Now that students have created a research paper, it is important that they share what they have learned.
Students can create a blog or use software provided by your school (such as Microsoft Sharepoint) to create a website about their research.
Encourage students to display the research with rhetorical style. Ask students to show their biases and opinions about the research, in an academic way, just as they would on a social media post. Require that students include visuals and a comment section on their website for visitors to leave comments.
Make sure that students include their references (Works Cited) on their website.
Once students have created their websites ask the students to visit each other's websites and leave comments using the following sentence stems from Birkstein and Graff's book They Say/I Say.
Agreeing:
I agree with _____________ that _______________.
X is surely not right about ___________ because recent studies have shown that _______________.
X’s theory of ____________ is extremely useful because it sheds light on the difficult problem of ____________________.
Disagreeing:
Although X does not say so directly, she apparently assumes that __________________.
Though I concede that ______________, I still insist that ________________.
X’s assertion that ______________ does not fit the facts because __________________.
Optional Additional Tasks:
1. Before students visit each other's websites, ask them to conduct presentations to the class. Students could do this in one of three ways:
-- Persuasive Speech
-- Powerpoint Presentation
-- Walk through their websites for the class
2. Test students ability to use credible online sources by asking them to include article links in their comments that offer information that proves their claims.
3. Ask students to respond to comments on their website using the sentence stems and providing evidence from one of their sources or a new source.