Piecing Together WA3: The Collage
For WA3, you will
be required to explore literacy from several angles: (1) Sponsorship, (2)
Violence, (3) Objects, (4) Central
Station, (5) the arguments you made in WA1 and WA2.
You should find
extra copies of WA1 and WA2 in your portfolios (I handed these back during our
last meeting). Today, I would like for you chop up your WA1 and WA2 and start
figuring out relationships and patterns among your arguments as they relate to
the quotes from the “Sponsors of Literacy” and “The Violence of Literacy” that
you worked with in your groups last week.
Here’s what I
suggest:
- Cut up your WA1 and WA2 into basic
“units” or “ideas” or arguments. You may decide to cut out sentences or
paragraphs or something else. The smaller the unit you cut out, the more
useful it will be to your in your development of
WA3.
- Attached you will find another copy
of some choice quotes Brandt and Stuckey offer. Chop these up too, but be
certain that you label them so you know which quotes belong to which
author.
- Remember the one-page synthesis of a
key literacy event from Central
Station that you developed for your group last time? Chop this up into
units, too. And don’t forget to do the same with the one-page syntheses
your group members offered in exchange (3 scenes total).
- Sift through them until you begin to
recognize patterns.
- Stack the slips of paper into
“appropriate” piles as determined by the patterns you picked up on. You
may consider creating envelops out of notebook paper, labeling them
accordingly, and placing your collage pieces in them.
- Grab a large sheet of paper and start
pulling like ideas together in whatever order seems appropriate for the
argument you think you’d like to make.
- Spend some time “writing badly” in
response to this collage, keeping in mind your plans for WA3 (in your
Dialogue Journal).
- Reread your earlier Dialogue Journal
entry (from last time) that discusses your plans for WA3. What are your
thoughts?
- Go back to the collage and “re-see”
it as a visual representation of the essay you are creating. Start
developing transitions where necessary and adding/rearranging elements
where appropriate.
- Type it up.
- Read it. Does it make sense? Do you
have at least five pages? Can you think of any section where you might be
able to add additional details to expand on your argument and make it more
effective?
- Revise it.
- Let someone in the Writing Center
and/or a classmate read your essay. Does it make sense? Does your reader
need additional information or a different organizational structure or
more effective transitions to understand what you are trying to say?
- Revise it.
- Turn it in to me!
Good luck with this! It’ll be tough, but it’ll be
interesting.