Return to Unit Two:TR

Class Plan -- Unit Two, Day 15

• Understanding perspectives and their role in research
• Form issue groups
• Introduce research process
• Give Group Annotated Bibliography & Analysis of Perspectives assignment

Activities:
Daily - Have students write about their opinion on a controversial issue. Choose something current and relevant that everyone is likely to have an opinion about and some people will definitely have strong feelings about.

Debate controversial issue - Referring to the Daily, have students debate the issue. Keep track of the various perspectives and positions addressed on the board as they debate. Allow the debate to go on long enough to get many ideas expressed, but set a clear time limit. The debate itself is not the point.

When you end the debate, show students the variety of perspectives represented by the class. Point out the different positions people were taking and how they aligned with the perspectives.

Students are likely to have a hard time understanding the difference between a perspective and a position. You will need to deal with that eventually, but for today's lesson, that is not your goal. What you want to show them is that there are always a variety of perspectives on any debatable issue. One of the goals of academic argument and research is to familiarize yourself with the variety of perspectives, to understand them all, not just one's own, and to see what perspective our own position is aligned with.

This would be a good time to show your annotated bibliography for your example topic and explain the perspectives it represents.

You will want to connect this to the research process. The main goal of their research needs to be gathering sources representing a range of perspectives. They can expect to read widely to learn what the perspectives are.

Discuss research - Ask students what steps they take in doing research. Talk about their past experience, if any, with Morgan Library. Give a basic overview of library resources, focusing particularly on using indexes (SAGE, periodical indexes, bound indexes, CD-ROM), the Library of Congress Subject Headings, and the library in general. The focus of your discussion is getting students able to go the library and get a periodical article. You can talk about other sources at other times.

Hand out source sheets and the search log and quickly show students how to use them. (You can review with those who don't catch on on Tues.)

Give students their issue group assignments - Have an overhead transparency prepared so this can be done quickly. Have students meet with the group, at least long enough to say "hi." They can go to the library together for this assignment, but they don't have to.