Day 10 (Thursday, Sept. 24th)
Lesson Objectives
Students will
Prep
You will be discussing videos and blogs that you don’t have immediate access to, so it is necessary for you to have very clear notes so that you can help students keep the ideas straight. It’s also a good idea to review all of the materials students may use for Assignment 2 since you will be discussing topics and issues in these texts.
Materials
Lead-in
Remind students that the purpose of Assignment 2 is to make connections between texts and to comment on specific ideas and their implications. Now we have all the resources (articles, films, logistics, etc…) we need to write the blogs for assignment 2, so today we’ll focus on specific topics and issues students may want to discuss in their blog.
Activities
Attendance and introduction (2-3 minutes)
Begin class by letting students know they have all the resources needed to complete assignment 2.
Discussion of Bjorn Lomborg Talk (8-10 Minutes)
What topic does Lomborg cover in his talk and where have we seen this topic in other texts?
What is Lomborg’s frame of reference?
What issues does Lomborg discuss within the topic?
How is his discussion of the issue similar or different than what we’ve read, heard or seen in other texts?
What gaps in our inquiry does Lomborg fill?
WTL (8-10 Minutes)
We’ve now critically examined three blogs. Using your blog analysis you did for homework, consider the gristmill log. What did you think was effective about this blog? What was ineffective? What about this blog would you use in your own blog? What wouldn’t you use? Which of the blogs do you prefer and why? Remember your audience for assignment 2. How will your blogging choices keep their needs in mind?
You posted a comment on the treehugger blog. How was this blogging experience for you? How can posting a comment help you with your own blog post? How did posting a comment change how you think about your own writing?
Discussion of the Gristmill blog (8-10 Minutes)
General blog questions:
1. How is a blog different than a newspaper, or other genres?
2. What are some advantages of blogs, compared to other genres?
3. What are some disadvantages of blogs, compared to other genres?
4. Do you use or frequent blogs in your daily lives?
5. Do you think blogging is becoming an important means for discourse in our lives?
Gristmill blog questions:
1. What is the purpose of this blog?
2. Who are the readers for this blog?
3. Do you think that this blog effectively meets the needs of the intended audience? Provide some reasons and examples.
4. Consider the blogs organization. Was it easy to navigate? Enjoyable? Annoying? Explain.
5. Consider the reader comments to the blog post. What are some things you noticed? Is there a common “comment rhetoric”? Did you observe any undesirable comment behavior?
Discuss blogging experience (5-10 Minutes)
Questions about posting comments on the Treehugger blog:
Group WTL (15-20 Minutes)
Return to the Issue Matrix we used while discussing The 11th Hour. Theassignment asks for a synthesis between ideas from the articles and the films. It’s time students begin making the connections they’ll wish to discuss in their blog. This time, have students work in groups to create the topics & issues that they wish to discuss. Here are a few examples to get the class started.
Topics & Issues: |
Article/Film: How is the issue discussed |
Topic: Environment and ecoliteracy |
11th Hour: |
Topic: Economy and corporations |
11th Hour: |
Consumers and media |
11th Hour: |
Students’ turn |
|
Student Freewrite (you determine the time)
Allow some time after today’s activities to give students a chance to work on their own blog entries. Remind students of the assignment expectations and strategies and offer a few ways for them to approach this writing time.
Approach 1: Freewrite. Begin writing down all of the ideas you might like to discuss in your blog. Don’t worry about right or wrong. Juts write! You can go over what you wrote later and pick out any good ideas to revise into your draft.
Approach 2: Outline. Consider all of the parts that make up this assignment, such as an introduction, conclusion, main point for discussion, supporting points for discussion, etc., and begin to fill in the scaffolding of your draft.
Review the grading rubric (if time) and conclude class
To end class today, ask students to reread the assignment sheet and the grading rubric and to ask you any questions they have. If there isn’t time, you could always add this to the homework. Be sure students know that Tuesday is a workshop day—you might refer them to your policy for attending workshops on your syllabus.
Assign homework for Tuesday (1-3 minutes)
Connection to Next Class
Today’s class helped students organize their ideas and “pre-write.” They should be ready to write a draft for workshop next week.
