DWRL Lesson Plans - Classroom Discussion

This assignment was designed to get students to practice their close reading skills in a short, condensed format of a blog post. Students sign up to blog for a given class day, chosing a short passage from the assigned reading for that day. They blog 200-300 words before midnight the night before class, using textual support and images to make a claim about the passage they chose. They present this post in class the next day.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

I post the blogging instructions on my website at the beginning of the semester and keep them available for students to consult. There are short instructions containing basic information about the assignment and timeline on the course homepage and then more detailed instructions regarding what the post should entail when students click the link for "Blogging Instructions."

Instructions For Students:

Steps for Completing a Blog Assignment:

1) Blog (200-300 words) by 12:00 noon the day before a presentation. For detailed instructions on what to write see Blogging Instructions.

2) Style your blogpost with appropriate images, formatting and short quotations.

3) Cite the passage you are analyzing (no longer than a short paragraph) at the bottom of your post on a separate line in MLA format. See the OWL at Purdue website to figure out how. Don't forget in-text citations which reference the page number after any quotes!

4) Present in class the day you signed up for (be ready to engage with comments on your post)

Blogging Instructions:

1) Choose a short section from the reading/film.

Choose a section that intrigues you. You may be drawn by the language of the passage, the events chronicled, the emotions that it evokes. You may be confused by its appearance in the text, or its placement. You may not understand it. You may be disgusted by it. Bored by it. Find it humorous. Any reason that you are drawn to a particular moment in a text may offer you access into the text. If you are dealing with a narrative, it could be a moment of high action, or a simple description/depiction of a scene or character. If you are dealing with criticism, it could be a crucial point in the argument or a short example. This passage should be no longer than a short paragraph of text.

2) Temporarily forget why you choose it.

Keep your theories in the back of your mind instead of the front while you go through the next two steps. Allow yourself to notice new, contradictory meanings, and to change your mind. Try to get out of your own way by reading against your biases (just noting what they are can be an excellent start...)

3) Make sure you understand the concrete, obvious action and meaning of the passage.

Always start with what you think is “obvious”! This is where all good readings begin — what is obvious to you is very often controversial to someone else. Look up all the words you don’t know. Unscramble difficult syntax. Decipher metaphors. Try writing a “plain prose translation.” Try writing a second, alternative version. Ask your roommate what s/he thinks. Call someone in the class and ask them the same thing.

4) Annotate your passage (i.e. Write all over it!). Note all strange or striking effects and attempt to trace their sources.

Write directly on the page OR type out the passage and comment on it (using Microsoft Word's comment function might be a good idea). First, just underline words that you notice. Read it several times, taking note of where your interest increases, what pleases, distracts, or bores you. Then try to figure out how the author creates these effects. Pay attention to metaphors, contradictions, strange word choices, particularly long or short sentences, alliteration, modes of address (“Gentleman of the jury!”), shifts in pace or diction, the point of view, punctuation and anything else that you think might help the author persuade you to feel the way you did. Make a long list of all this stuff — the longer the better.

5) Take stock of what you’ve found. (Step back #1)

Take a step back. How has your encounter with the text changed what you originally thought? How might you need to re-shape your thesis? Which discoveries seem particularly important to communicate to your reader? How does it all “add up”?

6) Put what you’ve found back into context. (Step back #2, #3)

Now step back even further. Think about how what you’ve found is connected to the rest of the text. Is it a break in the action? A climax? A resolution? Do the images in the passage illuminate or refer back to something that has happened previously, or foreshadow a later event? How is what you’ve found important to our understanding of the characters? Of the plot? Of the main issues the author raises? Can you think of any other moments in the text like this one? Can you make any comparisons? Is it radically different from the rest of the text? Can you contrast the effects?

7) Finally, write.

Write out a few short paragraphs which point out the 2-3 most exciting things this passage does, organizing them into your separate points. How do a series of words convey a certain meaning or feeling? How does a metaphor encourage the reader to make a comparison and why that comparison? Remember, the post should not only identify figures of speech (like a metaphor), grammatical constructions (like lots of gerunds) or other kinds of word choice, but point out a connection between the author's particular choice of words and the rest of the text--what does this passage accomplish that the rest of the text relies on, contradicts, elaborates upon? Remember to quote as you make your claims (those reading probably won't remember this particular passage, so you will have to give them examples of what you're talking about), but do not quote too heavily, as you want to prioritize your interpretation and your words. Quoting the most key words/phrases or maybe a sentence or two should be sufficient.

8) Develop a (new) thesis and write it out in one sentence.

After you have done your reading, recapitulate how what you’ve noticed about language and structure link to the larger themes of the text. This is where your argument should emerge. You want your argument to grow out of what you have noticed in the text rather than noticing in the text only the details that can prove an argument that you would like to make. This is absolutely crucial. If you force a text to fit your preconceived notions you will invariably leave out something crucial that destroys your argument. Even more important, you won’t learn anything new.

9) Re-situate your thesis toward the beginning of your post.

You may not realize what your thesis about a passage is until you finish writing your post, but be sure to re-organize so that your main claim about it appears first, and your detailed analysis follows as evidence of your claim. Your thesis should confidently state what this passage accomplishes and how. Feel free to use 'I' in your blogpost if you like, but remember, as long as you have evidence to back up your argument (quotations and your analysis of them), there is no need to cast your reading as subjective or "just an interpretation." Remember, good readers don't "read between the lines," they read all the lines!

**Assignment adapted from Alyssa Harad's close reading workshop materials. Significant amounts of her language structure have been retained.

Evaluation Suggestions:

I grade the posts with the following template. Students blog twice throughout the semester and the assignment comprises 25% of their final grade.

Blogpost:

Completed by noon /5

Thesis /5

Textual support /5

200-300 words /2

Visual presentation /2

Citation /2

In-Class Presentation

Completed on day scheduled /2

Oral presentation /2

Final Grade /25

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

Students are responding positively to the assignment and the skills it allows them to practice before writing a more formal paper. What I like about it is that it allows students who do not normally speak for extended periods in class to take the floor and have completed the prepwork beforehand.

In class, we pull up the post on the projector in class for their reference and the student takes the class through their post. Sometimes students print out the post for their reference as they present. Overall, students seem to like the opportunity to respond to each other's writing in class and it often launches a discussion about the text.

Course Type:

Literary Studies Course

Course Description:

E314J - Introductory Literary Studies Course - Gay and Lesbian Literature

In this course we will question whether we can indeed ascribe a “unity” to gay and lesbian culture or politics. Attending to a diverse array of moments in gay and lesbian history—moments of anger, sadness, triumph and hope—we will consider the how discourses of sexuality at a given time shape and inform the representation of same-sex desire in literature, film and other new media. The course will prepare students for the English major by familiarizing them with formal, historical, and cultural approaches to literature, as a well as by providing them with a sense of the history of sexuality, romantic love, and identity politics.

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Defamiliarized Keyboards and Embodied Writing

LeMieux — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 20:50:37 +0000

Author:

Steven J. LeMieux

Image Credit:

Screenshot from QWOP

Brief Assignment Overview:

This assignment is geared toward getting students to begin thinking, talking, and writing about how writing is a deeply embodied practice. I ask students to play two games (QWOP and GIRP) that reconfigure how we engage the keyboard as a material object.

Type of Assignment:

In-class Exercise

Assignment Length:

Partial Class Period

Single Class Period

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Accessibility

Open Access Software

Video Games

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

Reflection, Digital Literacy, Technology, Materiality

Media Requirements:

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Required Materials:

Computer-consoles for each student

QWOP

GIRP

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Early in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

In this assignment I ask students to play two games, QWOP and GIRP, both can be found at foddy.net. Both games demand that the player engage the standard computer keyboard in strange ways. In QWOP the player controls the calves and thighs of a runner with four keys (Q,W, O,P), and in GIRP the player scales a cliff by pressing and holding keys in a Twister-like fashion.

Before we begin playing games I like to engage the class in a brief discussion about the various experiences that they have had with different writing tools. You can ask them about the mechanical aspects of learning how to write—big red pencils and pencil grips, left and right handedness, print and cursive, timed writings, touch typing, etc. The goal here is to begin students thinking about writing as a physical, embodied practice.

Next, introduce students to QWOP. I like having them jump right in without any exterior explanation or videos of successful runs. The key with QWOP is making sure that student’s engage it as a serious experience. It is worth spending a decent amount of time actually paying the game (roughly 10 minutes)—the general impulse is to try it several times (less than a minute with the game) and give up. For this assignment to work you really want your students to struggle.

After the first few minutes you can encourage your students to think about how their legs work. Have them move around in class, get them thinking about their bodies (legs and fingers both). At this point I like to show videos of successful playthroughs (easily found on youtube). Have them play until you are satisfied with their effort.

Next, start up GIRP. It is less confusing that QWOP, and I have found that students take to it somewhat more readily, so an instructional video isn’t necessarily necessary. Have them play through GIRP in roughly the same manner that they went through QWOP (a serious engagement).

Once they have spent a fair amount of time thinking and playing and working with the games have your students immediately (prior to any organized discussion) write short reflections on their experiences with the games and writing as an embodied practice. Having them jump through these different keyboard uses and configurations quickly works well.

Once they have finished writing I like to give students the opportunity to discuss both games (and at this point it can be fun to have willing students show off their QWOP and GIRP skills for the class) and the relationship between the games and their fingers and the keyboard. Once both games have been discussed you can shift discussion back toward the more general topic of embodied writing that class began with. Ask your students to think specifically about how they have situated their writing practice in the past (where do they write? on what? when?). Guide them toward the notion that there is nothing natural about any of our writing practices and that any rhetorical situation also includes the various writing technologies we engage.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Be sure to play QWOP and GIRP with as much seriousness as you expect from your students before you begin the lesson.

Instructions For Students:

Since this is an in-class assignment you can follow the above description. Here are the key activities.

Discuss writing as a material, embodied practice
Play QWOP - Move, think about how your legs work
Play GIRP -Move, think both about the odd finger configurations the game demands and standard touch typing.
Write a short reflection about your experiences with both games and writing more broadly.
Discuss the games and the relationships we have with writing, our bodies, and writing tools.

Evaluation Suggestions:

I generally have students upload their short reflections to their course blogs.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

The key to this assignment is having students take the games seriously. It is incredibly easy to play for a minute than give up. You really need to work at getting your students engaged with the game (having them move and think about their bodies and the game and the keyboard works well). In general I have found that students readily engage in discussion about this topic—especially when it comes to relating how they learned to write. In the end it is worth remembering that the goal of the lesson is to begin thinking about writing differently rather than to beat QWOP and GIRP.

Course Type:

Introductory Writing Course

Course Description:

This assignment works in both early, general rhetoric/composition courses and in rhetoric courses geared toward more specific topic (video games, digital media, technology).

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Collaborative Web Page Annotations With Diigo

Battistelli — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 16:29:21 +0000

Author:

Todd Battistelli

Image Credit:

Todd Battistelli

Brief Assignment Overview:

This lesson introduces students to a collaborative annotation tool to facilitate class discussions and to encourage active reading and research practices.

Type of Assignment:

Class Discussion

In-class Exercise

Assignment Length:

One-Two Class Periods

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Textual Analysis

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

Introduce students to a tool that enables organization and annotation of web pages. Encourage active reading and research practices. Support in-class group discussions with references to common reading.

Media Requirements:

Media Console/Projector

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Required Materials:

Diigo accounts for each student & Diigo toolbar add-on installed in Firefox.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Early in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

After introducing students to the concept of annotating their sources, the instructor describes Diigo. Diigo is an add-on for Firefox (a more limited add-on is available for Chrome, but the Firefox add-on is used for this activity). It allows for real-time collaborative annotation of text on web pages. Users may highlight text, add sticky-note annotations to specific highlights, or add floating notes to any web page. Diigo also provides a bookmarking & caching function to store pages on diigo.com servers to mitigate against digital impermanence. Teachers may sign up for an educator account which provides access to group administration features useful for working with a group. Users within a group, for instance, can share annotations with each other without making them publicly available to all Diigo users.

As students are introduced to Diigo's functions, they should sign up for an account on the website. Teachers choosing to work with a Diigo group can add students to the group, or users can make their annotations public to share with the group.

Once set up, students work in pairs to annotate a page selected by the instructor responding to questions relevant to the goals of the course (in this case evaluating how accurately discussants in a discussion thread summarized each other). Students highlight text & add sticky notes with their responses. After students are done, the class reviews the annotations as a group.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Instructor should become familiar with Diigo & apply for educator-level account. Set up student accounts (have students sign up for accounts in class). Locate & bookmark a webpage to use for the activity.

Instructions For Students:

Annotate the website according to the prompts assigned to your group. Highlight the relevant text. Hover your cursor over the text to attach a note to the highlighted text. Review the annotations made by other groups by refreshing the page & checking the Diigo side-bar (displayed by clicking on the icon left of the "Diigo" button in the toolbar.

Evaluation Suggestions:

Instructors can assess this activity according to the annotations students produce and how well those annotations can be tied into the class discussion as well as used in later work during the semester. The annotations should provide a means to record and index ideas and arguments often lost in day-to-day discussions.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

Students should be required to use the Firefox add-on, as the Chrome version only provides basic annotation features. Firefox provides access to a sidebar that provides an overview of a page's annotations. Before students begin group work, the instructor should run everyone through a brief training exercise to familiarize students with the basic operations of the toolbar.

Course Type:

Advanced Writing Course

Course Description:

RHE 330E - Advanced Rhetorical Theory and Analysis - Topic: Audience & Argumentation. Students study variety of rhetorical theory & investigate questions of how rhetor and audience infuence each other and the arguments produced in any persuasive situation. Students apply theoretical models to analysis and evaluation of how sources interact in argumentation.

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Video Conferencing in the Classroom

mcginnis — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 18:00:35 +0000

Author:

Eileen McGinnis

Image Credit:

Hardcover edition of Lehrer, Proust Was a Neuroscientist

Brief Assignment Overview:

In this classroom activity, a scholar/expert whose work is on your syllabus visits the classroom via Skype or another conferencing tool. The visit doesn’t require much of a time commitment or advance preparation on the part of your invitee, but it has a big payoff in terms of bringing students in conversation with a noted off-campus scholar or expert.

Type of Assignment:

In-class Exercise

Assignment Length:

One-Two Class Periods

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Audience

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Cultural Context

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Invention

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Collaboration

Presentations

Social Media

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

To connect our classroom discussions with what's going on outside the classroom.

To inspire students through a conversation with an outside expert (in our case, the science writer Jonah Lehrer).

Media Requirements:

Media Console/Projector

Required Materials:

Skype (available on DWRL computers) or another video-conferencing tool

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Mid-Semester

Late in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

In this classroom activity, a scholar/expert whose work is on your syllabus visits the classroom via Skype or another conferencing tool. The activity follows an in-class discussion about the scholar's work, allowing students to engage with the reading and its author in a different way. Asking students to prepare questions in advance allows for a more focused and lively discussion.

Although I used this activity in a literature course, it would work well in a rhetoric course, perhaps even a 306 or 309S/K, where students might interact with a stakeholder in a controversy being discussed that semester.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

1. Contact the scholar as far in advance as possible about the visit to your class. Be flexible about the date of the visit.

2. As the date approaches, let the scholar know in advance which book excerpts/articles you have assigned in class, so that he or she is on the same page. Also, use this opportunity to arrange logistical details and maybe even to do a test conference on a DWRL computer.

3. For the class period before the speaker's visit, have each student submit a question for the visitor (ideally, this class would also be used to discuss the scholar's work, so that you the visit is an extension of that converstaion). I had students use the Drupal forum on our course website to post their question; they had about 10 minutes at the end of class to formulate a query.

4. On the day of class, log onto skype using the teacher computer. As per the previous arrangement, have the visitor call in, or call him/her when you are ready. Feel free to mediate the discussion using the questions submitted in Step Three. Unless the speaker's time is limited, be prepared to spend the full class period in conversation with the speaker.

Instructions For Students:

I did not give students a prompt for the activity, but I did give them advance notice about the speaker's attendance and an overview of how the class would be run that day.

Evaluation Suggestions:

This activity was not evaluated.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

The activity was a success in that our speaker (Jonah Lehrer) was quite engaging, and, based on our conversation during the next class, students enjoyed the visit. However, there were two main issues (possibly related) that you might consider when customizing the activity:

1. Student silence. My normally talkative class grew quiet when confronted with a disruption to our usual dynamic. The list of questions that I'd collected in advance were helpful in this regard, but you might consider other measures to get them going, like placing some students in charge of asking their peers' questions and interacting with the speaker.

2. Interactivity of speaker and students. In our set-up, the conferencing interface was projected on a large screen in the classroom, so that students could easily see the speaker. One drawback is that I had to be a liaison between the students and Lehrer; he could hear but not necessarily see all of them, as the computer’s video camera was not facing the class. This arrangement made true conversation/interaction difficult at times.

Alternatively: Jim Brown, who inspired this lesson, suggested gathering students around a single computer. This arrangement would allow students to communicate directly with the visitor (and vice versa), but might not be feasible if you have a class larger than 10 or 12 students.

Course Type:

Literary Studies Course

Course Description:

“We are made of art and science. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, but we are also just stuff.” –Jonah Lehrer, Proust Was a Neuroscientist

What does it mean to be human? Why do we behave the way we do? What’s the difference between life and non-life, organism and machine? Where are we (the human species, the planet Earth) headed next?

Acknowledging the obvious and meaningful differences in methods and outlook, one might argue that both writers and biologists travel similar terrain, presenting themselves as (often competing) authorities on the “big questions” about Life.

Instead of seeing literature and biology as necessarily antagonistic ways of looking at and understanding the world, in this course we will read literature about science and literary science writing for their complementary insights. What do literature and biology look like at their interface? How do the scientific paradigms of their day influence how writers grapple with questions of human experience, identity, and ethics? In turn, how do literary narratives about evolutionary biology or genetics shape the way we think about these disciplines, the way they’re understood by non-scientists?

No expertise in biology or in literary criticism will be presumed. The broad goals of this course will be to introduce students to the basic tools of literary analysis and to develop students’ own critical writing.

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Introducing Analysis with "Texts From Last Night"

Cate Blouke — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 15:17:55 +0000

Image Credit:

Screen shot of Texts From Last Night website

Brief Assignment Overview:

Using samples pulled from the popular website, Texts From Last Night, this exercise introduces students to textual analysis in a fun and (most likely) funny way. Students are asked how much and what kinds of information they can glean from a very small piece of text.

Type of Assignment:

Class Discussion

Assignment Length:

Partial Class Period

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Social Media

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

To introduce students to textual analysis - either close reading or rhetorical analysis - using a very small piece of text.

Media Requirements:

No Classroom Technology Required

Adaptable For Use Without Classroom Technology

Media Console/Projector

Required Materials:

No hardware required - could be completed with handouts.

Ideally, lesson would take place using a media console.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

First Day/Week

Full Assignment Description:

Using samples pulled from the popular website, Texts From Last Night, this exercise introduces students to textual analysis in a fun and (most likely) funny way. Students are asked how much and what kinds of information they can glean from a very small piece of text.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

If you aren't familiar with the website, Texts From Last Night, it's a blog dedicated to public submissions of funny, lewd, or ridiculous text messages received "last night." The site has both a twitter presence and a facebook following, so many students will already be familiar with it. Those that are familiar with it will probably be a bit surprised to see it turn up in a classroom, as most of the messages tend to include either drinking references or discussions of sexual escapades. So, the material is often a bit scandalous - which is why the instructor should be certain to pre-select material for analysis. It's probably a very bad idea to actually pull the website up in class. Set aside about 20 minutes to half an hour the night before class to troll the site for material. You can take screen shots of the texts you'd like to look at and then post them to your class blog, wiki, site, etc. or simply copy them onto a handout.

Instructions For Students:

One of the goals of this course is to teach you the practice of close reading, or a very detailed analysis of language. You might be surprised just how much information can be gleaned from a very small piece of text - but you'll also need to practice separating your assumptions from evidence-based analysis.

As a class, we'll take a look at some sample texts pulled from the website, Texts From Last Night. These sample text messages are very short (originating from real text messages), but they can contain a wealth of information - about the sender, their relationship to the recipient, the reason for sending the text, the sender's current or previous location... any number of important clues for deciphering the meaning of the text. (i.e. the relationships in the rhetorical triangle).

First, what can you tell about either the sender or the recipient of the text? What is their relationship? How do you know?

What is the text message saying? What is the content of the message/the reason for sendign it? Is it just to be funny? Does the sender want to persuade the recipient of something? Is the sender making a request?

Where is the sender now? Is the recipient somewhere else (as in far away)?

What does the message indicate in terms of time or chronology? What is the kairotic moment in which the text was sent?

Evaluation Suggestions:

This was an in-class discussion assignment, so no evaluation was necessary.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

I used this exercise on the very first day of class, and my students loved it. They were both surprised and delighted by the use of a seemingly trivial pop culture phenomena, and (of course) a bit titilated by the content. Since I try to cultivate an open and fun environment in my classroom, this set the tone well for my semi-informal ethos.

It was also a great way to start reigning in their conjectures. While many students wanted to make broad or sweeping claims about the messages and their senders, this was a great way to point out the difference between assumptions and evidence-based analysis. I asked them to stick very closely to the text itself and show me where they were getting their ideas.

Additional Resources:

Here are some sample texts that I used to introduce rhetorical concepts.

ETHOS: