Core 1:
- Explore-on: How are these poems the same as Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken, and how are they different?
- The Connection between change and persuasion.
- How do you change someone’s mind?
- With a partner, create a Smart Notebook file that reveals your thinking.
- Include images that represent your ideas.
- Extensions:
- Read your AR book.
Core 2:
- Write-on: How can working on sports writing help to improve other kinds of writing?
- Share out a few sports writing pieces.
- Read and take notes on the next section of “Thou Shalt Not Kill Thy Sentences.”
- How are we going to use this stuff.
- Extensions:
- Read your AR book.
Core 3:
- Write-on: How do plays explore words better than any other writing medium?
- Prepare to perform plays for video camera. (If you require copies of your play, we can make them with the document camera.)
- Which plays could you understand even if the sesquipedalian words were bogging down your understanding?
- What helped you to understand these plays.
- If we have time, what “lotteries” exist in our society? (Which things to we sacrifice for the sake of order and tradition.)
- Extensions:
- Read your AR book.
Core 4:
- Explore-on: How are these poems the same as Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken, and how are they different?
- Introduce concept of thought exploration and Mind Mining: We are going to use a lot of paper and markers and ideas today. Today is going to be about producing the most ideas. We will worry about the best ideas later. You see, volume has its advantages sometimes. When you produce ideas voluminously, there is this thing that happens in your mind. You stop seeing boundaries and you start making connections. When you are constantly worried about getting a right answer, it is hard to see what isn’t obvious. We need to be able to say things that are divergent, that are connected but not not the same. Get into groups of four or five. Make sure that you are with people who you can work well with and not those who will distract you.
- Brainstorm ideas about change and white down ALL responses.
- What ideas come to mind when you think about change?
- What kinds of things change? What is it about them that changes?
- How do you know when something has changed? What evidence do you look for to determine whether a change has occurred?
- Categorize the ideas that were written down, putting them into groups and giving each group a title.
- How could you categorize these ideas into groups?
- What could you call each group? Why?
- Do all of your changes fall into groups? Might some of them belong in more than one group?
- Is there a different way you might categorize your ideas? What other categories might you use?
- What are some of the characteristics of change, based on the ideas you have written?
- Brainstorm a list of things that do not change.
- What are some things that do not change? What are some things that always seem the same or always happen the same way?
- What evidence or proof do you have that these things do not change?
- How might you group the things that do not change? What can you call each of these groups?
- How are the groups of things that do not change similar to or different from the groups of things that do change?
- Think about the following ideas whether they show change: routines or habits, rules and regulations, table manners, laws, customs of cultures. Explain your answers. If they show change, where would they fit into your categories of changes? If they do not, where would they fit into your categories of things that do not change?
- Make generalizations about change.
- A generalization is something that is always or almost always true. What generalizations can you make about change? Use your examples and categories to guide your thinking, and write several statements that are generalizations about change.
- The Five Generalizations/Truths of change.
- Change is linked to time.
- How is change linked to time?
- Are all changes linked to time in the same way?
- How do some of the changes you listed relate to time?
- Change may be positive or negative.
- What is progress?
- Does change always represent progress?
- How might a change be thought of as both positive and negative?
- Change may be perceived as orderly or random.
- Can we predict change?
- Select specific changes from your list, and describe which aspects of them can be predicted and which are unpredictable.
- Even when we know a change will take place, can we always predict exactly how things will turn out?
- Change is everywhere.
- Does change apply to all areas of our world?
- What are some specific changes which are universal, or happen everywhere, and some specific changes that may apply to only a small area at a given time?
- Change may happen naturally or be caused by people.
- What causes change?
- What influence do people have over changes in nature?
- What influence does nature have over the changes people intended?
- Change is linked to time.
- (Really Number 3) Extensions:
- After all of our work with change today, answer the following question in your writer’s notebook or on your blog: How are change and persuasion related?
