Hand in your Rhetorical Analysis, along with your Writer's Memo and Peer Review (paperclip these together).

Part I: Working with your writing group, 

• Review James Baldwin's "Letter to My Nephew," pp. 123-126.
• As a group, respond in writing to the Workshop Questions #1-3 on p. 126.  Take notes and be prepared to report back to the class.

Part II: Individually, use the Exercises on pp. 132-34 to identify and begin to plan your letter-writing project.  Note that these are "Invention" exercises--you can respond to the prompts by jotting notes and ideas freely, without worrying about composing a formal text.

Finish reading Chapter 4.

Begin planning the organization of your letter assignment, following the guidelines on pp. 135-136. Compose a working draft to bring to class on Thursday.

1. Strengthening Topic Sentences for Focus and Transition

2. Designing a Page for Your Letter

Spend some time today designing a page layout for your letter.  What visual impression do you want to create with your letter?  Play with the features in Microsoft Word, such as font types and sizes, margin settings, page and paragraph borders.  Look through the "Visual Design" section, pp. 127-30, for ideas.

Your page design might include some of these elements:

• a format for your return address, designed as a personal "letterhead"
• a place and format for the date
• a place for the inside address (the address you're sending the letter to)
• a paragraph format for the body of the letter (draft a paragraph so you can see how it looks)
• decorative symbols or designs created from type elements
• deliberate use of "white space"

Be sure to save this work in a file on your disk!

1. Write a commentary on your letter-writing project, following the  instructions for "Reflecting on Your Writing" on p. 144.  Bring this commentary, along with the current draft of your letter, to class on Wednesday.  You will exchange these writings with another student in class and write reviews of each others' work.