Reviewing the WSM and Cohen's Article Discussing Krugman's and Frank's Articles |
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Introduce the Class Session and take roll (1-2 minutes) |
By referring to your agenda on the
board or by previewing the day's goals/objectives, introduce the
class session for your students. You might say something
like: Today we're going to review summary and the Writing
Situation Model. We'll also work on some revision strategies
for summary writing. Hopefully this will help you with some
of the challenges you may have experienced in writing your summary
of Cohen's article. |
Sample Transition to Next ActivityConsider using a transition such as the following: Now that we've reviewed the process and concepts of summary, let's expand on those by looking at the Writing Situation Model again. |
Sample Transition to Next ActivityConsider using a transition like the following: Looking at the responses we've just compiled, why is it important to think critically about a text's writing situation? Why is it especially helpful to do so before writing an academic summary and response to an author's text (like you'll do in Portfolio 1)? |
Discuss effective use of paraphrasing and quoting (10 minutes)Design an activity where you model effective and ineffective use of paraphrasing and quoting. You might prepare examples beforehand OR have students help generate ideas using Cohen’s article. Cover the following points (Use page 194 in the PHG as a guide): 1. Discuss when it is necessary to use author tags and how students should attribute other writers' words (as a rule of thumb the PHG indicates that we should attribute anything we did not know prior to research, etc.). Also discuss the concept of paraphrasing in detail. Paraphrasing is NOT using the thesaurus to change every other word of another writer's sentence, it is restating the author's ideas in your own words. 2. Discuss where and how often students should use paraphrasing and quoting in their summaries. (For example: It is ineffective to string together several quotes, as this infringes on the writer's voice and can become what is known as a "quotation quilt" [see PHG for more explanation of this notion]; but it is also ineffective to paraphrase too often, as ideas need to be supported with textual evidence). 3. Explain that quotes need to logically fit into the sentence structure. For example (feel free to revise and add your own examples): Ineffective and Ungrammatical: Cohen reports that the Macy's Annual Report "for 1955 called "middle income groups" explicitly distanced themselves from consumers deemed undesirable because they were too poor, black, or young and unruly." More Effective: Cohen reiterates the 1955 Macy's Annual Report's indication that "'middle income groups' explicitly distances themselves from consumers deemed undesirable because they were too poor, black, or young and unruly." Ineffective Quotation Quilt: Cohen says that "a lack of encouragement" for "public transportation" for the "low-paid, urban workers who now dominate shopping center sales forces" is causing inequality. More Effective: Cohen indicates that a lack of support for public transportation provided to underpaid, commuting mall-workers contributes to social inequality. Review any other points on quoting and paraphrasing mentioned in the PHG or that you feel are important here at the beginning. |
Example of how to summarize key points and evidence and incorporate quotes and paraphrases (5 minutes)You can use the example provided here (and revise it as you see fit) or one of your students' own summaries to illustrate this. If you use a student's writing in class, try to clear it with h/er before you show it to the rest of the class. Also introduce the piece as having been written by a peer. Doing so can avoid any inappropriate comments and also make the showing of student work a goal or privilege to which students can aspire. For example: Cohen makes an argument about the detriments of consumption on equality in America. She is responding to the government's and businesses' call to "spend more" after 9/11 to help boost our economy. Cohen's goal is to show that consumption, as it is currently, is problematic and that we, as consumers in America, need to think more carefully about it. According to Cohen, the problem is historical and dates back to the recovery from the Depression in the 1930's. Then, as now, the government and business leaders and workers called for more spending and increased consumer credit to enable this. As a result, a pseudo-democratic idea that spending more would create more equality among classes in the U.S. was born. "Citizens, living better than before, would be on equal footing with their prospering neighbors" (Cohen). Cohen does not believe spending more creates more inequality. In fact, she argues just the opposite and cites many examples of the negative effects increased shopping and malls have had on society, and she concludes by saying, "So before we praise consumer spending too lavishly this holiday season, it is worth recognizing that totaling up the dollars spent is not enough" (Cohen). Cohen wants us to think about some of the less tangible effects our holiday shopping and make a change. |
Sample Transition to Next Activity Revision is an essential part of the writing process and one of the goals of our course. Now that we've discussed summary in more detail, let's talk about how you revise your summaries to be as effective as they can be. |
Revision (5 minutes) |
Revision ActivityIn small groups or in a WTL, have students make notes about how they will revise their summaries for homework. Facilitate the application of the prior activity as they are doing this. |
Sample Transition to Next Activity Revision is an essential part of the writing process and one of the goals of our course. Now that we've discussed summary in more detail, let's talk about how you revise your summaries to be as effective as they can be. |
Discussing Krugman's and Frank's Articles (15-20 minutes total)Generating the main idea and key points (3-5 minutes)Begin by outlining the application of the WSM to each article. Then, on an overhead or on the board (you can use a student scribe for this activity if you'd like), have students compile the article's main idea and key points. Creating a summary from the main idea and key points (5-8 minutes)Have students get into groups of three or four, split the groups down the middle and assign either Krugman's or Frank's article to each half. Have each group create a summary of its assigned article from the points listed on the board on an overhead. Presenting group summaries (5 minutes)Have each group put its summary on the overhead projector and read it to the rest of the class. You should facilitate a brief discussion of what each summary does well/could improve upon after each group presents.
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Sample Transition to Next Activity Let's shift our focus now from summarizing to responding. For homework today, I asked you to read about the different types of responses, given on pages 162- 163 in the PHG. If you recall, your audience for Portfolio 1 will be open and interested in your response. So it's important that we start thinking about the different types of response we can provide. |
Introducing Responding (5 minutes)Introduce the concept of respondingThe goal of this discussion is to briefly introduce students to all three ways can respond to a text: agreeing/disagreeing with the text's ideas, interpreting/reflecting on the text's implications or assumptions, analyzing/evaluating what makes the text effective or ineffective. Review the points on page 163 in the PHG, highlighting important concepts and phrases, and check out the teaching guide on Types of Summary and Response (https://writing.colostate.edu/guides/teaching/summaryresponse/). You may want to make an overhead like the following: The three ways we can respond are by:
The goal of an Agree/Disagree Response is to emphasize one important idea from a writer's text and support or refute that idea using reasons and evidence. Here, you want to convince a reader that your position is a favorable one. The goal of an Interpretive/Reflective Response is to look critically at an argument in order to explain what it fully means. Looking critically at a text requires you to inquire beyond what the text actually says. One way to do this is to locate the assumptions that inform a writer's argument and find out what the writer's argument implies. Along the way, you may find yourself agreeing with or refuting the writer's ideas and the assumptions and implications that are tied to these ideas. The goal of an Analytical/Evaluative Response is to determine a text's effectiveness by examining its parts. You might look at the purpose, the intended audience, the thesis, the main ideas, the organization and evidence, and the language and style. Here, your aim is to point out an essay's strong points and/or where it falls short. Analyzing the text's effectiveness allows you to make more informed decisions about the usefulness and credibility of a writer's argument. Once you discuss these broadly, focus more narrowly on the agree/disagree response since they will do that for homework. Our goal here is not to show students that these types of responses exist simply as responses devoid of writing situations. You should ask students when/why they would choose to write a given response and/or provide examples of this. You can point out that they will practice all three ways of responding through upcoming essays. For now, it's only important that they understand the differences between each type. Also, let them know that a combination of responses is possible for Portfolio 1. If they choose a combination, they simply need to be sure that their response makes an overall, focused point. For the agree/disagree response, discuss what students feel the focus of the response will be (with what and to what extent they agree or disagree). Ask them when they've used this response (either in speech or writing) and ask them what made that response (or another agree/disagree response they've encountered) effective or not. |
Sample Transition to Next Activity Your homework for tonight will be try out your agree/disagree skills. Before we talk more about the homework, though, by now you should be receiving the New York Times. Your homework for tonight is to read an article that was published in the New York Times, so I want to talk a bit about how the paper is laid out and how we're going to be using it for class purposes. |
Introduce the New York Times (5-7 minutes) |
Discuss the NYTStudents should be receiving the New York Times by today. You can have them bring it to class starting today or next session. Tell students that they will be responding to current debatable issues in their writing. Explain that the reading of a national newspaper is one way to begin to understand not only current events and the discourse around publicly debated issues, but also the trends and cultural contexts that these issues are part of. Indicate that reading of the Times should begin immediately. Quickly show them the summary on page 2 of the Times and indicate that a quick skim of the summary is like reading a menu at the restaurant or like viewing the directory at the mall. The summary provides a quick overview, preview, or survey of the material in the entire newspaper and can quickly direct one's reading for the day. Reassure them that most people do NOT read the entire newspaper cover to cover but that quick skimming, scanning, and previewing can be applied to the paper right away. Introduce the layout of the newspaper page (backwards 6) and the story structure (inverted triangle/pyramid) essential story components—the 5 W’s—funneling down to the detailed information so that the story can be cut where space demands.) Students should be familiar with these features of the newspaper after reading the assigned pages in the PHG. Have everyone survey the paper for something of interest (articles, ads, anything). Review the special features of each day. Point out the editorial and Op-Ed pages and the Letters to the Editor. Explain the notion of the News Clip Journal and how we’ll collect a minimum of 10 articles on issues of interest, actually physically clipping and pasting or taping < them to notebook paper, culminating in a topic proposal at the start of Portfolio 2, which comes in Week 5. They will submit their clippings as homework at< the start of Portfolio 2. They should aim to collect an article a day. Point out that they will need a minimum of 10 articles and a minimum of 3 issues of interest as suggested by the newspaper by the third week of September or start of Portfolio 2. You can have students bring their NYT to class every day, and if there’s time before class, read a section they haven’t gotten to yet. You can also arrange to set aside 5 minutes at the start of each day for students talk about and share what they're reading with you and the rest of the class. |