During the assignment conference, you will have the opportunity to meet with me to discuss your first draft of an assignment. This is also a good time to talk about your general progress on the learning goals that you set for yourself at the beginning of the unit when you filled out your assessment plan, and to check in on what you need to do to stay on track for the grade that you’re working toward earning.

While these conferences are not mandatory, I will not be giving written feedback on first drafts in the way that I give feedback on weekly work. Draft feedback will happen during this conference time. So attending these conferences is an important way to help yourself make progress.

Unlike the draft feedback that you get on weekly work, assignment conferences are more directed by you, the student. This is partially to help you to develop your skill in of one of the major learning goals of English 110: to “take ownership of your work and gain an understanding of your own voice, style, and strengths.”

This means that before you come to the conference, there are several things you should prepare.

• Re-read your draft.
• Identify at least two places where it would be helpful to have my opinion. Are you happy with your summary? Is there a claim that you don’t have a lot of specific evidence to support yet and it could be helpful to talk more about it? Do you feel like your organization is not working yet? Have you written good research questions? Is there a paragraph where you might have multiple claims, and you need to split it up? What else can I, as a reader, help you to do to take this draft where it needs to go?
• Identify some things that you think that you’re doing well.
• Review the requirements for this assignment. How many do you think you’ve met? What do you still need to do? Here is the prompt (which includes the requirements) for E-mail To the Author.
• Reflect on the goals that you set for yourself at the beginning of this unit. What weekly work have you completed to work toward your goals? How much have you been in class? Have you made up the classes that you couldn’t attend? What kind of progress have you made so far? What will you need to do in Unit 2 to keep making progress?
• Remember: we all come into the class with different background and skills: it’s OK if you haven’t “mastered” a learning goal yet. But you should be able to talk about what you’ve done to challenge yourself to make progress, or where you can be challenging yourself a little more in the second half of the class.

📝 To sign up for a conference, or to change your appointment slot, go to the #conferences channel on Slack, find the Google Doc sign-up sheet, and put your name and e-mail address in the slot that works in your schedule. Indicate whether you would like to hold the conference on Slack or on Zoom.

🙏🏻 If something comes up and you can’t make a conference slot, please take yourself off of the list to give someone else a chance to take your spot. I have a lot of students! Please respect their time by showing up to a conference that you signed up to do.

⏰ If you miss your conference, I am unfortunately not able to reschedule with you outside of the times that are available on this list. You can sign up for a different time if it is free.