10/15/08

Good indy consults are always a great way to end class and make me feel like I had a better class than I really may have had.

Today in class, I started out right away by going through the materials that they each needed to have in their folders. They had a checklist from Monday, but I had a lot of materials missing and added for Project 1, so I decided to do a quick check with all of them. They definitely need to get themselves a little more organized.

We finished up Project 2 with the in-class reflection. This time I had them tell me what they thought their grade should be and to make an argument for that grade. This seemed like a good prompt. Each one wrote as much or more than I asked in a short amount of time. I'm not sure if I'll agree with them all, but it should be interesting. When they were finished, I had them put it in their folder and hand them in. Only 2 were missing (1 from an absence, 1 from a student whose computer was stolen).

With Project 2 done, we jumped right back into project 3. I had the students give me their topics and a student volunteer wrote them on the board for me so I could keep my own record of the topics. A few students wanted to do the same topic, but I encouraged them to find another. Each one did and I think they were ok with that.

I then began to prepare them for the archives visit with a KWL. I handed out the worksheet so they could follow along and we talked about what a KWL is. Then we chose a topic for the class (Waldo Library which morphed into Waldo himself) and filled out the sheet on the board. This took a little prodding, but we came up with a long list of what we know and a some good things that we wanted to learn. With JB's help, we also were able to fill in a few things we learned. Overall, this went really well.

I then had them fill out the KWL for their topic. Each student had a fairly good list of things they knew and things they wanted to know. I then had them share with the people around them to see if they could get any more ideas. A few students didn't want to participate, but I think I got them to at least share with one person a few things.

Next, we looked at an MLA handout that Randall made for English 1000. It was to help students identify what information they needed to get when they find good information at the archives. I quickly went through the most common ones they would use and asked for any questions.

Our final activity of the day was a quick lesson on introductions. I tried to talk with students about them before, but we didn't get very far. Today I think we came up with some good ideas as a class. I had them pull out the examples of feature articles I had given them the last class and had a few students read the intros to their articles. We then talked about whether or not we thought the intros were effective and why. As always, it took some work for them to go deeper than "it's boring," but we eventually got there.

Here are a few of the things they came up with:
An interesting intro begins with an eye-catching picture, thought-provoking quote, engaging story (maybe even a story that has some missing information, like who the person in the story is), or a question. Intros should be easy to read (no long complicated research-filled sentences) and should include some good detail, but not too much. In contrast, they decided that a boring intro is one that jumps right into research and is hard to read.

I think I'll make a sheet with these characteristics on it for them to refer to as they work and for us to use when we look at each other's intros.

Finally, indy consults went well. We looked at their goals and tried to decide if we were on track with accomplishing them and were able to talk about any concerns or attendance issues.