Title Awards
Affiliated Project: Project 2, especially as a research paper; also works for Project 1 essays.
Purpose of Exercise: This activity addresses one element of the research paper genre, titles, while helping students to focus on their topic and thesis. Students will use the activity to think about how titles work and what they signal to readers, before moving to brainstorm their own titles. I find this activity to be useful towards the end of a unit, especially when students are stressed, because it gets them laughing and interested in their papers from new perspectives.
Description: Students will nominate titles for various awards (most likely to succeed, most athletic, most artistic, etc), then reflect on how these titles created expectations about the texts. Students will then generate titles for their paper based off a list of categories and reflect on how creating titles affected their understanding of the paper. You will need a projector, a list of varied and interesting titles (anothologies and readers are great; just go down the table of contents), and a list of awards.
Suggested Time: 50 minutes (Can be extended to fill entire class period or condensed to 30 min, depending on how many categories you go through and how much reflection you build in)
Procedure:
Part One: Explain to students that titles are one element of the academic research paper genre and that they help readers by giving them an idea of the content, tone, or perspective of the essay. Ask students if they're familiar with the practice of senior superlatives or mock elections (I find the name varies from place to place) and tell them that we're going to run through a similar process, but for the collection of titles you put up on the projector. As you read a category, students will nominate a title for the award. After you have a few nominations (2-3), ask students to vote, and award the winner. You can write the winners on the board or type the awards in next to the titles that win them.
Some award categories: Most likely to succeed; most artistic; most boring; most likely to be (on) a reality show; most popular; most dramatic; most likely to brighten up your day; most blunt. You can be creative, too, and use awards like best car or others that your students remember from their past experiences.
After you run through your list of awards, ask students to discuss or write about how these titles affected their perception of the works without ever seeing the text. What does a title say to your audience? What conventions might particular genres have for titles, and how does this reflect their rhetorical situation?
Part Two: Next, have students pull out their own papers. Tell them to look over their drafts and to come up with five titles for their paper using the following list.
One Word Title
Song Lyric Title
The Science Journal Title that Tells You Exactly What The Paper's About
Clickbait Title--This Student Gave their Paper a Title; You Won't Believe What Happened Next
In Which the Title is an Extra-Long Sentence, as there Existed a Time When Books Had no Back Covers or Blurbs and Titles Were a Way to Advertise the Content
My Cliche Title
Can Your Title Ask a Question?
Steal a Title--Borrow a Title from a Book, Movie, or Album
If there's time, you can have students go around and share their best title. Ask students to discuss or write about how being forced to come up with a title now, before the end, affected their understanding of their paper. Ask them how they might use titling their paper to help in the writing process (generating ideas, focusing their topic, reminding them of their purpose). I find it helpful to also remind them to be flexible--a title that fits now may change as the paper progresses.