There's clearly a range of forms and approaches visible in these readings and
helping students to follow the ways these authors have put their essays together
-- and where they might have done something differently -- is a recurring focus
of our class sessions. We think one of the benefits of using actual academic
work is that these essays often have room for improvement and students can
usually see where the writer might have done more work to present the research
more effectively.
Here we provide a basic lesson plan for class discussion on writing moves
using Lowe's essay to illustrate, though this plan is easily adapted to other
readings, even to student writings.
Reading Lowe's "Colliding Feminisms: Britney Spears,
'Tweens,' and the Politics of Reception" as a writer: understanding the
writer's moves
Reading done in preparation:
-
Melanie Lowe’s
“Colliding Feminisms: Britney Spears, ‘Tweens,’ and the Politics of
Reception”
-
The assignment (Lowe is
used in Assignment Sequences: Cultural Politics and Public Discourse;
Gender Investigations; Reading Media)
-
Chapter 4:
Interviewing, especially the section “Special Cases: Focus Groups”
Class discussion/activity:
Objective: students
re-read Lowe’s piece as writers, looking for the way Lowe uses her focus
group data to make her argument
Task: class looks at
sections of Lowe’s article, looking for ways to talk about:
o
Lowe’s methodology
o
Lowe’s subtitle headings in connection to topic of the
sections
o
Lowe’s focus groups (students might read aloud from the focus
group quotation, the paragraph leading up to it and the paragraph after it,
noting how Lowe:
§
Moves in and out of focus group quotations
§
Introduces focus groups
§
Places herself in relation to the group
§
Makes points based on the evidence of the focus groups.
Time: one 75 minute class session
Next step: Students will consider which of Lowe’s
writing strategies they will try to use in their own papers.
Notes: Consider dividing the class into
groups to look at each of the moves identified above. Ask each group to
locate a specific place in the text that illustrates that move well and be
ready to describe to the rest of the class where Lowe makes similar moves
but perhaps in a slightly different way.
