A nifty assignment idea

Here's what I'm assigning my class today:

http://hungryforamonth.blogspot.com/

Assignment:

READ Evan's blog posts for the month of November. Just the blog posts - you don't have to read the comments. Most of the blog posts are short.

MARK two passages in the posts (printing out the ones you mark) or in the comments below. Mark one passage that contains an idea you like, find interesting, or agree with. Then mark one passage that you don't like, disagree with, or find offensive or annoying. Be prepared to talk in class about your reasons for choosing those passages.

I put together about a page's worth of comments, some praising the experiment and its humility and thoughtfulness, some pointing out that as a society we aren't doing men a favor by not teaching them to cook, some talking about how the vast majority of the world lives on way less than a dollar a day, some posts talking about how offensive it is to assume that poor people eat ramen and rice every day, or how offensive it is to think you can understand actual hunger and povery by doing an experiment like this.

In class I will have them all go around and explain the passages they marked. Then I'll ask them to write a short paragraph. Oh the challenge! One sentence that explains the project and refers to it. Indirect citation! Another that lays out what a commenter said. Another that explains a different comment. And then a final sentence for the student to say what he or she thinks.

My thesis advisor was a scary expert on composition teaching and he used to give us these mind-cracking exercises like "summarize this entire horrible literary theory article in one sentence"... He was also big on the "mark a sentence and explain it" technique, which I thought worked very well as a warmup.

This is going to be a good one!!!

Technorati Tags: composition, teaching

Comments

[badgerbag]

Since some other teacher are reading this - here is the assignment I'm going to pass out in class. For once, I have a handout, which means I can give a more complex set of instructions without writing it all over the board or explaining it 12 times during class time.

In-class assignment: Citation, Summary, Being Concise
=======================================================

Write a paragraph in response to this blog and the comments. Be very clear who you are citing. Use indirect citation and paraphrasing or summary rather than direct quotes. Keep in mind that you are explaining the blog itself and some controversial ideas to a person who has NOT read or heard of it.

Sentence one: Explain what the project is and who did it.
Sentence two: Explain a point that one of the commenters made.
Sentence three: Explain a point that a different commenter made.
Sentence four: Respond to the project yourself.
Sentence five: Explain how your opinion relates to the other commenters.

If you are talking about something an anonymous commenter said, you can say something like, "An anonymous commenter at Hungry For a Month felt that...." You might refer to a named commenter as follows:

"Goethe Girl," a commenter at Hungry for a Month, responded with the idea that...

or

Another Hungry for a Month commenter named "Logic" pointed out that....

Sentence five may be the hard part. You might pick a structure like this:

Though Goethe Girl thinks that blah blah, and the anonymous commenter was offended at blahdeblah, I think something else.

or

While many commenters pointed out flaws in Evan Stein's project such as X and Y, the project made me think about Z, and I thought blah blah blah.

If you agree with a commenter's response, make that clear. You must explain why you agree or disagree IN YOUR OWN WORDS.

Those are just two possible ways to address that 5th and concluding sentence. Think of it as the knot at the end of the braid. It ties all the ideas together in a way that shows you understand and have synthesized the relationships of different ideas from different sources.

[Jess]

Badger--
Mildly confused... Shouldn't they read the comments if they're going to have to write about them in their in-class exercise?
-J

[badgerbag]

I put together a page of selected comments for them which I emailed out and will also print and hand out in class! 8-)

[Jess]

Makes so much more sense! And you introduced me to hungryforamonth, which I hadn't read before. Thanks.

[WhatLadder]

I am so torn on the issue of summarising. I mean, YES, it is an important tool, but when students get into my class, I want them to get beyond summary and into analysis, and it seems like a lot of them who have been taught to summarise have a real struggle to get beyond it. The result is that when I ask for analysis, reflection or comment on a reading, I often get summaries instead.

I really like your questions, though, because they are more provocative, and the stealth citation exercise is awesome.