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Unit One, Day 6 - Thursday, September 7

What they'll do today in class:

Connection to course goals: Practicing summary reinforces the skills they'll need to meet the context for Essay 2. The different types of response and the analysis of Molloy provides an opportunity to practice the type of thinking and critical reading they'll need to meet the context for unit 2. The pre-writing activity emphasizes again the need to meet the context, but moves them into how they can make choices within the expectations of the context - there are different ways to set-up the criteria and still meet the context.

INTRODUCTION: Devise a brief introduction that explains what they'll be doing today in class and why.

  1. Review Academic summary by looking at their homework assignments.
  2. Compile on the board a list of what should be included in an academic summary of Molloy.

    MAIN POINTS OF MOLLOY ESSAY:

    Make sure they're on track with the main ideas here and not summarizing too many or too much detail about his experiments. (10-15 minutes)

    Transition: Now that we've effectively summarized Molloy, let's move to the next step in our evaluating process and make judgements about how well this essay would meet our criteria for the audience. To help with that evaluation, let's first look at the different types of response from the PHG and how the might be used to fulfill the context for Essay 2

  3. Introduce the types of response - list on the board
  4. WTL: How might each of these fit with the criteria we came up with on Tuesday?
  5. In short, try to show how the context for Essay 2 certainly requires some sort of analysis, but the other types of response can also be incorporated as well. For example, they might be able to use an agree/disagree response to show how an essay elicits an energetic response from a reader. Perhaps an essay is so controversial that it would make readers especially emotional about the issue, and thus they would want to talk about the essay. Thus, the agree/disagree response could show how the essay would make an effective discussion generator, which could be a goal of the sociology professor. (10 min)

    Transition: Now let's apply one of these types of responses to the Molloy essay to practice evaluating.

  6. Analyzing Molloy's evidence.
  7. Okay, now let's evaluate Molloy's evidence.
  8. Discuss group findings.
  9. Pre-Writing Activity - Finding and narrowing their criteria. We've talked a lot about the list of criteria we generated a few days ago, and have used it in class, but in writing your essay one of your tasks will be "personalizing" that list to fit your purpose for the essay. That is, it would be too much to try to evaluate an essay in terms of all of the possible criterion we've generated, so based on which essay you choose and how you want the professor to view that essay you'll have to decide which of those criterion are the most important and relevant to your purpose. To that end, let's practice narrowing that criteria using the essays we've read so far.
  10. If time, have them discuss their narrowed criteria.
  11. Conclusion: Summarize, or perhaps ask a few students to summarize, the main concepts from today's class. What did they learn? How does it relate to their assignment?

Assignment:

Read:

RC, Adams, "The Dilbert Principle" 381-385

Write:

A paragraph summary and one page response focusing on the style or organization of Adams' essay