Day 17 (Tuesday, October 20th)
Lesson Objectives
Students will
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:
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 as you draft the rest of your explanation.
WTL (10-15 minutes) Have students reflect on their current purpose and objectives.
Your Topic: State your Topic in a word, phrase or sentence.
Your Issue: State your Issue in a word, phrase or sentence.
Inquiry Question: State your inquiry question in a sentence.
Step One: You might be used to writing in a situation where it seems your feelings about your topic don't matter or are not relevant, but exploring those feelings can help you find out more about your issue. Exploring emotions related to an issue can also uncover the aspect of the topic that interests you most.
Write about the feelings you associate with the issue-anger, pride, sadness, fear, accomplishment, etc.-and what about the topic makes you feel that way?
Step Two: As you become more knowledgeable about the conversation surrounding your issue, what is emerging about your issue that you are sure is true? What kinds of things do you still need to know?
Make two columns, one where you list facts you know and one where you list things you would still like to find out about?
Step Three: Not only do you want to explore your own opinions about an issue, but you also should be collecting as many other opinions as possible. Doing so will give you a better sense of what people are saying about the topic and may help you find a direction for a future paper. Since you will eventually need to argue about your issue, you have to know the opinions of others to be able to incorporate or refute them. How are you going about incorporating multiple stakeholder perspectives into your annotations? Make a list of your opinions as well as other opinions you have heard about your issue.
Step Four: Knowing where you can find information about your issue can lead you to different perspectives on it. By talking to people and researching in the library and on the Internet, you can find out more about the issue. Thinking about what sources might be useful can give you various ways to approach your issue. List what sources might provide information about your topic which you haven’t looked into yet.
Step Five: Even though the annotated bibliography assignment ends with six, thorough, thoughtful, and pertinent annotations, the research phase of this course is only beginning. As we move toward your academic argument paper, you will need to refine your research around a specific thesis. If you had to make an argument within your issue right now, could you present a possible thesis statement? Granted this will most likely change, but a tentative thesis can provide insight into where you currently stand on the issue.
Groups merge annotations into topic documents (25-30 minutes)
Have students take time in class today to read each other’s annotations and come up with a plan for merging them and posting the combined document on their writing studio group page.
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
