End in sight and feeling alright

Apparently, my theme for this last part of the course is "working with . . .(artifacts, quotes, photos, etc)." I have been hitting this in every class in one way or another.

Here is my class plan from last Thursday: We spent the first part of class discussing "Our Secret." I had them count off so they were in different groups of 3, then they had to address these questions: What is the meaning of the title? Why this way of writing? What argument is the way it is written making? How does the form affect the content?

Next, we made a web or constellation of relationships between the elements in the text. We used the white board and the groups took turn putting up pieces. They found this extremely helpful.

In the second half of class I had them chose an artifact they had gathered for project 2 and write an interpretation of the artifact. Then, we chose a quote from Griffin that back up an interpretation of the text we agreed on. I projected Word onto the screen and as a group we wrote the quote sandwich.


Today:

First discussion of Said. I had them write a meaningful question about Said to shape class discussion. This question should reflect the work we've been doing. Then, I put them into groups of 3 of my choosing and assigned each one of these questions. They had to come up with 10 minutes ways of talking about the question, relating it specifically to the text and posing further questions to the class. We spent 45 minutes in big group discussion talking about the photos in the essay (2 groups had questions about this). We will pick up this work on Thurs.