Unit Overview

(20% of course grade)

Goals

The purposes of this assignment are to give you practice in

· developing a critical inquiry-based unit, centered on a line of inquiry that requires critical thinking

· integrating very different kinds of texts to create "intertextuality"

· using a poststructuralist approach to teaching literature

Assignment

Each of you will develop a unit overview (NOT the whole unit) that centers on a series of focus questions. Your unit overview should have three parts:

· Focus Questions

· Text Set

· Rationale

Creating a unit isn't a linear first-second-third process, but these are parts you'll need to develop, interdependently. (Myself, I usually start with a text--and then look at its underlying assumptions; my focus question usually emerges from that kind of analysis.) You will need to decide what the central question will be and explore ways that question might be developed or broken down into other questions. You will also need to find appropriate texts that can be scaffolded from simple to complex. Ultimately, the unit must cohere as a single unit centered on a distinct line of inquiry. Several outstanding examples are posted on our course page, right under our wikis list.

Length

Usually about 2-3 pages, single-spaced, with line breaks between paragraphs in the Rationale.

Due Dates

See calendar for due dates for first draft, peer workshop, final draft.

Specifics on the 3 parts of the Unit Overview

Focus question(s)

o should be limited to 1-3 open-ended questions that can be applied to any number of texts and produce multiple answers, depending on the texts, questions that require critical thinking.

o will also do just that: focus the discussion, establishing the main point under investigation, posing a problem that is personally relevant and socially significant.

o should be rich enough to allow for multiple iterations. You have to be able to get a lot of mileage out of your questions to keep teenagers interested for at least two weeks.

Text set

o should consist of about 5 texts. (Short pieces--i.e., movie clips, poems--are included in this count.)

o must include at least one text from either The Language of Literature or The Elements of Literature, available for check out in Media Reserves, basement of Holland Library.

o must include at least one text from popular culture (i.e., a movie clip, a chart from USA Today, a trashy song, a commercial)

o must include at least one informational/non-literary text, something generally viewed as a "reputable" source (i.e., a newspaper article; a sociological article on why middle school girls are so often vicious backstabbers; a reputable website; a clip from a documentary; a chart from a reputable source). Mix it up, juxtaposing divergent texts that then "talk" to one another in complex ways—to create what poststructuralists call "intertextuality."

o must fit your focus question(s) AND be age-appropriate.. The texts must work together to create a dynamic worthy of investigation over at least a couple of weeks, if not longer period of time. You also need to indicate where each piece comes from, so that others can find these materials easily; otherwise, please attach materials that will be hard to find.

Rationale

o should explain your choices to an audience who will not necessarily know the texts you've chosen, and even if they did, will probably not know why the hell you're putting this one with that one, asking the same focus question of both. (If you're doing some pretty wild juxtapositions, you'll get that kind of response—which is good.)

o should summarize each piece as succinctly as you can and then explain the angle you're plumbing for the inquiry at hand. At the same time, that angle should not be too fixed and predictable, or else you're flattening your inquiry and shutting down discussion and foreclosing critical thinking.

o should indicate the ambiguities of a given text that will complicate and advance the inquiry in significant ways.

o should be well-written. Your prose should sing, and your final product needs to be spit-shined polished and proofread.

Evaluation

See rubric posted on our course page