Home Teaching Resources Composition Archive CO150 2009-2010 Syllabus Friday, October 16

Friday, October 16

Day 23 (Friday, October 16th)

Lesson Objectives

Students will

• work collaboratively to evaluate research
• consult with their instructor about their work-in-progress on the inquiry/research project,
• explore strategies for writing the Inquiry Essay.

Activities

Attendance and introduction (2-3 minutes)

Interview activity (25-30 Minutes)

In your groups share your initial opinions through the following interview activity:

Inquiry Interview

Goals: Your aim here is to learn about your own and your group members’ frames of reference regarding your topic and issue.

Interview:
Take turns interviewing each other.  Have one person ask the questions, one person answer the questions and one person act as a scribe, writing down the answers. The scribe will return the generated answers to the interviewee. You may ask any of the following questions and any others that you think of.

Questions:

• What interests you about this question?
• How much do you know about this topic?
• Do you think you chose your question randomly, or is there something about who you are that led you to your question?
• How do you see your question fitting with the group’s topic?
• How do you answer your inquiry question right now?
• Where do you think your views on this subject come from?
• Where did you grow up?  When did you grow up? How might this background affect how you think about your subject?
• What do your family and friends think about this subject?  Do their opinions influence you at all?
• How do you identify yourself politically?  How do your political leanings affect how you view your subject?
• What sorts of values do you hold that might influence your opinions on this subject?
• What else about you might influence what you think?

Group Conferences (25-30 minutes)

Determine which groups you need to meet with today.  Explain that while the groups work on their interviews you will be meeting with the groups you didn’t meet with last time. As students work, you can conference with groups (aim to conference with about half of the groups today).  Aim to help them assess their inquiry: are they asking the right questions? Are they finding relevant, reliable sources?  Are they finding a range of perspectives on the subject?  Is anyone behind (if so, how can you and the group help the person catch up?)  Are there group dynamic problems that you can ease?  Also, be sure you have communicated that you understand where each individual student is with his/her research. This should help motivate anyone who is lagging behind, and it should ease any concerns that the best-prepared students may have.

Discuss Inquiry Essay strategies (10-12 minutes)                              

Take time to revisit the assignment sheet and to reiterate the purpose, audience and strategies for the Inquiry Essay. 

Work on drafting Inquiry Essays

You can begin drafting your essay even if your research is not 100% complete.  Reread the assignment sheet to remind yourselves of the explanation’s purpose and audience.  Begin drafting.  Be sure to hold onto what you write today so that you can use it on Thursday as you draft the rest of your explanation.

Conclude class and assign homework (3-5 minutes)

Wrap up class as usual, emphasizing the importance of sharing research so that a) they can enhance their understanding of the topic, including other issues within the topic, b) they can build the writing community by sharing research strategies and ideas, and c) the can comment on other perspectives in their inquiry essays.  Allow groups a few minutes to arrange a meeting outside class if necessary to combine and post their merged annotated bibliographies.

Homework

Finish reading your sources, writing and revising annotated bibliography entries.  Bring all of your sources and all of your bibliography entries to class next time.