Class Plan -- Day 11

Return to Unit One:TR

• Finished Summary/Responses
• Broad written synthesis from last time.

Goals:

• To help students begin to narrow their Inquiry issues to the ones they'll actually focus on in their essays.

Assignment:

• Do a new synthesis grid based on the focus you developed in class today. Then, do a one-page or so write-up of your own point-of-view on that same issue.
• Have your focus, your initial ideas about how both your own views and those of three of the authors we've read connect to that focus, and any questions about the assignment ready to bring to your conference appointment.

Setup Needs:

• Daily prompt.
• New synth. grids to hand out.
• Conference sign-up sheet.
• NOTE: Be ready to schedule conferences for your students this week so you can check up with your students on the focus of their Inquiry Essays. When you make your conference sign-up sheet, be sure not to schedule more than one conference every 20 minutes--and write in some breaks for yourself!

Sequence:

• Start with the following Daily prompt: (5 min)

Your main task for today is to take the broad synthesis you've already written  

and use it as a starting point to find a focus for your own Inquiry Essay.      

Start by thinking about the following:                                          

1.  First, paraphrase the theme you're most interested in writing about for     

your Inquiry Essay.                                                             

2.  Second, spend a few minutes writing about why you're interested in writing  

about that theme.  What makes that theme interesting or important to you?       

• When you bring your class together, be sure to announce the upcoming conferences and send around a conference sign-up sheet. Then, put a quick chart on the board that looks like this:

Theme                                   Why?                                     



(themes students chose to write about)  (why they're interested in that theme)   

• Get a few student responses to this from the Daily and write them down in the chart. Generally, the material in the "why" column will turn out to be personal reasons--aspects of the students' lives that are affected by that theme. Use these ideas to show your students how they can narrow their own foci by adding a personal connection to the broad theme, and then focusing on that connection. For instance, if a student wants to deal with the relationship between language and power, and his/her reason is that she's noticed this relationship in her classes, you can suggest that she focus on the relationship between language and power specifically in terms of power dynamics in college classrooms, etc.
• Another method you can have your students use to find a focus is to flag back to the word lists they generated at the beginning of the Summary/Response sequence. Have them look back at those lists and apply them to the syntheses they wrote for homework. Are there any words on the list that connect with the synthesis in some way? For instance, if a student wrote a broad synthesis on the "language and community" theme, and one of the words on his is "family," you can suggest that he focus his essay language and community specifically as it relates to interactions within a family--even his own family.
• Be sure to give your students lots of examples of potential connections. (10-15 min. to here).
• When you're done with the above discussion, take one of the potential connections you generated and, in a full-class discussion, do a sample synthesis grid on the board which shows how at least three of the in-class authors approach it. (If your class moves slowly as a large group, you can break this into a small-group activity.)
• Finally, spend the remaining time doing one of two things:
• Option 1: If you feel your students just need to get going and practice looking for foci of their own, actually ask your class about the steps they need to take to get from where they are now to an actual draft of the Inquiry Essay (things like solidifying the focus, looking back at the articles, outlining, etc.) Have them write down the list you generate on the board, and simply say something like "Well, you know what you need to do--go for it!" Give the assignment and let them spend the rest of the class working.
• Option 2: If you feel that your students need more explanation or structured practice, end the class with an activity geared toward helping them find foci for their Inquiry Essays. It can be something as simple as a q/a session or some structured practice. Or, you can structure it as groupwork in which students share their potential ideas and help each other while you circulate with help and encouragement. Give the assignment at the end of class.