If You Decided You Wanted to Do the Extra Credit for the Practice Essay – and Understand How Profs and Bosses Will Interpret Your Work

What Everyone Must Have to Begin

If Your Rubric Says You Used an Incorrect or Incomplete Part of the Required Source or You Used an Unreliable Source or If You Claimed Segregation Existed in the Time Periods Covered by the 3 Possible Time Periods from 1865 to 1877, Examine This Section 1st

Figuring Out What You Need to Do If You Have Underlining in Your Rubric in ANY of the Places Circled by a Blue or Red Line Below

What (and How) You Will Submit to Me When You Are Done (Sooner the Better)

If you want to read and hear why the instructor grades as she does (and why it is in your interests), click here.

If you want to read and hear how this grading applies to this class, click here.

If you want, hear what’s written below:

What Everyone Must Have to Begin

  1. You need Blackboard open to this link for the instructions so you can see them as you work.

 

  1. You need either to be able to see the rubric I sent you or a print of it (recommended).

 

  1. Your required textbook - The American Passages by Ayers. (Details on the ISBN etc. are in the syllabus.)

 

  1. To create a print copy and to do the file that you copy into an email to me, you need a digital copy of:

a.     The question/topic Blackboard asked you – Tip: Notice that question. It is about what happened to blacks in the South in a specific period
- It is not what happened to white men in the KKK or to President Johnson or to Liberal Republicans in the North
- It is not what happened at a different time or during all of the time after the war ended or what happened 20 years later

b.    The answer you entered in Blackboard

 

If you don’t know how to do this, here are the basic steps: click on Quizzes & Exams, click on your submitted Practice Essay, and follow the prompts to choose to see what you submitted (usually clicking on OK in the right corner). Then copy and paste the question and your answer into a file.

 

Ideally you need a word processor that will let you:

·         Strike through (Strike through looks like this.)

·         Underline (Underline looks like this.)


If you don’t have one, I can tell you how to use an awkward one in Blackboard. If you need more help getting the file, just ask.

 

 

  1. Based on prior experience with students, you need to make a print copy to work on so you are accurate.

o    Strike through (Strike through looks like this.)

o     Underline (Underline looks like this.)

  1. Based on prior experience with students, you need to lay your work out the way I lay your work out when I grade.

 

Put your book and what you wrote side by side so you can compare them easily. I have found touching the words on each one very helpful in making myself observe carefully. If you are left handed, you may want to reverse the pattern;

·         With the textbook on the left – Depending on what is marked on your rubric, some of you will have to compare your paper with two sections of the book—one you should have used if you wanted to be accurate and the one you actually used.

·         What you wrote on the right.

 

The source turned to the exact page you were using or should have been using for the content

 

t

 

The topic displayed in Blackboard

 

What you wrote for your Practice Essay

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If Your Rubric Has Green on “A or “B” or “C” Paper Criteria But Has a Few Things Underlined in the “D” or “F” Paper Criteria Column

That use of green in those A through C columns is a good sign. The underlining of issues or adding of comments in the D through F columns explains why that higher grade was weakened. If that happened, you do want to compare your book and your paper according to the instructions below.

If Your Rubric Says You Used an Incorrect or Incomplete Part of the Required Source or You Used an Unreliable Source or If You Claimed Segregation Existed in the Time Periods Covered by the 3 Possible Time Periods from 1865 to 1877, Examine This Section 1st

I have copied below the page numbers specified for each of the possible time periods from 1865 to 1877. Information on when segregation (a specific kind of treatment, not just general nastiness) started is also highlighted. To see the link that showed what was happening with blacks in the South from 1865 to 1877, click here. It also provides the chart to help you see change over time.

 

If You Are Using the 4th Edition Paperback - What You Have to Read for Each Column

The columns below are the same columns you see above. This time they contain the Chapter # and the name of the heading of the section you read within that chapter.

 

Notice that the word Segregation for the first time appears in a heading about 1883—with those times with segregation being identified with a purple column. Notice the Caution (in an orange-yellow) in the table and in the Caution in What You Have to Read for Each Column.

Trait

1865-1867  

1867-1872

1872-1877

1877-1887

1887-1893

1893-1901

What You Must Read

> 

For the content for this column, you read:

Pages 397-399, 403-407 in Chapters 15 & 16. Look for these headings:

·         “Emancipation in the South”

·         “Black Mobilization”

·         “Andrew Johnson”

·         “Johnson and the Radicals”

·         “The Reconstruction Act of 1867”

·         “Reconstruction Begins” (stops at “Despite these…”)

 

For the content for this column, you read:

Pages 409, 411-413, 420-421, 424 in Chapter 16. Look for these headings:

·         “The Fifteenth Amendment”

·         “The Rise of the Klan”

·         “Breaking the Power of the Klan”

·         “Grant and the 1872 Election”

·         “The 1872 Election”

 

PLUS some elections from 1868 are in Chapter 16 in “The Stigma of Corruption.”

For the content for this column, you read:

Pages 423-429 in Chapter 16. Look for the “The Failure of Reconstruction” which includes

·         “The Stigma of Corruption”

·         “The Resurgence of the Democrats”

·         “Why Reconstruction Failed.”

Caution: the use of the word segregation in text is about the future, not the period of 1872-1877.

·         “The Race for the White House”

For the content for this column, you read:

Pages 429-430 in Chapter 16 and 453-454 in Chapter 17. Look for these headings:

·         “CONCLUSION” (stops at “As with”) – These pages include some things that WILL happen AFTER the current time of 1877.

·         “Segregation” – Caution: These pages are the first to use the word Segregation in a heading and are about the end of the period—such as the Supreme Court cases AFTER 1883.

For the content for this column, you read:

Pages 468-469 in Chapter 18. Look for this heading:

“The Spread of Segregation.”

For the content for this column, you read:

Pages 495-496, 504-505 Look for these headings:

·         “African Americans and Segregation.”

Paragraph on 504 beginning “The main combat” through paragraph on 505 ending “brought harmony at the expense of black Americans.”

 

 

Figuring Out What You Need to Do If You Have Underlining in Your Rubric in ANY of the Places Circled by a Blue or Red Line Below

This shows a page I showed by students in face-to-face classes so they knew what to do with the copies of their Practice Essays. Now your essay may have color highlights in green for an “A” or “B” or “C” Paper and also have some things marked the “D” Paper and “F” Paper columns. Underlining (by hand here but digitally in your rubric) tells you the specifics for your paper. For the definitions of terms used (such as cherry-pick), click on Essay Topics and to the 2nd item—the definitions.

 

Notice the 2 colored areas circled in the rubric and that turn into an 4(arrow) that points to a box with instructions.

1.     The blue line marks what students should compare side by side in their essay with what the instructions said you should have read for this time period.
Follow the blue line to the
4(arrow) to the box with instructions, read the instructions, and strike through (like this) according to those instructions.

 

2.     The red line marks what you compare side by side in your essay with what you actually read even if it was the wrong stuff.
Follow the red line to the
4(arrow) to the box with instructions, read the instructions, and strike through (like this) according to those instructions.

What (and How) You Will Submit to Me When You Are Done (Sooner the Better)

1.     If you are not sure what you did, then email me asking to talk before you submit the file. I invested this far in you so I’ll certainly do some more.
Also, I could be wrong. Example: I had had a student use as a fact a caption under a map that I had not spotted. Talking is the fastest way to clear things up.

2.     If you have figured out what you did, you can do your strike through and your underlining in a word processing program that you know how to use.

3.     When you are done, you click on my email when I sent you the rubric, click Reply, and copy and paste what was in your file into the Blackboard message.

4.     I will then get back to you and tell you

·         EITHER that we must talk more because I fear you misunderstand something that will make you unnecessarily unsafe (Talking ASAP and briefly works wonderfully.)

·         OR that I think you are safe as is and I will enter the 10 points

 

 

Copyright C. J. Bibus, Ed.D. 2003-2013

 

WCJC Department:

History – Dr. Bibus

Contact Information:

281.239.1577 or bibusc@wcjc.edu

Last Updated:

2013

WCJC Home:

http://www.wcjc.edu/