March 31, 2022 Lesson Plan

Review (5-10 minutes)

Here is a quick review as it pertains to thinking about your drafts:

-What did you do? How did you find what you found? Think of it as a recipe: what were the steps from collection, to cleaning, to analysis, to interpretation with your data set? How about the ways in which you found secondary sources and how that informed your interpretations? Consider past lessons on context and data, cleaning, analysis, etc. (much of this is from Ferbruary and early March).

-What contexts are you considering? About your data set? About the topic you are writing about? About how your sources treat this topic? What histories of the topic, of oppressions associated with that topic, etc. are you acknowledging and thinking with as you write? Consider especially chapter 6 from Data Feminism and this lesson: March 17 Lesson Plan – Data and Writing Toward Social Change, Spring 2022 (cuny.edu)

-What are important technical considerations? What is the quality of the sample and what are the limits of what we can say about it? How is the distribution in the sample? These lessons are good for reviews here:

-How you organize your draft according to genre conventions of white paper or non-fiction essay (see Blackboard, too, for examples of these from professionals and students). Here are some lessons that spent some time on this:

-How might you use strategies to make data interesting, relevant, emotionally impactful, create emphasis to make something stand out, etc.? Some lessons on using examples, amplification, quantitative comparisons, thinking about emotion, etc. can be helpful here:

You should also consider the quality of your sources. These can be helpful here:

 

 

Peer Review Ground Rules (5-10 minutes)

Let me explain some ground rules for doing peer review.

-Say hi, quick small talk

-Be positive

-Explain yourself

-Offer tangible suggestions relevant to the project

-Explain yourself

 

Peer Review (30-45 minutes)

Writing should be read. We have a lot of knowledge in our heads that help us read something. A writer reading their own writing “fills in gaps” and knows what they mean in different and often more complete ways than other readers. By having other readers of your writing, you gain an advantage of having a “test” audience to see if what you tried to do is working or not and you get an opportunity to get a reaction from a reader that might help you shape your writing in ways you wouldn’t have thought of without their help. It makes for a richer revision process.

  1. Exchange Writing and Questions for Feedback. Email each other your in-progress draft. Also provide directions or questions to readers about how they should direct their feedback on their draft (e.g., “please let me know if second to last section makes sense in connection to main argument,” “please let me know if my claims seem well supported by the evidence I provide,” “please let me know if my data analysis feels relevant in the place that I have it referenced,” “please let me know if I’m doing too many direct quotes in ways that make it hard to read,” “please let me know if my sentences are too long and it is hard to read”).
  2. Reading aloud. Writer reads aloud their in-progress draft. This is IMPORTANT. Lots of research supports that reading aloud helps writers more easily identify changes to make because reading silently allows us to “skip over” parts of what we are reading. Reading aloud productively slows us down.
  3. Take Notes. The writer should be taking notes if anything comes up while they read aloud. The listeners should take notes on: things they found important and exciting in the argument from a “big picture” perspective, sentences or phrases they found beautiful or particularly impactful, and places that they doubt or don’t understand as potential cuts or revisions as well as places to expand or revise as places that are working but could use a push in a more sophisticated direction.
  4. Responders Repeat Back What They Heard. Responders try to say back the “big picture” of what they heard as in “This seems to be about ________ because ________” or “The focus here is about _________ and _________, right?”…stuff like that. Folks take notes as needed.
  5. Writer Responds to Listeners. Writer then responds to these big picture interpretations to agree or modify their interpretations. They take notes as needed.
  6. Listeners Share Positives. Listeners share what they liked and why in the draft based on notes they took before. Writer takes notes.
  7. Listeners Share Suggestions. Listeners share suggestions for moving draft forward through cuts, revisions, expansions, etc. based on their notes. Writer takes notes.
  8. Writer Repeats Back Takeways from Listener. Writer says back what they heard from listener with the positives and suggestions.
  9. Writer and Listener Write Next Steps. Together, writer and listener write down at least two next steps (e.g., find more sources on X, write more about limitations to data set, move a part higher up and tweak it to fit that new spot in the paper).
  10. Gratitude! Writing is sacred, it is sharing a part of yourself. It can be hard to share writing with other people. Show your appreciation to one another!

 

Introducing Campaign for Circulation Assignment (5-10 minutes)

Let’s go over the prompt for the Campaign for Circulation assignment and the proposal due on April 7–which you should not stress about! It is VERY informal at this point, just to get your brains going before spring break.

All is on Blackboard, let’s check it out.

 

Next Time (2-5 minutes)

-Turn in first/half draft of Data-Driven Argument by tonight at 11:59pm

-Design and Accessibility Readings and Response Post 10 / comment for April 5

-Campaign for Circulation Proposal–just initial thoughts!–by April 7 at 11:59pm

-Cover Letter + Second Draft of Data-Driven Argument due by April 14 at 11:59pm