Class Plan -- Unit Two, Day 19

Class Plan -- Unit Two, Day 19

Goals

Discuss conclusions drawn from student analyses.
Practice providing evidence to support conclusions.
Compare conclusions with those of other academic text analysis.
Discuss fourth article from the course packet.
Review strategies for writing the Text Analysis Report.
Generate criteria for this assignment, and examine sample essay.

Assignment for Day 27
Reading - [Assign the fourth article from your course packet, the one that students will be using as the primary focus for their Text Analysis Reports.] WritingText analysis of this article, using handout. 3-4 page draft of Text Analysis Report for Tuesday's take-home workshop.

Activities

Conclusions From Students' Analyses - You might begin by recalling student conclusions from last class (based on context), but expand the discussion to include the conclusions students arrived at in analysis of the article itself. They are likely to have had some trouble with their first attempt at text analysis on their own. You will want to field questions that they had in conducting their analyses (questions about the article, about the text analysis handout, etc.). Try to respond to any concerns, frustrations, or confusion that students are having. [Again, when having this type of large group "progress report" type discussion, it is often a good idea to get students to respond to one another's questions, as they have all been working on the same assignment and are likely to have encountered many of the same problems. Students seem to enjoy giving advice to their peers in this way as well.] However, the main purposes of this discussion are 1) pushing students to yield the kind of conclusions you will be expecting in their papers. [It is best to come into class having done the analysis yourself, with a clear idea of the kinds of conclusions that can be made about this particular text. That way, you can challenge students to complicate and expand their (typically) general or vague conclusions.] and 2) encouraging them to demonstrate how they arrived at their conclusions by offering examples/evidence from their analysis. [Therefore, you will want to be constantly prompting them to give specific examples of their observations.] This discussion will also be helping them to write their Text Analysis Reports since it works BACKWARDS from their conclusions (the same way that their essays will focus on conclusions, with specific examples from the analysis used as support).

Comparison of Texts From Different Disciplines.Once you have established some conclusions for this text analysis, compare it with those you arrived at in the analysis done as a group (last class). Try to turn this into a comparison not only of the texts themselves, but of the different academic disciplines which yielded these texts. [Why do these two academic texts look at the same general topic so differently (or similarly, as the case may be)? What do your conclusions in the analyses of these texts tell you about what each of these academic disciplines value and assume (in relation to one another)?]

Discussion of fourth article from the course packet. Briefly check general comprehension of this article. As a class, establish the text's purpose, topic, and position WITHOUT getting into the complexities of analysis which you hope students will do on their own.

Daily: Review Assignment Sheet for Assignment Criteria and Strategies.- Have students take out their assignment sheet, re-read it silently, then list a few ideas in response to a prompt like the following: What would a really effective Text Analysis Report look like? What elements would it include? What strategies would it use? [Go on to discuss student responses, using them to generate a group of criteria that the class can use in examining the sample essay.] GENERATING CRITERIA IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THIS ACTIVITY. IF YOU FIND THAT YOU DON'T HAVE TIME TO GO OVER THE SAMPLE ESSAY, YOU CAN SIMPLY HAND IT OUT TO STUDENTS AS A RESOURCE IN WRITING THEIR OWN ESSAYS. OR PERHAPS YOU COULD HAVE THEM READ UTM THEN DISCUSS IT BRIEFLY IN THE NEXT CLASS.

Examine Sample Text Analysis Report.Hand out the sample essay, and have students read it silently. Ask them to note effective and ineffective elements of the essay as they read. Then discuss their observations as a large group.

In any remaining time, ask students to discuss particular strategies that would be helpful in writing this Text Analysis Report, and add in any that you yourself have thought of after having responded to their first attempts at analysis.

Collect students' text analyses (on Article 3)..