Context, Objectives, & Rationale

Context

The Ballad of Black Tom is set in New York City during the Jazz Age. However, the novella raises several issues relevant to contemporary America, including immigration and police violence. Reading, annotating, discussing, and writing op-eds on these issues challenges students to connect the novella with modern events; to understand how writers use the rhetorical devices logos, ethos, and pathos; and to refine their own argumentation skills.

Learning Objectives

Student will:

1. Strengthen their reading skills by reviewing 12 reading strategies, identifying which reading strategies they’re using at a particular junction in the op-ed, and explaining why they’re deploying the strategy.
2. Identify when and how writers use logos, ethos, and pathos to persuade an audience.
3. Annotate to make connections between prior knowledge and a writer’s argument, raise objections, point out an argument’s strengths and weaknesses, ask questions, and try to answer classmates’ questions.
4. Transfer close reading and online discussion skills to non-digital texts and classroom discussions.

Rationale

Students will use the browser extension Hypothes.is to collaboratively annotate the op-eds. I decided to design the lesson around online collaborative annotation because it has been shown to increase student understanding (Miller, Zyto, Karger, Yoo, & Mazur, 2016) and intrinsic motivation (Dean & Schulten, 2015). The sequencing of the annotating, in which students are asked to complete tasks of increasing difficulty, decreases a student’s intrinsic cognitive load by utilizing a simple-to-complex design strategy (Van Merriënboer & Sweller, 2010).

Finally, by using an online social annotation tool, students are actively constructing their knowledge together, a mode of learning that aligns with dialectical constructivism. My students occupy several zones of development. If Student A is struggling, I can ensure he is in the same annotation group as Student B, who happens to be in Student A’s proximal zone of development, and ask both students questions with the intention that Student B’s annotation skills will be of use to Student A. My rationale for such a structure is Vygotsky’s assertion that the “developing child…imitates the cognitive skills modeled by skilled members of the community” (O’Donnell, p. 65). By emphasizing the community’s power for instruction, I’ll be utilizing the research from Bandura (2000) that illustrates “When individuals participate in a valued activity together, they may experience collective efficacy” (O’Donnell, p. 64), meaning that not only will Student A benefit but so will Student B.

References

Bandura, A. (2000). Exercise of human agency through collective efficacy. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9, 75-78. doi: 10.1111/1467-8721.00064

Dean, J., & Schulten, K. (2015, November 12). Skills and strategies: Annotating to engage, analyze, connect and create. The New York Times. Retrieved from: https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/skills-and-strategies-annotating-to-engage-analyze-connect-and-create/?_r=0

Miller, K., Zyto S., Karger, D., Yoo, J., & Mazur, E. (2016). Analysis of student engagement in an online annotation system in the context of a flipped introductory physics class. Physical Review Physics Education Research, 12, 1-12. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.12.020143

O’Donnell, A.M. (2012). Constructivism. In Harris, K.R., Graham, S., and Urdan, T. (Eds.), APA Educational Psychology Handbook: Vol. 1. Theories, Constructs, and Critical Issues (pp. 61-84). doi: 10.1037/13273-003

Van Merriënboer, J. J. G., & Sweller, J. (2010), Cognitive load theory in health professional education: Design principles and strategies. Medical Education, 44(1), 85–93. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2923.2009.03498.x