Collaboration / Rhetorical Analysis

On Friday, we closed off some old work and laid the ground for new work while Homecoming went on around us.

English 11 - A majority of the class day was devoted to collaboration.  Today's students don't have to keep vast amounts of information in their heads, but instead need to know how to work with other people to get information and use it.  One of our big goals is an essay that will make an argument for why The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is called a great American novel.  In order to evaluate Huck Finn as emblematic of American literature, we need to have a good idea of what makes American literature unique.  In order to do that, we've been gathering notes on all that we have read.  Today, we spent time sharing and swapping notes and I emphasized the higher rate of success students could achieve by collaborating as a group on such an ambitious project.  While the average student might only have time to write down and summarize a handful of quotes, the class has twenty or thirty times more time to gather information.  Pooling together this information will give student more to draw on when they set about writing their essays.

AP English - We spent the day looking at the rhetorical analysis essays they completed.  We graded and critiqued model papers.  Then, I passed on some notes on what major problems came up in the essays students completed.  Students closed off the day by grading their own essays and then looking at the grades and feedback I provided.