DWRL Lesson Plans - Stephanie Rosen

Distributed Peer Review

Rosen — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 19:19:20 +0000

Author:

Image Credit:

"Tin Foil Hat" by James Provost vis Flickr

Brief Assignment Overview:

When students can review their peers' attempts at an assignment before it's time for their own attempt, they inevitably critique other students' work and incorporate the best writing strategies into their own. For a typical rhetorical analysis assignment, everyone's analysis is public writing—on a class blog, and everyone's analysis is due on different days.

Type of Assignment:

Homework Assignment

Assignment Length:

One-Two Class Periods

Multiple Class Periods

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Peer Review

Revision

Writing Process

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

Rhetorical Analysis

Revision

Organization/Arrangement

Media Requirements:

No Classroom Technology Required

Adaptable For Use Without Classroom Technology

Media Console/Projector

Required Materials:

Class blog in which each student is a contributor.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Early in the Semester

Mid-Semester

Full Assignment Description:

This assignment is a typical rhetorical analysis. The innovation is that everyone's analysis is due on different days, and everyone's analysis is public writing—on our class blog. When students can review their peers' attempts at an assignment before it's time for their own attempt, they inevitably critique other students' work and incorporate the best writing strategies into their own.

The rhetorical analyses were posted over the course of 5 class meetings, with 4-5 students posting each day. Posts were due by midnight before our class meeting, and students who did not post that week were required to leave a comment on one post per week in the morning before our 12:30pm class. This ensured that students who were not writing that week were reading—at the very least, one post by another student.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

This assignment works best once a blog has been established, that is, once students have become familiar with it by writing required posts and comments for at least one class unit. In preparation for the rhetorical analysis post, students were given a detailed assignment prompt, and the freedom to choose their own rhetorical document (an advertisement) to analyze.

Instructions For Students:

(500-900 words) due by midnight the night before class.

Write a summary and analysis of an advertisement you found in your research that makes an argument about health. Your blog post should include an image of the whole or part of the advertisement and should also explain the context of the ad and its audience. In this post you will analyze how the ad makes its argument (its rhetorical strategies including logos, ethos and pathos) and why it makes the argument in this way. Basically, you must describe how the advertisement makes its argument, and you must explain why the advertisement is persuasive (or not) for its particular audience.

To be successful, your post must include basic elements including:

a clear and brief summary of the ad's argument
enough description of the ad so that your reader can follow your analysis
a discussion of the ad's intended audience
a discussion of the venue or location in which the ad originally appeared
your explanation of how the ad uses specific logical appeals to lead its audience to specific conclusions
your explanation of how the ad uses specific pathetic appeals to evoke specific values or emotions from the audience
your explanation of how the ad uses specific ethical appeals in order to appear credible to its specific audience
your argument about the ad's effectiveness for its specific audience

What to Find

Many advertisements make arguments about health, not just ads for prescription drugs. Of course, an ad for a prescription drug to treat depression, sexual disfunction, or some other disease or disorder would work for this assignment, but you can think more broadly than that. You could choose an ad that

makes an argument about health in order to sell a medical product (drug, supplement, treatment)
makes an argument about health in order to sell a non-medical product (deodorant, a car, food, anything)
uses health or illness as a metaphor to sell anything
makes an argument about health to convince its audience to do, believe, or feel something.

Where to Find it

Look around you: in magazines and on TV, on billboards or on the web. If you find a print ad, scan it; a poster or billboard, take a picture of it; an online ad, take a screenshot. If your ad is a video, you need to find the video online so you can watch it as many times as you need. Search YouTube using keywords including the product name.

Evaluation Suggestions:

My class uses the Learning Record for student evaluation. For the rhetorical analysis blog post, students were given aproximately one page of written instructor feedback within a week after posting. They also received comments from their peers on the blog which responded to their ideas rather than reviewed their analysis.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

From the first batch of blog posts, the writing was at a surprsingly high level. Each student had already posted a summary on our blog of one required text. Now they had the chance to write a post about a text of their choice, on a blog that already had an archive and a following. From there, things only got better. The blog took on a life of its own, outside the classroom, and it not only sparked intellectual conversations, it also became an unexpected writing resource.

Course Type:

Intermediate Writing Course

Introductory Writing Course

Literary Studies Course

Tags:

Close Reading YouTube and Cultural Archives

Rosen — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 00:58:07 +0000

Author:

Stephanie Rosen

Image Credit:

Stephanie Rosen

Brief Assignment Overview:

Start close-reading on day one by using YouTube videos and considering their archives.

Type of Assignment:

In-class Exercise

Assignment Length:

Single Class Period

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

This assignment is meant to introduce close reading immediately, explain some course objectives, and get students "reading" and discussing on the first day.

Media Requirements:

Media Console/Projector

Required Materials:

media console with projector

Timeline for Optimal Use:

First Day/Week

Early in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

My course description (see above) sets up a false dichotomy between watching YouTube and reading books. In reality, my syllabus features many works which reimagine literary texts by remediating them—in video, film, and more. We are especially concerned, in this class, with works that pull from the queer archive in order to make new art. On the first day, we used some YouTube videos to practice close reading and think about the ways in which the archives used in a text—or a video—affects our reading of it.

We watched Dan Savage’s original “It Gets Better” video, in which he and partner Terry tell stories about youthful struggle, love at first sight, adopting a son, family vacations, and achieving acceptance. We also watched the music video “Reading Rainbow” by the Lost Bois, in which A. O. and her musical partner, B Steady, remix the theme song to “Reading Rainbow” and rap about their intellectual formation from children’s books to queer literature to black feminist theory. Students were asked to take notes, paying particular attention to the archives each video uses.

After the videos, students offered items from their notes and I rewrote each very different archive on the board. Once notes were on the board, students were asked to answer a prompt about one video in small groups, using that video’s archive to inform their response. Half the room discussed one video, the other half discussed the other. After discussing in small groups, students reported to the class, some already offering rather sophisticated close readings on the first day!

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Since this exercise was designed for the first day or early in the semester, I suggest choosing video which provide a bridge between students' prior knowledge and the content of the syllabus.

Instructions For Students:

[The following instructions were explained in class.]

Watch the following videos and take notes. Try to write down as many elements of the video’s archive as you can. If it uses stories, what kind; if it uses texts, which ones; if it uses music, what music? In addition to noting the archive, write down any other thoughts or questions that occur to you as you watch.

[After watching and taking notes, students were given the following prompts:]

The short version of the argument in Dan Savage’s video is, simply, “It gets better.” But if you had to summarize the argument in a paragraph instead of a sentence, what would you say? Use your reading of the video’s archive to help expand on its message or argument.

The chorus in The Lost Bois’ song includes the phrase, “I ain’t nothin’ but a lost boi.” Clearly, “lost” is a key term in this song and for these artists, but “lost” is a term with several meanings. In this song, what does “lost” mean and what are the qualities of being lost? Use your reading of the video’s archive to support your answer.

Evaluation Suggestions:

Students had a chance to report their answers to the class, and came up with some great readings. There was no formal evaluation, but I pointed out how the most successful readings used prior knowledge and intertextual readings to support their claims. For example, The Lost Bois’ video includes footage from Disney’s Peter Pan, and one student used her knowledge of the “lost boys” in that text to support a reading of “lost” in this one.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

This activity went over quite well. The videos could be quickly read and discussed within a first class meeting. The strategies we used would carry over to our readings and the videos would remain a point of reference for later discussions.

Course Type:

Literary Studies Course

Course Description:

In 2010, Dan Savage began a viral video campaign when he and his partner posted a video to YouTube promising a viewing audience of gay, lesbian, transgender, and bisexual kids that life “gets better.” The project’s uncritical positive attitude has received critique from some queer intellectuals and kids, but it has also inspired videos from prominent LGBT people and allies, and given some viewers suffering from discrimination and heartbreak a sense of community and hope.

Before YouTube, queer people read books. In fact, reading, writing, and critiquing literary works has long been an occupation of queer-identified people. Literature can build community and offer hope, but it can also reflect the complexities of queer lives and relationships, transform transgressive pleasures into art, and analyze the histories and ideologies that often keep things from simply getting better, in spite of Savage’s promise.

In this course, we will examine the specific features of literary works that enable them to do all this, and that have long made them an important part of queer culture. Students will develop skills — close analytic reading and creative critical writing — that will help them succeed in upper-division courses across campus. This class is therefore recommended for English majors and non-majors alike. Readings include canonical and popular literatures, as well as some music, film and new media, and scholarly articles that will inform our approach.

Tags:

Close Reading

Critical Reading

Visual Analysis