Dinner Party Prewriting
Purpose: To help students use research in their essays and begin organizing their information, specifically in terms of synthesizing sources. This works well with a 2135 research paper, but it could work well with any paper utilizing secondary materials.
Suggested Time: 25-35 minutes, and possibly more
Description: Students will place sources in conversation with one another by imagining they are at a dinner party with one another. How would authors converse, which authors would agree and which would disagree, what points of tension would emerge when seated side-by-side?
Procedure: Introduce the topic by explaining the task. For this prewriting exercise, students will arrange their ten sources around a table. Rather than give them a template, let them draw a table in any shape they want.
To give them an idea of how this works, show a clip from The Office. It’s not necessary to show the whole clip, but the first two and a half minutes are awkward and uncomfortable.
Encourage them to make sure that this doesn’t happen at their dinner party and that there is enough space. Suggest that they “seat” sources with like information near each other. Also, tell students to put their sources in conversation with one another. They can do this by drawing speech bubbles, writing a script, or charting them like I’ve done in the Parks and Rec example below:
Example:
Conversations
Donna, Tom, and Jean Ralphio are discussing fashion, a topic they have in common and agree upon.
Ron isn’t talking to anybody, but he is judging Tom for being too commercial because he largely disagrees with Tom's interests and points.
Ben and Leslie are simultaneously planning a campaign and flirting with each other because their identities (articles) can build upon each other.
Garry is alone in the corner because nobody likes Garry, but he’s trying to join every conversation.
Recommend that they come up with as many conversations as they possibly can, as this will help them generate ideas for body paragraphs of their research paper, as well as see who goes where.
When they are finished, have them share with a partner. This verbalization gives them a chance to clarify, or to see points that need clarified. They can also tweet their connections or post them in a Discussion Board thread.
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