Reader response feedback

1. Reader response feedback Pay close attention so that you can benefit for the final draft!

2. Please wait • Hopefully you have already had a chance to review the feedback you received, assuming that you appropriately completed the assignment. • Please do not open the attachment and/check your grade until AFTER we go through this presentation. • iPads should remain FACE DOWN until you are cued to look back at your responses.

3. The most common mistakes: Forgetting the basics • Many of you included topic sentences, but they did not appropriately establish the type of connection you were making. Without that, it makes it very difficult to determine how “on target” you are with your thinking. • Book titles need to be underlined or italicized. It is not acceptable to not punctuate them, or to punctuate them with “quotation marks.” • Make sure your response is double spaced. It makes it much easier to read and provide feedback. Plus, it is a standard writing expectation for this class—even with rough drafts. • Forgetting some of the skills we have worked hard on this year: avoiding contractions and addressing the reader in academic writing, editing and revising, ICE quote format, etc. • And probably the number one area for improvement…

4. where to improve: “The big one” • Many of you were “water skiing” or “snorkeling” in your thinking. Examples included: • Summarizing for the majority of the response • Making many sub-connections, rather than exploring/discussing one or two. • Simple, basic word choice that does not convey deeper level meaning. (Example: Many of you wrote about how “nice” the Tuohys were to take in Michael). • Simply disregarding the directions, which left you with surface level thinking. • If we are going to continue with this metaphor, your thinking should be of a “scuba diving” nature, meaning that it goes way below the surface. • Rather than including so many examples/connections/ideas, you need to pick ONE (maybe 2) and really develop that example/connection/idea.

5. Waterskiing/snorkeling or scuba diving thinking? I Beat the Odd's Michael Oher is similar to Maximum Ride: The Angle Experiment's Maximum Ride because they both want to preserve their families. Michael Oher is from a big family, he has 11 siblings. His mother is doing crack and is gone for very long periods of time. When Michael's mom left she would lock up the house they were livening in, the kids could not get in to it at all. Then one day his mom left, and on the next day men came took his sisters. After a day they came and got him and his brothers. His siblings and him were then moved into a foster homes that were far away from each other. Not soon after that, he was able to visit his mom and every time he did all he wanted was to go back to having his family together in one house. So his family would be preserved. On the other hand, Max has only 5 siblings. Her siblings aren't related to her at all, but they were all in a bad situation together and when they got out they became just like family. A man by the name of Jeb hade made them a home to live in where the people from the "bad place" would not hurt them. Then, one day the people from the "bad place" came and took Angel, the youngest of the group. The rest were unable to keep them from taking her. Soon, the bad people had left only Max and the other 4 remand, she and the others then made a promise to get Angle back. Then, after they got her back they would run and hide from the bad people to keep their family preserved. Max and Michael are very similar for they both wish and try to preserve their family because they both know that it can be torn apart easily.

6. Consider the previous rr… • Most of you can probably see that this person was sticking to water skiing/snorkeling thinking. • What is interesting, is that this person initially created a HOTS connection in the way that that texts connected. • AND, this person rightly choose just one way to connect the texts—which was good. • When you look at the list of previous areas for improvement, what prevented this person from achieving the intended level of HOTS or “scuba diving” thinking?

7. What does this one do better? I have read chapters one through four of I Beat the Odds by Michael Oher.  From reading this I have made a text to text connection with their characters from this book to The Outsiders by S.E Hinton, which i have fully read.  I found that in both of these books, the narrator, in   I Beat the Odds it is Michael Oher, and in   The Outsiders it is a fictional character named Ponyboy, has an older sibling who is like their dad, because neither of these narrators had one.  For Michael Oher, it is his oldest brother Marcus, and Marcus would make sure all of his younger siblings got food, brushed their teeth, and went to school.   He  was the oldest man in the family, so Michael and his brothers somewhat looked up to him.  For Ponyboy, it is his oldest brother Darry.  Darry got a job to take care of his younger siblings.  He cooked for them, and did his best to keep them safe.  Even if it meant setting rules Ponyboy did not like.  Darry had to be strict to keep his siblings safe.  I can relate the relationships of Michael and Marcus with Ponyboy and Darry because Marcus and Darry are both taking the place of a missing dad.  For The Outsiders, they do not have either a mom or a dad, and for I Beat the Odds, they have a mom, but she tends to disappear for drugs.  So because Michael and Marcus's mom is often gone, it is almost like Ponyboy and Darry's situation, where they do not have any parents at all.  Marcus and Darry would both do anything to take care of their younger siblings, or it seems this way anyway.  This is the text to text connection I made between I Beat the Odds and The Outsiders characters.  

8. Waterskiing/snorkeling or scuba diving thinking?          There was one peculiar and unique section in the inspirational book, I Beat the Odds, which made me halt and ponder about it. This section spanned through the pages 68-69 and described the hardships and actions which a large majority of Tennessee's foster kids face throughout their lives. This passage made me stop and think because I thought how grateful I was to be living with a middle class biological family for several reasons. When the passage listed that parents who have been in foster care have approximately twice a chance of having their own children join foster care or be homeless, I felt very gratified. This is because I live with two wonderful parents who did not face the horrors of foster care which Michael describes. As a result, I am not suffering foster care as well. Another reason why I felt blessed is because the book stated that kids who are leading deficient lives are often put    into even more inferior positions in foster care. Luckily, I cannot relate to the severe troubles of kids in need. I live in an appeasing a pleasing? abode, I get exemplary education, and I get cared for from adults whom I have known in this world since my birth. The kids who are placed in foster care often do not get these necessities according to Michael's experiences. Lastly, I felt obligated because I realized how kids in terrible conditions can turn out and the next generation after them could be much worse thanks to them. According to what I learned from the passage, due to neglect, sexual abuse, substance abuse, gang memberships and a lot more hideous things in the world, kids will often maintain the dreadful behaviors they endured and can often pass such improper etiquette to their children later on by abusing them as well. I felt so thankful that I learned what is right or wrong from my disciplined superiors unlike these poor kids. I wished that I could teach them in some manner to make an impression on their minds to make themselves "better" humans and also meliorate the future generations. These are the thoughts and feelings which ran through my mind after I read the informative passage which was stated through pages 68 and 69 in the fantastic autobiography, I Beat the Odds.

9. Now what? • As previously stated, and as many of you probably found on your feedback, editing and revision are still important during the drafting process. • You are going to be given some time to self-assess your other two RR’s that you’ve completed with the rubric you’ve received today. • DO NOT LOSE YOUR RUBRIC!!! You will need to turn it in again so I can assess your final draft. • Spend some quality time to honestly assess how you think each one would have scored. • Then, once you determine which one is better/stronger/what you want to use for tomorrow, take the TIME and EFFORT to actually edit and revise for tomorrow’s peer edit. • Think: Why would I ask you to do this?