Class Agenda for Lab; 9-24

Class Goals

The goal of this class is to continue practicing summaries. To do this, we're going to examine our first summaries that we wrote last week. Then we're going to discuss and write about the chapters from the The Global Warming Reader.

We're going to add some new criteria for excellent summaries:

They must contain the "main ideas," but they must also contain important "specific" information. We must remember:
* the title of article or text we're summarizing
* the author of the article/text
* to define the main ideas using "paraphrase" from the article/text
* to take note of important sources of information (experts, cited texts, names, institutions, dates, years)
* to take note of different kinds of evidence (we want to pay attention to "quantitative" data, like numbers, percents (%), and any charts/graphs                                                                                            (Source)

Agenda

1. Take Quiz.

2. As a class, we're going to discuss the New York Times article on climate change. Then we're going to read two blogs that responded to our assignment on this article. Then students are going to write a brief blog on their computers about whether they believe their own first blog fulfilled the assignment, and why. If their blog didn't fulfill the assignment, they should list the changes they plan to make to receive full credit on the blog.

Blog one (186 words)
Blog two (156 words)

3. The Global Warming Reader essays          (Source)

For rest of class, students will work on the essays from the reader.

First, they will go through their Twitter feed and see what main ideas other students Tweeted. They should note down the main ideas they believe should go into a summary (remember, students will need these summaries to help them write their first essay assignment, as well as their second blog). Students should "favorite" or "Retweet" any Tweets they think are especially helpful or insightful.

Second, students will work with a partner to answer the following questions (be sure to keep straight where you're getting your information, and use Google to look up any ideas or words you don't feel comfortable with).

Who is responsible for communicating evidence of climate change?
When have they communicated this? For how long?

What kind of evidence do we have for climate change?

Students should be able to explain the evidence for climate change to an "outsider" who knows nothing about it.