Saturday, October 1, 2011

Starter Activity for Problematizing a Topic Essay (Essay #1, 1010)

My students enjoyed this short activity to prep their heads for the concept of "problematizing."

1.  Take three volunteers and have them choose which side of the topic they will represent (pro, con, neutral) without telling them the topic.

2.  Have the volunteers come up to the board.  Give them the topic and two minutes to see who can generate the most examples/reasons for their side.

3.  Alternately, divide the class into the three groups (pro, con, neutral) and have them fire answers up to the their representative at the board.

4.  Possible topics:  Is graffiti art?  White lies.  Joining the military.  Road construction in Utah.

Stephenie Swindle

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks Stephanie for sharing. It helps all of us to see in-class activities that support the assignments!

Gae Lyn

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this idea. There is not much on the Web about this essay.

Unknown said...

Off-topic comment! I found a site where there is a list of all students
http://studentnis.org/stl/?uni=utah