Week 5/Day 12 – Monday, September 19

Homework Due:

  • Bring your copy of the Food Reader to class for an activity.
  • Critically read and annotate Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Trouble with Fries” in the Food Reader. As you read, fill out the document called “Reading Workshop: Pivotal Words” (available on Canvas ______(insert directions on how to access this document)______. Type your responses in the document, print it, and bring it to class with you.
  • Respond to “Pinned Discussions”  “Preparing for A2” (due ______)
  • For homework throughout the week you’ve begun exploring issues within our course theme, identified stakeholders, and begun doing some more reading in the reader or on sanctioned websites to “listen to that conversation” more closely. Now is time to begin putting the “pieces and parts” together for A2.
  • Respond to the questions below to begin articulating your plans for P2.
  • Which issue are you interested in for A2? What articles did you read in the reader or from the sanctioned websites about that topic?
  • Of the problems that are arising within that issue, which problem do you think you’d like to solve for A2? Why?
  • What might be a solution to the problem? Why?
  • What stakeholder would you like to target for your A2 proposal? Why is the issue exigent for that audience?
  • Why is that a logical audience for this proposal? (In other words, how and why does that stakeholder have the power to implement your solution?)
  • As always, your response must be at least 250 words and is due by ______.

Lesson Objectives

  • Define “development” and understand what it means in a proposal;
  • Examine how authors use textual and visual evidence to achieve their purposes in writing;

Prep

Prepare your materials for the day’s lesson (below) and review your lesson notes. Closely read Malcolm Gladwell’s text and see which “Pivotal Words” you identified in the text. Some students may have already responded to the discussion you assigned so you may want to “peek in” to see what students have written and/or respond to anyone who has already posted.

Materials

  • Copy of the reader
  • Overhead/slides for development mini-lecture
  • Overhead/slides for article analysis activity

Lead-In

Today’s focus is on development and connects a number of different concepts students have been working on over the past week: understanding synthesis, analyzing an audience, and developing appeals for a particular audience. To explore how authors do this in writing, at the end of class students will engage in the second Reading Workshop of the semester (which they began prepping for with the assigned homework for today).

ACTIVITIES

Attendance (1 minute)

Transition: Last class we learned about analyzing an audience so you can better appeal to them and today we’re going to work more on developing evidence – both textual and visual – as a way to appeal to an audience in a proposal. First, though, let’s talk about the article you read for homework so we can delve a bit deeper into some of the conversations within our course theme.
Tip: You can involve students in your class “opener” by asking someone in the class to recall what happened last time and use that to transition into the day’s lesson.

Discussion (brief) of Article (5-10 minutes)

Project discussion questions from the reader about the article, pulling these directly from the reader’s questions provided at the end of each reading. Add any necessary tips, etc. based on what the questions are. For instance, maybe they just focus on one question, WTL for a 5 minutes, and then talk about it as a group. Again base this discussion on what the discussion q’s are in the reader.

You might then begin to forecast the next step in the day’s lesson objectives by asking the class what they think the assumptions are of the writer of the article and where they draw that analysis from. This will get them thinking critically about not just what the text says and how it’s developed but why it says what it says, or how development choices reflect the objectives of the writer and the way they are approaching their audience.

Development in a Proposal (10-15 minutes)

Transition: There is certainly plenty more to say on the issues that come up in the article, and in A2 you’ll have more of a chance to weigh in on your own solutions for problems related to our course theme. Now, though, let’s go from thinking about the content of the article – the WHAT – to the rhetoric – the HOW – by exploring development in the article.

Ask students to look closely at the hierarchy of rhetorical concerns on the back page of the A2 assignment sheet. Draw students’ attention to “development for audience” and the questions listed there.

Explain that we’ve discussed audience, but our assignment sheet talks about “development for the audience.” Ask: does anyone want to take a stab at what the word “development” means? For instance, when a teacher tells you to “develop your ideas more,” what does that mean?

(Use whatever students say as to segue into a more formal definition of the term.) Project the following information.

  • Development= how writers choose to elaborate on their main ideas in their writing.
  • Development includes evidence and explanation of that evidence for the audience.
  • How you develop your paper depends on the rhetorical situation (i.e., the purpose of your writing, the audience you’re writing for, the context, etc.)
  • How is development linked with audience? Why is it called “development for the audience”?
  • Based on your audience’s needs, values, knowledge, etc. (that you figure out by doing an audience analysis), you provide details and explanation based on what you’re trying to do (your purpose) and shape them for your particular audience (using audience appeals.)
  • What does this mean in a proposal?
  • Development = evidence and explanation of that evidence.
  • Quotations from experts
  • Statistics
  • Facts
  • Graphs, charts, photos, or other images
  • But it’s not enough just to include that evidence, you have to explain it clearly for your reader and help the reader know how to understand it. While evidence is drawn from the text, the explanation of that evidence is drawn from you and your thinking.
  • This is also where synthesis comes into play. To be an ethical writer, you need to synthesize your sources – that is, use evidence from multiple sources to prove your ideas. This may require you to make inferences about how a source applies to your idea. In making such inferences, be fair about your representation of a source as you extend what is directly stated in the source to how that source applies to your new context—in other words how that source relates to or “informs” your argument of idea.
  • Develop your ideas throughout your paper by providing details and explanation when you:
  • Explain your problem;
  • Explain why your problem is exigent;
  • Explain why your solution is a good one.

Let’s see an example of how an author uses multi-modal evidence to support his argument. Return to the Capparros’ article, “Counting the Hungry,” in the reader.

Ask your students:

  • The author uses a LOT of evidence in this article. What evidence is the multi-modal evidence?
  • How does this visual evidence help to further support what Capparros says in the article? How does the multimodal element help the author’s development?
Tip: You may want to project the article from the reader on the document camera so that you have a visual aid as you ask students about it.

Reading Workshop: Pivotal Words and Development (20-25 minutes)

Transition: Capparros uses multi-modal evidence in his article and you, too, will use at least one piece of multi-modal evidence in your proposals to help your development. Now we’re going to look at textual evidence (i.e., evidence that’s in words, not images) and analyze the way Malcolm Gladwell develops his evidence for his audience. For homework you read Gladwell’s article closely and identified some “pivotal words” that he uses to help the reader understand his ideas. Now we’re going to see how those “pivotal words” are related to development.
For this activity you and partner will use your homework as a starting point for analyzing the author’s development.

Project the following directions:

For homework you identified some spots in the text where the author uses “pivotal words” to help the audience understand his ideas. Now you’re going to use that to explore how many of those “pivotal words” are ways of developing evidence for a reader.

Compare your homework with a partner. Choose 2-3 quotations from the text to analyze. In the “analysis” box on the sheet, answer the following questions:

  • Look back at the 2-3 quotations you’ve chosen to analyze.
  • How does the author use the “pivotal words” to help his development? In other words, what larger point is the author developing when he uses these words to help his reader understand better?
  • o Are they helping the evidence develop the key point? Are they helping a key point develop the thesis? Are they helping connect one key point to another? Are they to help the reader stay on track?
  • (NOTE: You’ll need to look at the text and ideas surrounding the quotation – both before and after – to really understand how the author uses these pivotal words to help development.)

For example:

  • In one section of the article, Gladwell uses an amplification phrase (“for example”), when talking about how French fries are cooked: “McDonald’s fries, for example, are briefly dipped in a sugar solution, which gives them their golden brown color; Burger King fries are dipped in a starch batter, which is what gives those fries their distinctive hard shell and audible crunch.”
  • Sample response: In this quotation, Gladwell is offering examples (evidence) of how McDonald’s and Burger King’s fries are made. He is using this to help develop the larger point that both companies’ fries are eventually deep-fried, which is why they’re so unhealthy.

Spend at least a few minutes doing a large-group discussion talking about the author’s use of pivotal words to help his development. Be sure to touch on the fact that the author doesn’t just include the evidence, the author introduces them for the reader and offers explanation/discussion/commentary/analysis (i.e., development) of the information to help the audience understand and know how the evidence proves what the author is trying to say.

Connect this to the students’ own writing by explaining that this, too, is what they will do to develop their ideas for their audience in their proposal. They’ll use textual evidence and at least one multimodal element to support their ideas, always keeping in mind who their audience is, what they value, etc.

Assign homework (2 minutes)

  • Complete the A2 Audience Analysis sheet (available on Canvas) and bring it with you to class next time.
  • Continue reading and annotating articles from the reader and the sanctioned websites (listed on the A2 assignment sheet) about your topics for A2 (remember: you must synthesize at least 3 sources from the reader or from the sanctioned websites. One of your articles MUST be one you used in A1!)

Conclude Class

Today we focused on the “audience” part of our rhetorical triangle and considered how to develop our ideas for a particular audience. Next class, we’ll turn our attention to the “text/genre” portion of the triangle and learn about the genre conventions of a proposal.

Connection to Next Class

With each class students are building skills to help them better understand writing as a rhetorical practice. We started the unit with helping students understand what stakeholders are and how to identify them; we then transitioned into helping students understand how purpose shapes audience (and vice versa) and how stakeholders can become audiences for writing; we expanded on the idea of audience with helping students learn how to analyze an audience and shape appeals accordingly; and today we combined lessons about synthesis, audience analysis, and audience appeals to help students better understand development. Next class will focus on the genre of a proposal (what the features of proposals are, how they’re organized, etc.) so that students can begin putting the “pieces and parts” together to better craft A2 and be prepared for workshop in Week 6.