Course Description Freshman Seminars are offered in many departments at UW-Milwaukee, and are seminar-style classes capped at twenty students that are meant to engage students in university-level thinking, reading, writing and discussion through collaborative exploration of a very specific topic. In this particular Freshman Seminar, students read seminal satirists, explore modern popular adaptations of satirical techniques, and are required to write short response papers, a 3-5 page satire analysis, and a short creative satire on a topic of their choice. The lesson fits into the curriculum about two-thirds of the way through the semester, as students are working on their creative satire project. This type of activity, though, could certainly be adapted to fit any writing assignment as long as there is a sample of this type of work from a student not currently in the class. The lesson takes about sixty minutes to complete, and is best done in the context of a small classroom (15-30 students).

Executive Summary The purpose of this study is structure an activity that effectively helps students to see multiple uses for sample writing that is shared in the classroom. Students are asked to participate in two sets of small groups to discuss a sample paper, and the ways it could be read and used effectively. Each small group meets for 15-20 minutes. The first group brainstorms how to read the sample paper through a particular pedagogical lens, while the second group focuses on synthesizing the lenses represented. The group summaries demonstrate that when students are given a carefully constructed lesson, they are able to recognize and discuss multiple perspectives of a text and then synthesize them collaboratively. Additionally, a pattern emerged from our reading of student self-reflections: students overwhelmingly claimed that the lesson will both help them consider and analyze their audiences and consider multiple viewpoints when reading and writing.

Complete Report: Using Sample Papers Effectively Click here for our full lesson study report.

The Lesson Below are links to the lesson plan and the materials used to teach it. The Lesson This link contains the lesson portion of the Complete Report. Overview and Handouts Click here for an overview of prompts to give to students as well as a set of handouts.

The Study Below are links to the study of the lesson. The Study This link contains the study portion of the Complete Report. Observation Checklists This link contains the observation checklists used in the analysis of the lesson study.