Collaborative Study Guides Instructions
We will be creating collaborative study guides for several of our readings for this course. You can find the links to the study guides for your section by hovering over “Study Guides” in the course menu above and clicking on the link for your section. These study guides will work to flesh out the context of our readings as well as help to define unknown concepts and vocabulary words. These guides will be collaborative, meaning we will all contribute to them. I will start the study guide with some background and key concepts for the reading. You are required to make at least 2 distinct contributions to the “Key Concepts,” “Questions and First Attempt Answers,” or “Vocabulary Words and Definitions” sections of the study guide before the day contributions are due on the course schedule. Do not delete anyone else’s work or any existing text in the study guide.
The sections of the study guides are:
Background:
I will fill in this section before the reading is due. You can start your assigned reading by looking over this section of the study guide, or turn to it after you have made a first pass at the reading on your own. You do not need to contribute to this section.
Key Concepts:
What are some of the key ideas or concepts in this reading? I will sometimes get this section started, and invite you to add any ideas or concepts here that you found interesting and important for understanding the overall meaning of this reading. The format for this section: underline the key concept and then provide a few sentences explaining it and its importance to the reading.
Questions and First Attempt Answers:
What did you find confusing about the reading? Was there an idea you didn’t understand or that you wanted to know more about? Are you curious about how this reading relates to other readings or ideas we’ve discussed in class? Here you can record questions you have, and a first attempt at an answer, if you have one. Or, you can answer or add to someone else’s question here. These should be in question form, not a list of what you found confusing—be honest and help each other out in this section!
Vocabulary Words and Definitions:
We should all be working to expand our vocabularies all the time! Record any words that you didn’t know from the reading along with a definition from a reputable dictionary, such as Oxford. Include the page on which the word you are defining is found in our reading and a link to the definition you are using, or reference its source in MLA format.