How to Do the 3 Posts in the 1st Primaries Discussion (It’s 80 points so follow instructions.)

Tip: Read over the table of contents below. Notice that there is an equivalent set of information for the 1st Primary Writing and the Peer Reviews.  Do the 1st Primary Writing; then come back to these instructions to do the Peer Reviews. If you need help, ask.

Caution: Why Do You See No Postings in the Discussion for the 1st Primary Writing and Where Can You See Everything You Need to Do the 1st Primary Writing?. 1

1st Primary Writing—Method, Requirements, Citation, Background, Rubric, and Grading (40 Points). 1

What Does Your Instructor Recommend As a Method to Do This Assignment?. 1

What Are Essential Requirements from Sources to Maximum Length to the Subject Line of Your Post?. 2

What Are Requirements for Citation for Your 1st Primary Writing?. 2

What Is Essential Background for Success with This Primary?. 3

What Is the Rubric Used to Measure Your Content and Your Following the 5 Good Habits for Evidence and How Does It Work?. 3

How Does Grading Work?. 3

2 Peer Reviews—Definition, Method, Requirements, Rubric, and Grading (40 Points). 4

What’s a Peer Review?. 4

What Does Your Instructor Recommend As a Method to Do This Assignment and What Are Its Requirements?. 4

What Is the Rubric Used to Measure Your Peer Review of the Papers of 2 Other Students and Your Following the 5 Good Habits for Evidence. 5

How Does Grading Work?. 5

Resources Available as Links on This Webpage. 5

If You Want to Know Why We Use These Shortened Citations. 5

Brain Trick for Quoting and Avoiding Quotation Humiliation. 5

 

Caution: Why Do You See No Postings in the Discussion for the 1st Primary Writing and Where Can You See Everything You Need to Do the 1st Primary Writing?

Blackboard has several types of discussion. One requires that you make an initial post before you can see other’s posts. The discussion for the 1st Primary Writing is that kind of posting.

You must 1st post your paper before you can see other students’ papers. That means you want to do write that paper as carefully as possible. If you are looking at the Discussion Board, you can find not only the specific Discussion but everything that might help you (such as definitions, a self-test, and the primary itself) in one place—Writing with Primaries available by clicking on either

·         Clicking on 1st Primary Writing on the Course Menu (the menu on the left when you are inside the course)

·         Clicking on Lesson Units and then scrolling down the bottom to Writing with Primaries and clicking on it
You’ll see the 1st Primary Writing.

1st Primary Writing—Method, Requirements, Citation, Background, Rubric, and Grading (40 Points)

What Does Your Instructor Recommend As a Method to Do This Assignment?

Read and plan carefully, being sure to record the exact page numbers as you plan so you can cite (covered next). Copy the questions below into your word processor file and add a blank line between each question. Type your answers and use the word processor’s word count feature to be sure you are within the maximum word count. Also run spell and grammar checking.

Print it and proof it. To proof means to compare side by side your paper and your source to be sure page numbers and facts and names and quotations and everything is correct.

When you are sure you are accurate, create a post in the 1st Primary Writing discussion. Then copy and paste your file into it. Tip: If you do not know how to post in a discussion, use Blackboard’s instructions. You can find Blackboard videos in a folder in Useful Web Links.

What Are Essential Requirements from Sources to Maximum Length to the Subject Line of Your Post?

Sources to Use

In 1st Primary Writing in Blackboard, the Requerimiento of 1510

In the textbook, 27-30

Use no other pages or sources–and certainly not your memory.

Questions to Answer

1.       What are the two choices the Spanish say the Native Americans have?

2.       Why do they believe they have a right to state these choices?

3.       In the years covered in Chapter 1 in pages 27-30, what were the actual results of Spanish rule on Native Americans?

Format

Do not try to do format within the Discussion Tool. The only format that works successfully is a blank line between paragraphs for each questions

Length

300 words maximum – Less is better.

Punctuation

Make sure it is accurate, especially if you are quoting something. Keep it simple by using this Brain Trick (This link goes to the bottom of this webpage.)

Subject Line of Your Post

Using the Create Thread discussion command create a post with this subject line:
Your Name – Answering 3 Key Questions

Example: if your name is Ana Joy, your subject line is
Ana JoyAnswering 3 Key Questions

 

What Are Requirements for Citation for Your 1st Primary Writing?

Do not use lengthy citation statements within parentheses () as is done with MLA. You are trying to teach history accurately to someone like yourself. You are not collecting research and quoting from it. You all have the same sources and so you do not want to get a lot of words get between you and your fellow students. Do these things for this writing assignment:

What You Want to Cite

Example of How You Would Cite

If the fact is from T]the Requerimiento of 1510

If your fact is from page 1 of the Requerimiento, then immediately after your fact you’d write: (Requerimiento, p. 1)

If the fact is from the textbook, the Essentials edition

If your fact is from page 30 of the textbook, then immediately after your fact you’d write: (Essentials, p. 30)

If the fact is from the your colleagues’ postings from Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary

If your fact is about the meaning of slavery stated in Merriam-Webster, then immediately after the word slavery you’d write: (Merriam-Webster)

If the fact is from the your instructor’s dictionary collection with the primary

If your fact is about the meaning of slavery stated in your instructor’s collection, then immediately after the word slavery you’d write: (Instructor collection)

Click here If You Want to Know Why We Use These Shortened Citations (This link goes to the bottom of this webpage.)

 

What Is Essential Background for Success with This Primary?

·         You need to know what occurred before the Requerimiento of 1510:
In the 1490s to avoid conflicts between two Catholic kingdoms, the pope had—to simplify—divided the “non-Christian world” between Spain and Portugal. The line cut through Brazil. Spain received all of the west (except for Brazil); Portugal, all of the east. (Essentials, p. 20). That’s the “donation” referred to in the primary (Requerimiento, p. 1). Historians refer to this division of the land as the Treaty of Tordesillas or the Line of Demarcation.

·         You need to be absolutely sure that understand the words servant, slave, and subject. Use the Collaboration for Unit 1 and your instructor’s link with definitions. To help you realize whether you understand those words, there is a self-test you can take with this primary. After you take the self-test, Blackboard shows you the same test, but you can take it unlimited times. Just make sure you know the meanings (and not just how to click).

·         Notice the past covered in this quick reference I provide in the resources for Chapter 1: Why you need to recognize prior eras. You cannot understand the primary for Chapter 1—nor the period at all—unless you realize how different these people are from today. For example, they are fine (no guilt at all) about enslaving people. If you were a slave, you would get no pay but instead work for enough to survive another day and to avoid the owner’s violence against you.

Tip: This link defines the words primary and secondary history or covers History Department’s requirements for all instructors. Save yourself from unnecessarily low grades by understanding these words and these realities.

What Is the Rubric Used to Measure Your Content and Your Following the 5 Good Habits for Evidence and How Does It Work?

What is a rubric? Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary defines a rubric as “a guide listing specific criteria for grading or scoring academic papers, projects, or tests.” Frequently, rubrics are in a table:

·         With rows for each criteria (such as this one with criteria for Reading FOR Evidence, Writing WITH Evidence, Following Directions for Evidence, and Mechanics)

·         With columns for each grade level (such as this one with columns for “F” through “A.”

Some rubrics (like this one) are weighted so that some criteria are worth more points. This rubric has these weights:

Click here for an explanation of the rubric and how to use it as a grader or as someone graded. You can also look at the link immediately under Evidence Quiz 1 in Evidence Requirements.

How Does Grading Work?

For this assignment, I email my graded rubric to you. After you reply to my feedback, I enter the grade at My Grades. The point value is @ 20 points for content and @ 20 points for following all 5 Good Habits for Evidence

2 Peer Reviews—Definition, Method, Requirements, Rubric, and Grading (40 Points)

What’s a Peer Review?

Merriam-Webster Online defines peer review as “a process by which something proposed (as for research or publication) is evaluated by a group of experts in the appropriate field.”

In this course, you all can practice the skills needed to act like expert—and to make decisions that protect yourself and to get and keep a good job we all have to learn to be experts now. It is possible for you to think like an expert in this course:

·         Because you must all use the same sources

·         Because you all must cite all statements

·         You read the others’ original posts and chose the 1st post you want to review for content and for following all 5 Good Habits for Evidence. Caution: Do it thoroughly but choose quickly because the maximum number of countable replies to one person’s post is 3. If you post after the 3rd person has already posted, yours will not be counted and you’d have to do another.

 

What Does Your Instructor Recommend As a Method to Do This Assignment and What Are Its Requirements?

You read the others’ original posts and chose the 1st post you want to review for content and for following all 5 Good Habits for Evidence. Caution: Do it thoroughly but choose quickly because the maximum number of countable replies to one person’s post is 3. Tip: It is probably safest to choose one that no one has reviewed yet. If you post after the 3rd person has already posted, yours will not be counted and you’d have to do another.

Use part of the same method that you used with your own paper. Print the other student’s paper and proof it. To proof means to compare side by side your paper and your source to be sure page numbers and facts and names and quotations and everything is correct. Mark anything that is incorrect that you need to include in your peer review and mark any good things (such as following a Good Habits for Evidence that the student has done as well).

You evaluate the other student’s paper on the same requirements you followed for sources, questions, format, length, and punctuation.

When you are sure you are accurate, return to the 1st Primary Writing that you plan to review. Tip: If you do not know how to reply in a discussion, use Blackboard’s instructions. You can find Blackboard videos in a folder in Useful Web Links.

 

Subject Line of Your Post

Using the Reply with a Quote discussion command create a post with this subject line:
Your Name – My Feedback to Help Your Content and Evidence

Example: if your name is Ana Joy, your subject line is
Ana JoyMy Feedback to Help Your Content and Evidence

Second, insert your feedback at the spot where you want to give feedback by doing these thing:

·         Make a blank line.

·         Type an opening square bracket [ and then your feedback and then a closing square bracket ].

·         Type another blank line

 

Example: If your colleague in the class cited page 30 for a statement, but you found that fact on 29, you could write just below the citation for page 30

[Page should be 29.]

 

 

What Is the Rubric Used to Measure Your Peer Review of the Papers of 2 Other Students and Your Following the 5 Good Habits for Evidence

Look at this rubric briefly when you are working on your 1st Primary Writing just to notice the importance of evidence. Then before you do the peer reviews look at it carefully so you make maximum points.

Click here for the rubric used to measure the 2 Peer Reviews.

You review 2 (and only 2) papers posted by other students on both of these 2 things

1.       Content (historical content as measured by what is supported by a specific page in our textbook or in resources provided by the instructor)

2.       Evidence (use of evidence as measured by the 5 Good Habits for Evidence)

Caution: This rubric also says that you need to participate from the beginning. If your 1st post is in the last two days, your points will be lower.

How Does Grading Work?

For your two replies of peer reviews, I enter the reviews in an overall Blackboard Discussion rubric. For each of the 2 peer reviews, the point value is @ 10 points for content and @ 10 points for following all 5 Good Habits for Evidence

 

 

Resources Available as Links on This Webpage

 

If You Want to Know Why We Use These Shortened Citations

The reasons are:

·         All of your written assignments are brief. If you used traditional MLA citation which is written inline (within your lines of text), you would use up your word count much faster.

·         History’s standard, the Chicago Manual of Style, provides rigorous citation, but not inline. Instead, it uses endnotes (citation at the end of the paper) or footnotes (citation at the bottom of the page) to provide citation.

In other words, citation is there but it is not in the way of communication of the history. The citation is not written within your lines of text because of how historians write about history.

·         They are helping people understand the past.

·         That is your job in this course as well. Why? When you try to help someone understand history, you start to understand it yourself. If you want to understand something, try to teach it.

·         In this class, you may place your citation in either endnotes or inline, but we make that citation as unobtrusive as possible and follows the simple format above.


 

Brain Trick for Quoting and Avoiding Quotation Humiliation

Click here for additional tips.

The rules for showing what you have taken out (…) of the author’s words or put in ([ ]) are complex and for most of us they are not worth learning.

 

This brain trick lets you be accurate but avoid learning those rules:

  1. Choose 3 to 6 words to quote and change nothing (not an ing or an ed, not a comma, nothing) between the first and the last word.

  2. Put abefore the first word and a after the last word.

  3. Place those words with the “ ”within your sentence.

 

  1. If something sounds awkward about your sentences, then change your own words—the only words you have a right to change.

 

  1. Look at all of the words in the source. Be sure the meaning of the source remains in your quotation.

 

 

 

Copyright C. J. Bibus, Ed.D. 2003-2017

 

WCJC Department:

History – Dr. Bibus

Contact Information:

281.239.1577 or bibusc@wcjc.edu

Last Updated:

2017

WCJC Home:

http://www.wcjc.edu/