Ever have one of those moments where you’ve carefully planned your lessons, created the materials, and then drawn a total blank when you get in front of the class? That happened today. I’m used to preparing my materials at the beginning of the semester and then reviewing them before class. It’s that review that didn’t happen this morning.
“Welcome…sit down…pull out your papers from last week.”
I love it when they’ve written something for homework—at least they can read that while I pull myself together.
It would have taken all hour to have each read their work, so I chose 4 students who had taken different articles home. Not only do the students get to hear others’ work, they also get to hear their own mistakes, proving my point that you really should read your paper out loud before you turn it in. I didn’t do any editing during this time—I want to keep it as nonthreatening as possible.
My brain finally kicked in and once the papers were collected, I began to talk about what I had planned—planning a paper, plagiarism, bibliographies, and citing sources.
First we discussed the structure of a research report and the first rule of planning:
The students did a great job participating in the discussion on how to apply this rule and plan a paper when the assignment is given in number of words or number of pages.
Next we talked about the three types of information that will show up in their papers as a result of their research:
We reviewed what each of these meant, then read over a sample paragraph that had all three types of information. As I read, the students identified which of the above was being used in the paper. It was a great discussion. All the direct quotes were cited using MLA parenthetic citation, so I was able to briefly introduce that as well.
For right now, I’m expecting most of the students will paraphrase the facts they pull from the articles. For the full paper, they’ll be required to include at least one direct quote.
Finally, I distributed “How Robots Work” and assigned homework:
1.Read the article.
2. Choose three topics.
3. Make a key word outline on three topics and write three paragraphs.
