Lesson Materials: 1. PowerPoint
Lesson Objectives: 1. Understand the connection between grammar and content (the use of prepositions in writing about data, and mathematical concepts); 2. Understand how to revise at the sentence level; 3. Share ideas to use in your websites
Connection to Major Paper/Project: This lesson will help you edit your writing for clarity of ideas and meaning.
Connection to Course Goals: This lesson addresses the course goal of using conventions, and focuses on choosing the kind of syntax and word choice that will communicate a message effectively to a specific audience to achieve a particular purpose.
Activities:
- This American Life Broadcast and the Drake Equation: Use the PPT as a basis for discussing this broadcast.
- Prepositions and the Drake Equation: Go over the correct placement of prepositions in the broadcast, and use this handout to draw connections between uses of prepositions. Discuss the following questions: How many prepositions were you able to correctly place in the transcript before the listening? What did you notice about the use of prepositions in writing about data? What did you notice about the way in which these physicists applied their academic training to their own life? What did you think of this broadcast?
- Action Verbs Activity: For this activity, examine how you describe tasks you completed within your resume. Choose at least 5 action verbs from the link and use them in the resume version you plan to upload to your website.
- How Texas Teaches History: Discuss the five Ws and an H in the article and make connections between visual and written language. Focus questions for this discussion could be: 1. How does the order of information that a sentence features draw or subtract attention? 2. How can this principle be related to visual communication? 3. What responsibility do writers and presenters of information have to their audiences? 4. How can people who are tasked with effective communication meet these obligations?
- Website Draft Review Guide for Grammar, Vocabulary, and Conventions: Answer questions about your own website and to review a peers’ website. Then, share your insights with the class and take notes on changes you can make to your websites.
Homework:
- Be prepared to share the most finalized version of your website for conferences in the next session.