College Learning Strategies Fall 2017

I am planning for our Wednesday class meeting and I am interested in knowing who is planning on coming.  My original plan was for individualized meetings but some students have expressed an interest in meeting during the scheduled class time.  That works for me as well.  Some of you have scheduled meetings.  YOU WILL NOT BE PENALIZED for not coming to class on Wednesday night if we schedule a meeting.  I recognize that the shift in days makes life difficult for some of you and I will do whatever I can to schedule the meeting at a time that is convenient for you.  So far I have scheduled meetings or met with only 5 students.  Please email me at bstevens@ric.edu to set up a date.  If you would prefer to meet on Wednesday at 6:00 that will be fine as well.

The Promising Practices Conference is this Saturday.  Please attend if you can.  Registration is $5 for students but I can get you a registration waiver if you need one.  Just email me at bstevens@ric.edu and I will arrange it.  There are some great sessions that are DEFINITELY relevant to what we are doing in class. Please register here if you are interested: Promising Practices Registration Here is what you can earn:               Attendance at the event:              25 points               Report back on your session:      50 points               This will certainly be very helpful to anyone who has missed a class....or two...

Class is cancelled Tonight 10/23! I am really sorry for the late notice but I can't make it tonight.  We will delay everything on the syllabus by one week.  Please let me know if you would like to meet this week for help on your essays.

Please be ready to share your writing this week!  It is critical that you have made some progress in both researching and writing your persuasive essays for this week's meeting.  It is fine (actually good) if your writing and research is in a very "rough" phase.  We will work together to fine tune your projects during our meeting.  We can't help you if you don't bring anything for us to work with though.  Please come prepared!

This week I would like you to consider two things: 1) Attending Diversity Week events and 2) How are you doing this semester?  Please make a post in the comments section below.  Evaluate your progress as a student.  What are you doing well?  What areas have you struggled in so far?  Many of you are doing very well in this course.  Others have not really been contributing as much as they could be.  How are your other classes going?  RELAX- WRITE...

Purpose of this exercise/ assignment instructions: One of the skills shared by all successful college students is the ability to extract meaning from a variety of sources.   This requires creativity and analytical thinking.   We are going to practice those skills today by writing a brief comparison of the lives of two cousins using their death certificates as a starting point.   Edith Doran and Margaret Allen died four years apart but their experiences leading up to the production of their death certificates were very different.   Please write an essay comparing their lives with as much detail as you can support with the available evidence.   It is impossible to do this assignment incorrectly but it is very possible to do it incompletely .   Please be sure to provide evidence for any claims you make in the essay.   There is enough information in the two death certificates to write a fairly rich and detailed story but I encourage you to use clue...