Since we are beginning the discussion on lesson plans and creating a syllabus, I think my blog this week will be fitting. Like many of my colleagues, I am teaching the third unit of my ENG 103 course. Their assignment is an argumentative essay about a community issue. As the weeks have progressed, the students see me more and more as an authority in the classroom. Today, before class, a few students even asked me to look over their thesis statement drafts to help make them better. While this is a great sign, I am still nervous about taking on the lesson/unit as a whole.
My lesson plan consists of readings, journal prompts, and activities, but I am looking to add some new ideas, especially in-class activities that pertain to our unit. The areas I am in most need of some guidance are introducing what exactly a community is (basically a “why do you care about this issue” and “why should an outsider of that community care” sort of intro), sample essays, and methods of teaching logical fallacies.
I want to begin with "What is a community? What is an argument?" to help frame the unit as a specific kind of argumentative writing and discuss how argument differs from persuasion. Hopefully, in doing this, the students will be able to choose fitting topics. They have some topics that are banned, such as parking and dining campus services, and they can’t write about a large global issue, such as abortion. If anyone has an idea of how to introduce community or argument, let me know!
In putting together my lesson plan outline, I discovered our textbook doesn't offer any sample essays that fit our version of an argumentative paper. They are more large scale “save the whales” themes. I want to find alternate examples as to not confuse them that “save the whales” is the topic/style I’m looking
for….because it is definitely not. I am searching for short essays (2-3) to assign about a community issue, such as putting in a stop sign in a neighborhood, that we can discuss in class.
As far as the logical fallacies, I just did some research for my wiki page, so I feel a bit more confident teaching those. I have found some clips for logical fallacies, which I may use one during class along with a short quiz after to entice active listening. I am hoping maybe someone has some ideas for an activity or game that won't take too much class time or be too challenging to teach how to recognize and avoid/correct logical fallacies in arguments.
-O
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ReplyDeleteI think what a community is would really depend on the issue; for example, if someone wants to write about a campus-wide issue, then this university would be the community; if they're writing about something from their hometown, or even a smaller population within their hometown, then the community would be that area. There's also the broader option of "the community is whomever is affected by this on a national level" (unless you want to keep it more local). In general, I think keeping community a flexible term would make sense for this particular thing.
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