Craft Group prompts: You will be required to submit two prompts per week with no more than one prompt focused on each assigned text for that week (e.g., you might choose one prompt from the Carr book and one from the essay or video). Prompts are due by 11:59 pm on Thursday. Late prompts will be available for discussion, but you will receive no credit for them. Each prompt should be a discussion starter that explores some specific quote from one of the texts (book, essay, video or podcast) assigned for that week. This is your chance to grapple with the notions that Karr and other writers suggest about writing in general or memoir specifically. Think of craft as the deliberate choices writers make when creating their work. Be sure to introduce and include a quotation from the chapter, essay, video, or podcast you’re discussing that exemplifies the craft element you want to explore. (A prompt that doesn’t include a quotation will not get credit.) Tell us what you think about the quote, then ask an open-ended question that refers to it. These prompts should be ideas that get us started thinking and discussing. They should not be questions that can be answered with a fact or with a yes or no. Example: “In The Art of Memoir, Mary Karr suggests that ‘Any decent comp teacher schools you to work in the realms of maybe and perhaps’ (15) when you don’t fully remember something. I think she’s right that a writer’s ability to admit when he or she is not sure of something increases readers’ trust. Where do you think we should draw the line as writers, though, between mostly remembering the facts and setting the scene confidently vs. falling back on admissions about our fuzzy memory?” Craft Group Responses (three per week) should be substantive (if you want credit) and thoughtful, but they need not be formal. They should be in standard written English, though, not text-speak. You are welcome to comment “I totally agree with you, Jane” or “Great point, Bill” but these will not be considered substantive enough for credit. Responses should make a point, expand on a point, disagree with a point, compare or contrast to another passage or text, discuss how the point relates to your writing, or explore a new way to look at the craft point. Please refer to others who have responded before you to a prompt by name when appropriate (e.g., “Although I agree with what Susie said about Wallace’s repetition, I think what he was really after was a sense of . . . .” ) Each of your three responses for the week may be to a different prompt, or you may double-up, triple-up, or quadruple-up your responses by engaging in a discussion with other students on one prompt. In other words, if you and Johnny get into a heated debate about a particular prompt, you may go back and forth three times and get all three of your responses that week completed on just that one prompt. Disrespect, bullying, or general meanness will not be tolerated in class discussions, but that doesn′t mean I don’t welcome healthy disagreement. I do. I do. The earlier you start responding to the prompts in a given week, the more likely that the discussion group will foster lively back-and-forth discussions among students instead of perfunctory answers to three different prompts. http://www.tinareber.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/punctuating.pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9qYvJF7qx0