While we'll often write text out of class, we'll also write a number of "inclass" papers.  Sometimes these papers will be "inclass" versions of "out-of-class" papers.  This concept isn't as complicated as it might sound at first.

Typically you'll write out-of-class papers over a period of time, taking them through several drafts and revising them in response to our class discussions of your work and the work of other people.  Eventually you'll put that text into a final form.

When you write an inclass version, you come to class without any notes or drafts, but with a clear sense of the ideas that you're going to write already in mind.  You'll know already what the piece means to do.  You'll have a pretty good sense of its structure, that is, what comes first and then next.  You'll know what arguments you're going to make.  And you might even have some of the language in mind.

Your task is to come with all of this in mind and then to render it all in good, clear, well finished prose.

Because you're writing under more limited conditions, we might expect the inclass paper to be a bit shorter than the out-of-class version, and, realistically, we might expect it to be a little less well finished.  Naturally, I take the circumstances of the writing into consideration when I'm grading the paper.