Mr. D's email address: dollier@tncc.edu |

Hang in here: We're almost to the other side!
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I am an Equal Opportunity Educator: I refuse to discriminate against, condone discrimination against, or participate in, or support, or tolerate discrimination against any person based on ethnicity, religion--or lack thereof, age, gender, national origin, physical disability or learning disability, political affiliation, sexual identity, or sexual orientation. |
Office Hours: 9:00-11:00 M & W (4 hours);T & Th 9:00-9:30 (1 hour); and 12:45-2:00 M-Th (5 hours)
On-line office hour: TBA
Email me at dollier@tncc.edu
Page last Updated: 25 April 2017, 9:40 a.m.
Class Video Resources |
Class Internet Resources |
Fall Class Schedule |
Avoiding plagiarism by citing sources:
- Avoiding plagiarism and using MLA documentation style (16 min.)
- What do I need to cite? (1 min.)
- Plagiarism: You can't just change a few words! (1 min.)
- Quoting and paraphrasing (3 min.)
- Citing without quoting (3 min.)
- Citing websites (2 min.)
- Punctuating in-text citations (3 min)
- How to cite a Youtube video.
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"OWL" links (OWL stands for Online Writing Labs) link to handbooks, workbooks,
help desks to assist you with writing problems.
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Plagiarism Tutorial: Test your knowledge and misconceptions about plagiarism, and learn why and how to avoid it!
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PaperRater, a useful style and plagiarism checker. Try it!!
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E-mail Do's and Don't's poster created by Eng 111-03 Fall 2015. Follow this ettiquette and these protocols when emailing your professors and everyone.
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Grammar Bytes. Grammar Instruction With Attitude: Daily grammar work out, grammar glossary, grammar exercises, MOOC (enroll in a free Massive Open Online Course), handouts, Power Point presentations, grammar videos, tips & rules--and it's actually FUN! Great stuff for teachers and for students alike.
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Mr. D's email address: dollier@tncc.edu
Researched Essay Topics and Other Projects:
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Grading Criteria for all Essays and projects, and the course syllabus
Week One
Thursday 1/12/17
In-class activities: 1] Identifying main ideas and supporting details in researched writing. 2] Process: First, highlight and copy the title, author's name and text of an article into an M.S. Word document. Then skim through the article to get an impression of what it is about and to get an overview of what sort of support is included and where the supporting details tend to be located. Next, background highlight the main ideas/topic sentences in light blue, and in yellow highlight all the details that support THAT main idea before moving on to the next. When finished highlith the conclusion in light grey, and then--after having read the whole article--go back and highlight the thesis statement in pink. 3] The readings:
Homework assignment for Tuesday, 1/17/17:
- Finish marking main ideas, supporting details, theses, and conclusions in the articles about cell phone use.
- Compose three paragraphs (one full page to a page and a half) describing your experiences and development as a reader as well as your feelings about reading, per the Reading Literacy Pre-Semester topic prompt.
Week Two
Tuesday 1/17/17
In-class activities: 1] Group activity: compare mark ups of four readings on cell phone use. 2] Discuss cell phone readings. 3] Upload Reading Literacy Pre-Semester paper to Google Drive and post it to BlackBoard Assignments
Homework assignment for Thursday, 1/19/17:
- Using your mark-ups of the articles, write concise summaries of the four articles, four to six sentences which convey the most important main ideas in each article as well as the writer's thesis. It will be similar to the abstract at the begining of the article we read from Science Daily, "Texting and Tweeting in the Clasroom: How Do They Impact Student Learning?" 4/6/15. Take a look at that as an example. Save your summaries to Google Drive so that we can work with them in class Thursday
- Purchase the access code for Little Seagull Handbook with InQuizitive lessons or click on the link and go to the website to buy it outright. It costs $15.
Thursday 1/19/17
In-class activities: 1] Group activity: compare mark ups of four readings on cell phone use. 2] Discuss cell phone readings. 3] Upload Reading Literacy Pre-Semester paper to Google Drive and post it to BlackBoard Assignments
- Make a list for discussion: If we are to have a cell phone use policy, there will need to be results or consequences for use during class. The articles we read listed numerous consequences to discourage in-class use. List those consequences or policies, and in addition, come up with at least three ideas of your own, which can include "no consequences for in-class use," but you will need to prepare to defend that position in class discussion.
- Finish the annotated bibliography of the articles about cell phone use. We will peer review it in class on Tuesday and then submit it to BlackBoard following peer review.
- Log in to InQuizitive and work first two lessons, "How to Use InQuizitive" and "Editing the Errors that Matter"
Week Three
Tuesday 1/24/17
In-class activities: 1] Discuss cell phone policy. 2] Cover works cited entries for the annotated bibliography 3] Upload the annotated bibliography
Homework assignment for Thursday, 1/26/17:
- Post the annotated bibliography of cell phone readings
Thursday 1/26/17
In-class activities: Begin "Phase One" of "Communicating as a Professional": Note-taking and paraphrasing from sources
Homework assignment for Thursday, 1/26/17:
- Complete "Phase One" of "Comunicating as a Professional." On Tuesday you will submit (1) your vocabulary and note-taking workseet, and (2) separate from your notes, the documented paragraph, formatted per MLA conventions as modeled in this sample research paper, or the in sample researched paper in the Little Seagull Handbook. Please use Times New Roman 12-point font double space the entire document from your name block a the top through the works cited enries at the bottom of the paper.
- Plagiarism Tutorial: Test your knowledge and misconceptions about plagiarism, and learn why and how to avoid it! After completing the pre-test record your score; then work the tutorials, and do the post-test. Record both the pre-test and the post-test scores to report them to me in class on Tuesday--do NOT have them emailed to me from the last page of the tutorial!
Week Four
Tuesday 1/31/17
In-class activities: 1] Discuss and "tweak" the "Phase One" paragraph 2] Register with Remind.com 3] Explore class resources: (a) 100 Ways to Use Google Drive, (b) Speechnotes voice-to-text tool, (c) M.S. Word's "Speak" text-to-voice editing tool. The passage below was created with Speechnotes; let's listen to it using "Speak" and then edit it for our paragraph which paraphrases the Adams and Weins articles:
Homework assignment for Thursday, 2/2/17:
- Read two sample essasy on "Communicating as a Professional," focusing specifically on the second body paragraph, which we will begin in class on Thursday: Kirk Goggan's essay; and Liam Keating's essay.
Thursday 2/2/17
In-class activities: 1] Discuss Speechnotes voice-to-text tool--it only works on Chrome on the computer. 2] Discuss and begin "Phase 2" of "Communicating as a Professional"
Week Five
Tuesday 2/7/17
In-class activities: Discuss the second body paragraph and how to begin the third body paragraph of the Professional Communication essay
Homework assignment for Thursday, 2/9/17:
- Finish drafting the essay: Use the outline and the resources in the grading rubric to complete the essay on "Comunicating as a Professional." There are many links--READ them; they link to important information. In class on Thursday, we will discuss how you have executed the third body paragraph of the "Professional Comunication" essay, and we will focus on the importance of thesis statements and transitions.
Thursday 2/9/17
In-class activities: 1] Discuss how to execute the third body paragraph of the "Professional Comunication" essay. 2] Group Activity: Reconstruct Bertrand Rusell's essay to focus on the importance of thesis statements and transitions. Here it is.
Homework assignment for Tuesday, 2/14/17:
- Finish the essay: Use the outline and the resources in the grading rubric to complete the essay on "Comunicating as a Professional." There are many links--READ them; they link to important information. We will peer review these essays in class on Monday and submit them for grading at the end of class, so they must be ready at the start of class. Follow the instructions in the lesson plan and the grading rubric, read the sample essays that I have suggested, and you should do well with this project. I want all B's and A's on this essay--all A's would be better than B's!!
- InQuizitive. Work the following lesson sets, and then edit your essay closely for these types of errors:
- Comma Splices
- Sentence Fragments
- Fused (Run-on) Sentences
- Pronouns with Unclear Reference
- Omitted Commas
- Final Proofreading and editing. Use your tech. tools: (1) Run it through M.S. Word's grammar checker and spell checker, (2) run it through Grammarly, (3) run it through Paper Rater, (4) then listen to it with M.S. Word's "Speak" function and make it perfect. That's all--just perfect.
Week Six
Tuesday, 2/14/17 1] Peer review "Professional Communication" essays. 2] Final edits of essay, print it out and submit it.
Homework and resources for Thursday. Read and view the following:
Thursday, 2/16/17 1] Review the Learning Pyramid 2] Learning Unit: The NHLP and Brain Development During Learning.
Week Seven
Tuesday, 2/21/17 1] Complete the Cues column and Summary section on NHLP notes from Thursday. Ask any questions you have. (10 mins.) 2] Complete the learning unit on The NHLP and Brain Development During Learning. Take good notes for the test on Thurs.
Homework and resources for Thursday.
- Finish your Cornell notes by writing the cues and the summaries. Study your notes to prepare for the 20-question test. Write good summaries because you will be writing paragraphs frhom your notes about this topic
- View the videos and read the web pages about The NHLP and Brain Development During Learning, which I have pasted in below, and take notes from those sources.
Thursday, 2/23/17 1] NHLP/Brain development test 2] Discuss "boilerplate comments" for revising the "Professional Communication" essays 3] Discuss and begin the Errors Analysis Project.
Homework assignment for Tuesday, 2/28/17:
- Finish the errors analysis project
- Compose two paragraphs about the NHLP and brain development during learning AFTER completing the errors analysis project.
- Using the key words for the six stages of learning from Dr. Smilkstein's research on the NHLP, write a paragraph describing how you learned a higher order skill or body of knowledge outside of a formal classroom situation.
- Write a second paragraph discussing how emotions affect (control) learning, and exemplify it by describing a specific learning situation in which stress interfered with your ability to learn, recall, or achieve successful learning outcomes.
Week Eight
Tuesday, 2/28/17 1] Finish and submit the Errors Analysis Project, per instructions on the whiteboard. 2] Write a paragraph (or two) in which you discuss how you will employ specific strategies from these two resources, JMU's Learning Toolbox and The Study Guides and Strategies web site, to overcome the difficulty which you described in the previous paragraph (test anxiety, speech anxiety, overwhelm due to time management or procrastination, etc.), or similar such situations in which stress prevented you from achieving your desired learning outcomes. Choose a strategy from the Learning Toolbox and a strategy from the Study Guides and Strategies web site which are applicable. State what the strategies are called on the web sites, describe them, and describe how each will work to help you to overcome that particular stressor now and in the future.
Homework assignment for Thursday, 3/2/17:
- Finish the third body paragraph (posted above) of the NHLP and brain development essay. Document your sources with parenthetical citations and two correctly formatted works cited entries for the webpages you used from JMU's Learning Toolbox and The Study Guides and Strategies web site.
Thursday 3/2/17
In-class activities: 1] Compose introductory and concluding paragaphs for the NHLP essay to finish it. 2] Add the Works Cited section 3] Submit the essay on BBd as soon as humanly possible, but no later than 9:30 a.m., 3/7/17..
- Introductory paragraphs
- Set the hook
- Narrow the focus/provide needed background info
- Clearly state the thesis
- A thesis statement is NOT an announcement of intention
- States the subject matter
- Is unified
- Clearly indicates the writer’s opinion
- Contain the “key words” if possible
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Body paragraph 1 describes the NHLP, according to Smilkstein, and describes how you went through each of the six stages when you learned ________.
Body paragraph 2 discusses how emotions affect learning, and describes a specific situation in which stress (noradrenalin) interfered with your successful learning outcomes.
Body paragraph 3 describes two strategies, from your research, which will enable you to overcome that learning difficulty hereafter. |
Concluding paragraph
Must bring closure
Can paraphrase your main points
Can comment again on the subject matter
Can call for action on the part of the reader |
Week Nine
Tuesday, 3/14/17 Group workshop: How much does punctuation matter? The Dear John Letter. A $2 million comma?!
Homework and resources for Thursday.
Thursday, 3/16/17 Discuss the Icarus Project: 1] Diving deep to ferret out meaning and interpretation, i.e., critical thinking activities 2] Using punctuation to make meaning and nuance
Homework and for Tuesday, 3/21/17
- Do all the InQuizitive lessons for all of the punctuation errors and grammatical errors that you discussed in the Errors Analysis Project
- AFTER working the InQuizitive lessons, go back to your NHLP essay and edit it carefully, looking especially for those errors so that you have not created the same patterns of error on the second essay as I marked on the first.
- We will peer review the NHLP essays at the start of class on Tuesday, so make them perfect.
Week Ten
Tuesday, 3/21/17 1] Per review NHLP essays 2] Discuss and begin "Readings Analysis" (a) Identifying main ideas, explication, and supporting details (b) Making connections and researching background in The Battle of the Ants."
- Copy the story into MS Word and highlight the sentences that "tell" in a light blue background, and highlight the sentences that "show" in a yellow background.
- Discussion prep (take notes): What is the purpose of the analogy half way through the story where he describes battles involving Achilles and battles in Concord, Austerlitz and Dresden and compares them to the battle of the ants? What is the significance of the battles that he compares the ant battle to? (research them) How does this change our understanding of ant behavior? Human behavior?
Homework assignment for Thursday, 3/23/17
- Submit your mark up in BBd as an attachment: Additionally, at the end of the document, include the following: Find the words which I designated below within the story (they follow below in their order of appearance in the story), and try to define them from their context clues. Where you can't make sense of them, look up the word and record the definition that most closely reflects the way that Thoreau intended it to be understood.
- The words: duellum / bellum, Myrmidions, internecine, resolutely, adversaries, "divested him of several of his members," pertinacity, Achilles and Patroclus, carbuncles, endeavoring, carnage, obstinacy, fidelity.
Thursday, 3/23/17 1] Discuss the Battle of the Ants 2] Previewing reading and note taking using the SQ4R reading process, per Steve Piscitelli's video on SQ4R. Section your notes sheet into Cornell format and follow the instructions posted at "Phase One" of the Multitasking and Time Management Project. 3] Begin Phase One of the Multitasking and Time Management Project.
Homework assignment for Tuesday, 3/28/17
Week Eleven
Tuesday, 3/28/17 In class: Discuss the Sparks article and the summary you have drafted from it.
Homework assignment for Thursday, 3/30/17
- Finish revisions to the Sparks article summary following the points we discussed in class. Prepare it for submission along with your article notes at the start of class on Thurs.
Thursday, 3/30/17 In class: 1] Discuss and tweak the documentation for the Sparks article summary. 2] "Phase One" of the "Multitasking and Time Management" project
Homework and for Tuesday, 4/4/17
Week Twelve
Tuesday, 4/4/17 In class: 1] Discuss your personal experiences when we have felt that we were "multitasking," and how to develop these into a paragraph. 2] Preview the Mueller article about Covey's time management matrix.
Thursday, 4/6/17 In class: 1] Discuss Mueller's article and how to use the time management matrix. 2] Submit the Mueller article summary, and 3] prepare for writing the final body paragraph by making two matrices: the first categorizes how you have used your time over the past week, by putting the activities you brainstormed on Tuesday into the four quadrants so that you can look at how you have been spending your time, with the past week being typical of that. For the second, make a to do list for the next week and then prioritize it by placing your list into the appropriate quadrant, including the number of hours you think it will take to accomplish each task.
Homework and for Tuesday, 4/11/17
- Complete the "Multitasking and Time Management" project following the outline in "Phase Five" on the lesson page.
- Bring your notes with you on the learning unit about the NHLP and brain development.
Week Thirteen
Tuesday, 4/11/17 Reading Workshop: Review what we have learned and practiced this semester to develop good acadmic reading skills. Take copious notes because you will be writing about this in your final essay, which will be to complete the reading literacy narrative you began in week one.
Review: What have I learned about academic reading in English class?
Reading is a process
Reading academic texts requires engaging with texts, not just looking at the words:
- Note taking—Cornell format video; Cornell format instructions
- Identifying main ideas and major supporting details, and annotating them by marking and highlighting
- Distinguishing between text that "shows" (narration, description, exemplification, empirical data) and text that "tells" (exposition, explanation, elaboration)
- Reading strategies from the JMU Learning Toolbox
- Reading strategies from the Study Guides network
Incorporating readings into my writing:
Attributing and citing sources, videos and tutorial:
Sample Reading Literacy Narratives: Kaytlyn Evans, Spring 2016; Josh Colonna, Fall 2016; Amanda Gentry, Fall 2016; Christina Villanueva, Spring 2016 |
Homework and for Thursday, 4/13/17
Week Fourteen
Tuesday, 4/18/17 Webfolio Workshop: View this tutorial on how to build a Google Sites website, and begin building your home page.
Homework and for Thursday, 4/20/17
- Finish your Google home page with a welcome message--a paragraph about yourself--a statement of its purpose includin a link to our class webpage, and an image of you or which in some way clearly represents you.
- Post and link to a second page: Do final revisions/edits of the professional communication essay, and separately post it in a Google Sites webpage along with at least one graphic which relates to the future profession which you researched from the Occupational Outlook Handbook and detailed in the third body paragraph. Link to the online sources in your works cited section
- Submit the Reading Literacy Narrative on Thursday.
Week Fifteen
Tuesday, 4/25/17 1] Check BBd Gradebook for accuracy, completeness. All grades should be posted but for multitasking essays, reading literacy narratives, and the webfolio of revisions. 2] Webfolio Workshop: Revising returned essays.
Completing the webfolio of revisions:
- Welcome page/home page: Introduces you, includes at least brief paragraph about you , clearly states the purpose of your webfolio site, links to TNCC website and our class website, includes you VCCS email address. (You may remove this after the course graes have been submitted.)
- Four essays--professional communication, NHLP, multitasking and time mangement, reading literacy narrative. Each essay page has at lesst one relevant image--a photograph or other graphic.
- Documented paragraph of the Adams and Weins articles paraphrases, separate from the professional communication essay
- Two documented summaries--Sparks and Mueller articles--separate from the multitasking essay
"Finals Week" schedule for ALL classes.
Ours meets Thursday 5/4/17, 8:00-10:30

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