Assignment Author
Jessica GoudeauAttribution
Nyssa MorrisContext of Assignment
Right after first research summary
Pedagogical Goals of the Assignment
Help with research summary writing
Assignment Description
Mini Peer Review and RS Model Paragraph Lesson Plan:
I’m combining two assignments in order to submit them to e-files; even though I did them on separate days, I think they could work well together. My students’ first research summaries were abysmal, so instead of grading them, we did a number of things together in class talking about the expectations for research summaries (we also did the citation scavenger hunt), then I handed them back clean copies of their papers for a peer review. (Nyssa Morris helped me think through ways to grade them that were more productive than just marking all over them and talked through this assignment together. So instead, I didn’t mark at all, but wrote out paragraphs on the computer that I then handed back at the end of class with their grade on it so that they could have clean copies of their originals. I bet you could also copy their papers and then mark on the copy they gave you.)
After a whole class of talking through what their research summaries should have looked like, by the time they broke up into small groups, I heard a number of them pointing out things they wished they’d done. They then spent twenty minutes or so in pairs looking over their peer’s papers. I had them mark the thesis sentence, the arguments of the paper and the evidence supporting it; of course, when they couldn’t, it helped them realize what they were missing.
The other assignment I did before their first research summary (not that it made any difference!) was writing out model research summary first paragraphs. The students broke up into small groups and graded the paragraphs. The first is obviously a D. The second was harder; it’s overblown and an inappropriate scope for a one-page paper, but it sounds like what they think is good. One of my groups gave it an A, which was a great tool to talk about what to include and what not to include in your first paragraph (most groups gave it a C). The third was my A even though I intentionally misspelled a couple of words so I could talk about organization and structure being more important than spelling. The last one was a B. This helped my students understand what I was looking for, or at least it should have. I think it might even have been better after the first research summary.