Day 16 (Wednesday, September 30th)
Lesson Objectives
Students will reflect on composing the blog and their inquiry so far
Prep
For this class you’ll want to form the groups you will use for responding to each other’s blogs. Each student will respond to three blogs. Groups can be created randomly, say by using the alphabet, or more thoughtfully. You are beginning to know your students intimately and you may want to assess them and put them in groups accordingly, based on emerging strengths and areas needing improvement.
Activities
Attendance and introduction (2-3 minutes)
Take attendance and introduce class as usual.
Assign a postscript and collect student work (6-8 minutes)
Put postscript questions on the overhead and instruct students to answer them, then turn them in with the other things that are due today. Here are some sample postscript prompts:
Remind students that as you grade you’ll use the grading criteria that are listed on the assignment sheet. You might give them an idea of when they can expect the assignment back.
Share Blogs (30-35 minutes)
In the groups your created, have students exchange copies of their final blog drafts. Remind students of their purpose in this activity, that they are not workshopping but critically reading the blog with the intention of responding—the last aspect of Assignment 2. Have student s read the three blogs twice, once initially with their pens down, before rereading critically and actively, marking areas of question, where they want to respond, etc. When students finish reading each blog, have them outline or compose their responses, making notes to themselves on texts they want to revisit for accuracy and clarity, as well as research they may want to conduct to fill any gaps in their knowledge which would hinder a thoughtful response.
Transition from Phase 1 to Phase 2 (if time)
If students finish reading blogs early, you can have them begin composing their responses or take time to reflect on where you’ve been and discuss how it relates to where you’re going. Bring back the writing as a conversation idea (you likely have an overhead of this from week 
Ask students to describe how the writers we’ve read so far find answers to questions about climate change. Some of this will be review from Day 7. Your list might include things such as: They get involved with something they care about; they talk to other people; they think about the questions raised by their research; they read books, popular magazine articles, scholarly articles, newspaper articles, etc.
Now, we’re moving to the second stage of the conversation model: the stage during which we form our own opinions and find ways to support our ideas to prepare for "entering the conversation" by writing an academic argument. We’ll be working in small groups to research answers to some of the questions we formulated during Phase 1.
We can take direction from the writers we’ve been talking about as we go forward with these inquiries: We should inquire into something we care about, we should remain as open-minded as possible, and we should aim to become as informed as possible as we try to find answers to questions. Also, we need to allow ourselves to leave some questions unanswered.
After the research, each student will write an academic argument based on his/her own inquiry or on another group’s inquiry.
Homework for Friday
