Kain And Wardle's Activity Theory Analysis

Kain, Donna, and Elizabeth Wardle. “Activity Theory: An Introduction for the Writing Classroom.” Writing about Writing: A College Reader 2nd edition, edited by Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2014, pp. 273-283.

In the beginning of the term I was assigned an essay that described me as a writer and thinker. With this essay being my first assignment, I was quite stressed with the feeling of failure. After this assignment I learned the importance of the drafting system. After my paper was graded I received it back and noticed multiple mistakes. This was the first step I practiced improving. Writing multiple drafts helped me analysis the material I wrote from another point of view. For example, I was able to eliminate sections that were unrelated from the main point. Building my vocabulary up another step I had focus as a writer and thinker. I used a combination between the dictionary and thesaurus to help me increase my vocabulary. Overtime with experience, I saw improvements in all of these categories that I was struggling

Using these has helped me write at a higher level and do my best work. The writing process was difficult for me personally because I tend to jump right in and begin writing; however, I learned that you need to do multiple drafts as well as research and peer edits to make your paper is the best that it can be. It is difficult, sometimes, to consider peer reviews because you think you are right while they think they are right, that is why I feel more comfortable having someone more educated than me review my paper. Multiple drafts are crucial in the writing

1. Read your assignment carefully for content related requirements. Let’s look at the example below. Note that it does not ask for a vague opinion, but requires that your answer be based upon:

The activities that helped the most in writing this paper where the chapter outlines, I felt like these helped me understand the material better. I used a web outline and this helped get everything organized. The comments form the peer review were not as helpful as the last time. It is my fault though because I did not add at the end what specifically I wanted help with.

How might you use feedback to help you determine what areas to focus on further when writing?

The seventh activity I participated in was wearing green on October sixth to support mental health awareness. It was neat to see how many people participated. Making people more aware of mental health disorders is very important because some people truly do not understand them.

For the seventh activity Amber said phrases such as “car on”, “push”, “want car”, and “beep-beep” and K.C repeated her. Amber continues to use positive reinforcement like she has done in previous activities, by saying “yay” and giving him a high five. The eighth activity was named crayons and paper, which consisted of K.C trying to trace his hand. At the beginning of the activity Amber asked K.C if he wanted to use a red crayon. K.C responded by repeating “happy” (which was something that was said earlier in the session), and he walks towards the door and runs behind the junior clinician. Amber redirects him by directing him to draw something different, which was a flower.

I find that the short writes number nine and ten were my favorite and most useful assignments given. They allowed me to write about myself and what I was doing. Since we had to test the rules stated in Choosing Civility, it allowed me to experience what I was writing about. I enjoyed testing several of the rules because of how complicated some can be to test. It helped me learn that by following some of the rules civility is possible. This was an assignment that did not involve research and more hands on experiences, which I find more enjoyable.

I have chosen my rough draft of my setting description of the short story and unit 2 activity 9 the directors cut. I think that these two pieces are very successfully written. I am not a very good writer and I struggle with grammar and spelling, however, I think that I did my best on these two assignments better then I did on other assignments. I have never written a short story before and in my opinion the rough draft of my story describing the setting was very well done. I really like the words the I used to describe the setting and overall I’m really happy with the story. The second piece that I think is successful is the directors cut unit 2 activity 9. I think this is successful because I always wanted to be a director, movies are my passion

With this topic, I thought that I asked very good questions and had very good overall ideas behind it. I used multiple sources, and tried to stick as closely to the Purdue OWL Example as I could. I also liked the way the paper flowed. When I went back and read it, I thought it was easy to follow and went very smoothly. I also included plenty of examples from the author and kept my own opinion in check for the most part especially more early on.

Feedback has been very useful because the reviewer has different perspective and has not become used to reading the paper, so they easily spot mistakes and what needs to be fixed in order to have better paper. Especially when we used to do a group work and read each other thesis and try to see if this is good thesis or it needs to change. It was really helpful because I was able to see from different point of views to what I can add in my thesis or can change it to better my thesis. Overall I think my writng was good and during the group session I was able to see from different

Once I have finish modeling the activity 3.1, students will have the opportunity to do the activity. The teachers helper will pick a name out of popsicle stick holder. I will either have the amount of dots and have the student write the corresponding number or write down the number and have the student draw the correct amount of dots. If the student is unsure of how to write a certain number, we would count the number line up in to the number.

From taking this course I have been able to improve many of my weaknesses, but there are still some that I need to work on. Overall I am becoming better at not procrastinating as much as I used to. This class has helped me to learn to take the little steps along the way because then there will not be as much work to do towards the end. This has also made me realize that the final product of my writing will turn out better because it will have had more time to develop, which means that there would have been more opportunities to proofread. I think by learning many styles of writing, such as paraphrasing, summarizing, analyzing, and researching; it has enabled me to be able to write more broadly. By knowing how to correctly use all of these kinds of writing styles, it will help me in the future for other classes because I will have the knowledge that I need to write these types of papers. I still procrastinate sometimes, but not as much as I used to. I will be able to improve on this as time goes along because I will become more motivated by seeing the end result, which usually would be better grades.

Over the course of this semester each paper that was written helped to introduce me and my fellow classmates to different formatting, and genres of writing. A lot of knowledge was gained from writing these papers and I was able to compare and contrast the disciplinary writings and notice what makes each of them stand out. Reflecting back on these individual papers helps to express what I have learned.