Week 7: Monday, October 6th - Friday, October 10th

Week 8:  Overview

Weekly Notes and Advice

This week may be challenging while you are introducing the type of analysis we are asking students to do.  Be sure to allow your class enough time to grasp analysis and, as with the previous weeks, connect the activities you do in class tightly to students' own writing (CSOW).

Also note that the English Department's Reading Days are scheduled for this Thursday and Friday (October 14-15).  You can use these days as outside of class time to meet with students, help them research in the library, or you may hold class for your students and wait until next week to give them a research day, etc.  Try to avoid canceling one class for both weeks, however.

 

Connection to Course Goals
Collecting sources for the Annotated Bibliography will help students learn about the recent conversation surrounding their issue. Students' previous experience with research may have involved collecting and simply regurgitating information on a topic. Here, we are asking them to think critically about a) their role as researchers and b) the choices they make as writers, by evaluating their sources for a specified purpose. We hope that this approach gives them a better "real world" sense of how and why writers research and respond to public issues.

 

Goals for this Week

  • Read students' Working Bibliographies or first drafts of Part 3 of Portfolio 2 (the Annotated Bibliography) that they have posted to the Writing Studio page.  Their initial drafts should include approximately a half dozen sources by the start of this week.
Activity Ideas:  Working Bibliography Feedback
  • Continue to discuss the evaluation of sources.  Pick up where you may have left off last week (see Activity Ideas for Week 7).
  
  • Discuss their use of the Working Bibliography tool in the CO150 Room in the Writing Studio to create the Annotated Bibliography if you haven't already (see Activity Ideas for Week 7).
  
  • Continue to discuss issues in the news (NYT) that represent "clashes of values and beliefs."
  
  • Introduce analysis.
 Activity Ideas:  Introducing Analysis
  • Introduce Personal Position Analysis.
 Activity Ideas:  Personal Position Analysis
  • Using the Position Analysis for a Single Source template developed last week, continue to define distinct positions by applying the Personal Position Analysis to research sources. Focus on the contexts that contribute to the formation of positions and shared perspectives.
Activity Ideas:  Applying the Personal Position Analysis
  • Assign the completion of the Annotated Bibliography by end of this week or the start of next week.
  
  • Continue to collect/discuss news clips of issues in the contact zones.
  

 

Required Readings and Assignments

Assign the following to students this week:

  • Continue reading sources on your issue
  • Complete the Personal Position Analysis
  • Plan for the completion of your final Annotated Bibliography and post it to the Working Bibliography Tool in the Writing Studio
  • Continue to collect news clippings from the NYT that represent differing values, beliefs, etc. on the same issue

 

Additional Teaching Resources

CSU's guide Strategies for Teaching Internet Research effectively covers tips for students as well as teaching ideas and suggestions for helping students choose credible and effective sites of information, employ search engines, and avoide the over-use of Internet sources at the expense of what many "hard" sources have to offer.

Morgan Library also offers a guide on How to Do Research at CSU and, while it is not necessarily geared toward the teaching of research, can be a very helpful place to generate ideas for talking about research in the classroom.  Short exercises or lessons could be derived from this guide, or it could be offered to students as a resource during their research.