As the first stage of building our course’s skills and essential knowledge, you and your team should begin with the following foundational activities. (Please note: As you and your teammates decide what work to accomplish in and out of class, carefully consider how best to leverage your time together. What kinds of work are best accomplished individually (our of class)? What kinds of activities benefit most from the live exchange of ideas that classroom time makes possible?
- On your own, read our textbook and respond to its various questions and prompts. Always respond to open-ended questions in complete sentences. And when responding to close-ended questions (multiple-choice), note the way the wrong answers are wrong. Often they’re wrong in some small yet significant way, so try to prepare yourself to discuss this with your teammates.
- With your teammates, discuss our textbook, its explanations of skills and essential knowledge, and its questions. And when you discuss the questions, give yourselves the time to explore the differences in your individual thinking. Making the time to articulate these differences can be powerfully instructive, in large part because good conversations can spontaneously generate new and important insights.
- Only after you’ve made the time to discuss them, check your responses against the textbook’s answers (Unit 1, Unit 2, Unit 3, Unit 4, Unit 5, Unit 6, Unit 7, Unit 8, and Unit 9) and discuss any differences or misunderstandings. When you discuss close-ended questions (multiple-choice), be sure to talk about HOW you selected your response and WHY the wrong answers are wrong, especially if the reason is subtle and unnoticed by one or more of your teammates. If your team needs clarification, ask Mr. Simone.
- “Composing on Your Own”: As you begin each unit, look ahead at the “Composing on Your Own” prompts to get an idea of how they will build on each other across the unit. This will allow you to decide how and when to integrate that writing with other writing that your team may decide to do. (Unit 1, Unit 2, Unit 3, Unit 4, Unit 5, Unit 6, Unit 7, Unit 8, and Unit 9)