This Communication and Argumentation seminar is an intensive writing workshop that focuses on argumentation and communication. Students learn to write and present their ideas in cogent, persuasive arguments and other analytical frameworks. Reading and writing assignments and other exercises stress the connections between clear thinking, critical reading, and effective writing.

The 11th grade learning experience consists of 7 mostly month-long units aligned to the Common Core State Standards, with available course material for teachers and students easily accessible online. Over the course of the year there is a steady progression in text complexity levels, sophistication of writing tasks, speaking and listening activities, and increased opportunities for independent and collaborative work. Rubrics and student models accompany many writing assignments.Throughout the 11th grade year, in addition to the Common Read texts that the whole class reads together, students each select an Independent Reading book and engage with peers in group Book Talks. Students move from learning the class rituals and routines and genre features of argument writing in Unit 11.1 to learning about narrative and informational genres in Unit 11.2: The American Short Story. Teacher resources provide additional materials to support each unit.

In this unit, students will take a look at the historical vision of the American Dream as put together by our Founding Fathers. They will be asked: How, if at all, has this dream changed? Is this dream your dream? First students will participate in an American Dream Convention, acting as a particular historical figure arguing for his or her vision of the American Dream, and then they will write an argument laying out and defending their personal view of what the American Dream should be.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Students read and annotate closely one of the documents that they feel expresses the American Dream.
Students participate in an American Dream Convention, acting as a particular historical figure arguing his or her vision of the American Dream.
Students write a paper, taking into consideration the different points of view in the documents read, answering the question “What is the American Dream now?”
Students write their own argument describing and defending their vision of what the American Dream should be.

GUIDING QUESTIONS

These questions are a guide to stimulate thinking, discussion, and writing on the themes and ideas in the unit. For complete and thoughtful answers and for meaningful discussions, students must use evidence based on careful reading of the texts.

What has been the historical vision of the American Dream?
What should the American Dream be? (What should we as individuals and as a nation aspire to?)
How would women, former slaves, and other disenfranchised groups living during the time these documents were written respond to them?

BENCHMARK ASSESSMENT: Cold Read

During this unit, on a day of your choosing, we recommend you administer a Cold Read to assess students’ reading comprehension. For this assessment, students read a text they have never seen before and then respond to multiple-choice and constructed-response questions. The assessment is not included in this course materials.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Many factors influence recovery from surgical ACL reconstruction, and defining these is key to achieving the best outcomes. While the elements linked to surgical success in adult populations are well defined, they aren’t so clear for younger patients. New research from the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York suggests that for these patients, age matters when it comes to protecting the knee. That conclusion stems from an evaluation of 324 athletes under 20 years of age who underwent ACL reconstruction following a sports injury. A key consideration when operating on this group is minimizing the risk of growth disturbances. Children and young adolescents haven’t reached skeletal maturity, which has led to the development of age-specific surgical techniques. Researchers compared several of these approaches among groups divided based on skeletal age, school age distribution, surgical technique, and graft selection. Clinical follow-up was performed for at least 2 years..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

In this activity, students will be playing Jeopardy to review various French vocabulary and grammar topics.

In this activity, students will play a game of Jeopardy to review various French vocabulary and grammar topics.

This video is for elementary age students and teaches students how to revise. The video was produced by students for students.

Communication is the heart of business. Short emails, complex reports, private chats, impassioned pitches, formal presentations, and team meetings move information and ideas around an organization, define strategy, and drive decisions. Business communication is concise, direct, clear, and compelling.

Madeline Noonan meets with all of her students individually during writer's workshop. In each conference, she specifically identifies strengths and two goals. Students continue to revise and rewrite throughout the workshop process and build confidence in their writing at the same time.

Revising a team-based academic research paper presents multiple challenges. Students are often given general advice to improve their prose: create a logical narrative, be concise, use the active tense and a variety of verbs, make references clear, use effective topic sentences, etc. Yet, for new writers, a laundry list of good writing practices can seem overwhelming, even debilitating, to improve their paper. Complicating matters is the challenge of writing a coherent document within a team and tactfully offering constructive criticism for co-authors. The team-based peer review guides are intended to address these challenges by sensitizing students to common writing errors and offering a straightforward approach to revise them, while providing direction on how to offer thoughtful comments for co-authors. The peer review guides contain four exercises that offer a step-by-step approach to support student’s revision process as they move from macro-level, big picture structural revisions to meso-level scrutiny at the paragraph level to micro-level line-editing. The four exercises are designed to be completed sequentially as students progress through their writing, but they can also be completed independently on an as needed basis.

This three-week module, centered on a focal case, represents the second part of the Department’s introduction to the challenges of reflection and action in professional planning practice. As such, it builds on the concepts and tools in 11.201 and 11.202 in the fall semester. Working in teams, students will deliver a 20-minute oral briefing, with an additional 10 minutes for questions and comments, in the last week of the class (as detailed on the assignment and posted course schedule). The teams will brief invited guests (“briefees”) taking the roles of decision makers. DUSP faculty and fellow students may also be in attendance.

Production of Educational Videos is an introduction to technical communication that is situated in the production of educational videos; the assignments are all focused on the production of videos that teach some aspect of MIT’s first-year core curriculum. The objective of these assignments is improvement in both communication ability and communication habits; these improvements are effected by providing participants with instruction, practice, feedback, and the opportunity for reflection. In addition to improvements in communication skills, improvement is expected in students’ attitude towards writing, oral presentations, and collaboration; as the semester progresses, students should feel confident of their ability to write, present, and collaborate.

Production of Educational Videos is an introduction to technical communication that is situated in the production of educational videos; the assignments are all focused on the production of videos that teach some aspect of MIT’s first-year core curriculum. The objective of these assignments is improvement in both communication ability and communication habits; these improvements are effected by providing participants with instruction, practice, feedback, and the opportunity for reflection. In addition to improvements in communication skills, improvement is expected in students’ attitude towards writing, oral presentations, and collaboration; as the semester progresses, students should feel confident of their ability to write, present, and collaborate.

Great works of fiction often take us to far-off places; they sometimes conduct us on journeys toward a deeper understanding of what’s right next door. We’ll read, discuss, and interpret a range of short and short-ish works: The reading list will be chosen from among such texts as “Gilgamesh,” Homer’s Odyssey (excerpts), Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (excerpts), Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Saleh’s Season of Migration to the North, Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, John Cheever’s “The Swimmer,” Coetzee’s The Life and Times of Michael K, Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle,” Toni Morrison’s Jazz, H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine, Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Beckett’s How It Is, Calvino’s Invisible Cities, Forster’s A Passage to India. As a CI-H class, this subject will involve substantial practice in argumentative writing and oral communication.

This activity is designed to help students reflect on the role of revision in the composition process. Designed for an end-of-semester portfolio project for a high school Creative Writing course, it could be easily adapted to be used in any classroom setting in which students have been expected to write and revise an original work.

Self-edit worksheet for Essay 3. Use this worksheet to help you with revisions before final submission.

MIT students are challenged daily to solve for x, to complete four problem sets, two papers, and prepare for an exam worth 30% of their grade… all in one night. When they do stop to breathe, it’s for a shower or a meal. What does this have to do with creative writing? Everything. Creative writing and MIT go together better than you might imagine.