researching about climate debt, too. Who is making the arguments about climate debt? Is anyone arguing against it? What are the best parts of the climate debt arguments that these groups are making? What are the parts of their arguments that you believe need more thought? Why?

Topic Three

3. For students research NDAA and Zeitoun, they should spend some time researching NDAA. What is it? Who passed it? Who wrote it? Why was it passed? Who opposes NDAA? Why do they oppose it? After summarizing what information they're able to find, they should write a paragraph that discusses any connections between NDAA and what Zeitoun experienced. What was similar? Is anything different?

Assignment Three Revised

Please click on the link under "Pages" to see the new topic.

Extra Credit Opportunity

What

Next week Tuesday, November 27th the Pulitzer prize awarded film "Slavery By Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II" by Douglas A. Blackmon will be presented in E-242 at 10:30am.  The film will be followed by a discussion led by Professor Victor Rosa and Global Conversations founder Jeffery Kazembe Batts. As we approach the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, I encourage all LaGuardians to learn more about America's true history!

Blog

Students should blog about the film: what it was about, what they learned, and how it might connect to the issues in our class. 

Exclusive: Less fortunate in U.S. hit hardest by extreme weather - report

By Timothy Gardner

WASHINGTON | Fri Nov 16, 2012 7:24am EST

(Reuters) - U.S. droughts, floods and heat waves likely fueled by climate change in the last two years hit the people who can afford it the least - the poor and middle class, a report published on Friday said.

In affected areas of U.S. states hit by five or more extreme weather events in the last two years, the median annual household income was a bit over $48,000, or 7 percent below the national median, according to the report by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank with close ties to the White House.

Floods hit lower-income households particularly hard. Families in areas hit by the largest floods this year and last, many near the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, earned an average of 14 percent less than the U.S. median, said the report called "Heavy Weather: How Climate Destruction Harms Middle and Lower Income Americans."

"These findings reflect a cruel phenomenon sometimes called 'the climate gap' — the concept that climate change has a disproportionate and unequal impact on society's less fortunate," said the report, which tapped U.S. data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Census and other agencies.
Droughts and heat waves hit households that earned an average of $49,300, about 5 percent less than the U.S. median annual income, sometimes hurting the people least able to afford air conditioners or the electricity to run them, it said.

Scientists say it is difficult if not impossible to pin individual storms entirely on climate change. But conditions caused by global warming, including higher ocean temperatures and rising seas, can make storms stronger and floods worse.

Even with the Northeast still cleaning up after Superstorm Sandy that killed at least 120 people, damaged billions of dollars worth of property, and brought new focus on climate change, wide-ranging action by Congress to tackle global warming will be an uphill battle.

FOCUS ON ECONOMY AND JOBS

President Barack Obama told a news conference on Wednesday it was unclear what Democrats or Republicans are prepared to do to fight climate change.

"If the message is somehow, we're going to ignore jobs and growth simply to address climate change, I don't think anybody's gonna go for that," he said. "I won't go for that."

Still, Daniel Weiss, an author of the report, was optimistic Obama could take action at federal agencies to cut carbon emissions and help people protect themselves.

"As Obama himself has said, presidents have to do more than one thing at a time. That applies here," Weiss said.

The Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, should finalize proposed rules on carbon reduction standards for new power plants this year, he said. The rules were staunchly opposed by some coal-burning utilities that say the rule would effectively kill any new coal-fired power plant, because it requires them to invest in unproven technology to capture carbon and store it underground.

The EPA should also propose and finalize such standards for existing power plants, the source of about a third of all U.S. greenhouse gas pollution, Weiss said. He recognized that is a higher hurdle.
But he took heart in Obama saying on Wednesday that he plans conversations with scientists, engineers and elected officials to find out about making short-term progress in reducing emissions, and he would work in coming months and years on building bipartisan support for tackling climate change.

The report also recommended that the government fully fund the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program to provide people with resources to pay for cooling and heating during extreme weather events, at a cost of about $5 billion a year.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Grade Checklist

Grade Checklist (ENG 101)

Essays (30%)

1 ____

2 ____

3 ____

Blogs (20%)

In-class (5%)

Peer Review Response __

Important to know __

Zeitoun and Kathy __

Framed Quotation __

Twitter Response ___

Future blogs (TBA)

Assigned (15%)

Blog #1 __

Blog # 2__

Revised Blog (#3)  __

Lower 9^th Ward Research (#4) __

Blog Comments (#5) __

Blog # 6 __ (TBA)

Blog #7 __ (TBA)

Extra Credit

Hurricane Sandy ___

English Orientation ___

Twitter (10%)

Out of class Tweets (___ /16)

Participation (10%)

Volunteers __

Offers discussion when called upon __

Brings text __

Listens to others __

Texts in class __

Reading Quizzes (10%)

6 quizzes, 70 points (through 11/26)

x/70 ___

Midterm (10%)

x/100 ___

Final In-class Writing (10%)

x/100 ___

Assignment Three is up!

Look to the right, or click here.

Trip to Boston? Transfer Options!

The latest addition to HSAC’s Transfer Initiative includes a group trip to visit colleges and universities in Boston.  Thanks to the support of the Student Government Association, we may be able to take up to 30 students on a subsidized group field trip organized by HSAC to expose LaGuardia students to transfer options, and to research these options to share with other LaGuardia students.  This opportunity is open to all LaGuardia students.

Your students are invited to learn more this initiative here:  https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BxnlWiiyzLRZSmFXWFVEU3ZmbkU
The application form can be downloaded here: http://www.laguardiahonors.com/#!boston/c1xo
The application deadline is Dec. 21.

Conferences Next Monday

Bring your first essay with my comments, as well as your midterms. 

Class Agenda 11-19

1. Announcement: Extra Credit today at the "Orientation Cafe"

2. Quiz

3. Last Minute Peer Review: partner up and re-read. Make sure it's an A.

4. Midterm Review

5. Class Activity: Critical Thinking

Goal

In today's hour we are going to discuss a few specific strategies for the “critical thinking” section of our writing. We can use these strategies for our class blogs and our essay assignments. 

Description

Let's look at a passage from "Climate Rage" and a passage from "The Battle for Control of Reality." Let's briefly talk about them and their connection to the essays as a whole. 

For the purposes of critical thinking, let's add some new strategies to the ones we learned in our previous class.[Note: what did we learn in the last class?]

·         Close-reading of language. How can we go beyond paraphrase and “interpret” the meaning of the passage by focusing on specific words?

·         Connecting the idea to a relevant passage in the same text. How can we connect this passage with another to deepen its meaning?

·         Connecting the main idea to another text. How can we connect a main idea we’ve discovered in the passage and relate it to a relevant idea that we’ve found elsewhere?

 For each of these strategies, let's write some possible sentences together as a template. 

4.  Now I'd like you try pick a new passage from one of the essays and try out one of these strategies on your own. If you're unsure what passage to pick, I have one for you to work from. You should try to write at least three sentences. 

5. When you're done, find a partner to share it with. Maybe we can discuss one as a class. 

6. Reflection: For students that finish before the hour (including the entire class!), I'd like us to reflect on the strategy you chose, why you chose it, and whether or not you find it effective.