title of exercise: Secondhand evidence.
materials required:
1 rough draft of an academic essay (such as a seminar paper)
1 pair of safety scizzors
jar of paper mache paste
Miss Renuka: Hello, English 6010. In our last meeting, we engaged in a read-aloud protocol. That exercise helped you transform your prewriting into a rough draft.
Miss Hilary: Today, we are going to engage in a draft exchange that helps you extend and refine support for your clai--
Shashi! Stop eating the paste--
Renuka: As Miss Hilary is saying, every draft exchange should have a specific objective vis a vis the development of your wider project.
Wilkie: Theoretically, though, why is that? Shouldn't a draft exhange be open-ended rather than focused on 1 predetermined agenda?
Hilary: (thinking seriously) Wilkie, that's an insightful question. To reply: because, every draft exchange should have a specific objective vis a vis the development of your wider project.
Sharon: I think that, tautologically, Hilary is trying to say
Jeff: That the heuristic "1 objective per draft exhange" is a conventional classroom practice. Therefore, its rationale is tautological.
Miss Renuka: ok. Theoretically, the purpose of this draft exhange is to force you "back into the chaos, back to the point where you are shaping and restructuring your meaning" (Sommers 390). We are going to "sabotage" your conviction that your draft is complete.
Hilary: And how! More specifically, the peer review is designed to help you locate and address "breaks in logic, disruptions in meaning, or missing information" (391).
Miss Renuka: Let the chaos begin! Please sort youselves into pairs of two.
Hilary: (clearing her throat) Academic chaos is, you know, very orderly.
Miss Renuka: Hilary, I really would appreciate it if you um put down those scizzors while you talk.
Hilary: We'll start with the read-aloud protocol for draft exhanges. You know the drill: no touching your partners' draft (or other personal items).
Miss Renuka: As your partner reads her draft aloud, listen specifically for claims and support. When your partner has finished reading, have a conversation in which you identify any evidence that contradicts, or fails to adequately support, the "principal arguments running through the text" (391).
Hilary (to Renuka): Do we need to specify protocol for having a conversation?
Renuka: Wrong room, Hilary. These are graduate students, not autistic people.
Hilary: My people would have a protocol, is all I'm saying.
Sharon (in a warning tone): Hilary.
Renuka: Now, this is the fun part!
Hilary: Once you have identified the weakest peices of supporting evidence for the "principal arguement" running through your text,
Renuka: you pick up your scizzors
Hilary: and simply cut that peice out of your text
Renuka: MLA citation and all!
Hilary: Snip!
Renuka: Like, you ARE the weakest link! Goodbye.
Hilary: be sure to cut drafts, not people.
Renuka: Okay, this final part is really cool.
Jeff put his forehead in his hands.
Hilary: After you have finished literally cutting out the weakest peices of supporting evidence in your draft,
Renuka: you bring them up to this big long table.
Hilary: So, what we are going to end up with at the end of the exercise is: a table of cast-off evidence.
At the end of class, each student will come up to the table of cast off evidence and select 1 peice of evidence that can be woven into her own paper
Renuka: --as supporting evidence--
Hilary:--wider contextual information--
Renuka:--or an anectdotal connection.
Hilary: This structured "chaos" allows you to both disrupt and refine your own pattern of evidentiary support--
Renuka: and to conceptualize connections between your own project and other students' work in the course.
Hilary: As your homework assignment, each student will go home and find a way to "paste" the peice of "secondhand" evidence into her paper.
Renuka: Warning: this step requires conceptual as well as syntactical adjustments. Ie, you will have to revise thesis and topic sentences as well as the language you use to introduce the evidence.
Hilary and Renuka: (to the tune of "tradition") Revision! Revision!
Hilary: Actually Sharon made up the comp/rhet adaptation of Fiddler, but so far there is only 1 word to the song.
Renuka: Still, it's catchy: Revision!
Jeff: Make it stop.
(the end).
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2 comments:
Yay!Yay!Miss Hilary rocks!
I want to be paired with you on every class assignment we have(though I think we're gonna be on everyone's "Not-to-Be-Paired-Up-Together-Ever" list)
Btw people-this really is our peer review assignment!
I want to be in your class! :)
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