Objectives
Develop students’ skills in analyzing and synthesizing research sources, and developing their ability to integrate quotes from research sources into their own research papers
OER Assignment
I have developed a new Research Paper assignment for ENG101 in response to Ari Honarvar’s essay, “Why Rituals Are Good for Your Health” which is an OER text for the Open Educational Resources Seminar as part of an ENG101 cohort led by Marisa Klages-Bombich. A goal of this seminar is to provide OER resources that will benefit the students financially by helping them avoid the purchase of costly textbooks.
The OER anthology where I found Honarvar’s essay was suggested as a resource for OER readings in this seminar and is listed as a curated OER Text for use in ENG101 on the new English Dept website:
The OER anthology is called 88 Open Essays: A Reader for Students of Composition and Rhetoric by Sarah Wangler and Tina Ulrich:
Honarvar is listed as essay #38 in the Table of Contents of this anthology which begins on page 234.
Background Information About This Class
This section of ENG101 consists solely of high school students who are participating in the Early College Initiative High School Program and who attend the International High School. There are 10 ENG101 students enrolled. Most of them have quite recently arrived in the US. This section of ENG101 is paired with a section of ENA101 which has an additional 10 students, all of whom are also from the International High School in the Early College Initiative High School Program.
Prior to the beginning of this semester, when I found out that I was teaching a cohort from the International High School, I was inspired to design a lesson plan to capitalize on what these unique international students already bring with them to class and to try to use their diverse backgrounds and cultures as resources so that they can learn from one another. The goal to create student awareness of commonality of culture led me to the selection of Honarvar’s OER essay, “Why Rituals Are Good for Your Health. ”
For example, though one student is researching prayer and depression and another student is researching yoga and meditation, there is a common thread of how these rituals can benefit us, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually which I hope will inspire the students to discover and appreciate the commonality of human experience regardless of cultural difference.
Overview of the Research Paper Unit
This assignment is in conjunction with Unit III: Evaluative Response/Essay #3, the Research Paper. Students have read Honarvar’s OER essay, “Why Rituals Are Good for Your Health” and have written a first draft (which they workshopped online in a peer review exercise) and a Final draft of an evaluative essay in which they either agree or disagree with Honarvar’s argument that rituals are good for your health. I also hoped to foster critical thinking by looking at ways in which we can agree or disagree with Honarvar. I modeled this with my own sample “Big Mac” which disagreed with Honarvar based on a research article I found. Though most students tended to agree with Honarvar in their own writing, one or two were bold enough to mention during a student presentation on the benefits of yoga that they had tried yoga but found it to be “difficult” or “painful.” This led to an interesting discussion about the short term challenges vs. long term benefits of certain rituals.
Summary of Blackboard Discussion Board Activity, “Responding to Student Presentation,” In Context With Unit III and Connection to Course Goals
Students have researched two outside sources that provide support for their thesis statements, either agreeing or disagreeing with Honarvar. In the synchronous “Zoom” component of the course, students give individual in-class presentations in which they discuss one reason they agreed or disagreed with Honarvar and one quote from one of their research sources that supports their own response to Honarvar. These presentations are based on writing posted previously in the Discussion Board Forum “Responding to Research on Rituals” and/or in the Discussion Board Forum “First drafts of Essay #3.” Students then comment asynchronously on one another’s presentations by posting in a followup Discussion Board Forum, “Responding to Student Presentations” in which they are asked to compare and contrast their own rituals to two of those presented by their classmates. For extra credit, students may read and quote from their classmates’ research articles posted previously in the Forum, “Researching Rituals.” Students may review these presentations if they wish by watching the video recordings of the Zoom classes when these presentations were given by their classmates which are saved on Blackboard in the “Content” folder for “Unit III.” Their writing about these presentations may be included in their Final drafts of Essay #3. I will evaluate their use of the “Big Mac” sandwich technique as I grade their essays to consider: how effectively did they quote from their research sources to connect to and support their thesis statements about either agreeing or disagreeing with Honarvar?
One important focus of this course is upon the engagement of the students in their own learning via student-centered activities. Another is the scaffolding assignments of increasing complexity from Unit I, as students respond to one text; to Unit II, as students compare/contrast two texts; to Unit III: as students respond to three texts, only one of which is provided by me since they are asked to find two research articles (or use one research article of their own and one research article found by a classmate). These assignments also build upon practicing “the sandwich technique” (introducing a quote, quoting, and then analyzing a quote) in Units I and II to practicing “the Big Mac,” a more advanced form of “the sandwich” with “two all-beef patties” (using two quotes that connect to one another, and then analyzing both quotes) as students connect a quote from Honarvar’s essay about ritual to a quote from a research source they have found about their own ritual.
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