Return to Unit Three:MWF

Class Plan -- Unit Three, Day 30

• Generate possible issues for research.
• Students make a decision about which issue most interests them.

Reading - PHG, research section.

Research - Begin researching the issue you chose today (doing library and internet searches), and decide whether or not you want to stick with that issue as your research topic. IF IT'S POSSIBLE IN YOUR CLASSROOM, YOU MIGHT HAVE YOUR STUDENTS ARRANGE THEIR DESKS IN A CIRCLE TODAY, SO THAT THEY DON'T HAVE TO GO TO THE FRONT OF THE ROOM TO DO THEIR REPORTS.

Activities:

Daily - In the article you found for today, what is the specific issue that is being discussed? Skim the article again quickly and see if you can find the claim (the thesis; the most clear articulation of the author's position). When you find it, underline it.

Individual Reports - Before you have students talk about the articles they found for today, be sure to remind them that they only need to give a brief (2-minutes or so) report. This would also be a good opportunity to ask one of your students to act as "scribe" and record all of the different issues that come up in the reports. Also tell students that they should pay attention and take notes on anything that interests them, since they will be asked to choose a possible research topic at the end of these reports. Finally, encourage them to ask questions of one another.

Ask your students to report the following information:

• Title and author of the article
• Specific issue the article is concerned with
• Search term(s) you used in order to find this article
• The author's claim or thesis, which articulates his or her position on the issue (what you underlined in your daily)
• Other issues you ran into as you were doing your research
• Reason why you found this particular issue more interesting than the others

Review list of issues on the board - Ask students if there are any other relevant issues they ran into in their research that are not included on the board. [IT MIGHT BE A GOOD IDEA FOR YOU TO COME TO CLASS WITH A LIST OF POSSIBLE ISSUES YOU HAVE THOUGHT OF, SO THAT YOU CAN FILL IN THE BLANKS AND PROVIDE STUDENTS WITH OTHER OPTIONS THEY HAVEN'T COVERED.] Discuss the list of issues on the board. Which ones seem most "researchable"? In other words, for which issues/topics are there likely to be a good number of articles written? Which ones (if any) seem like they might not be very debatable or might not lend themselves to argument/research very well? At the end of this discussion, ask students to take a couple of minutes to make a tentative decision about what issue they would like to research, then write this down on a piece of paper and hand it in to you. Explain that you are having them make this choice so that you can put them into research groups with people who will be working on the same (or similar) issue, but that they can still change their minds about their topics in the coming week.

Collect articles - Ask students to hand in their articles. Ask them to make sure they have written all of the important bibliographic information about where the article came from on the front. Then ask them to write their names on their articles and to pass them up. Tell them that you will be putting this set of articles on reserve right after class. Explain to them how they use the reserve desk at the library, and tell them that this would be an excellent way to get started on their research, particularly if any of the reports given today on their issue interested them.