ENGL 270 American Literature: Panels Assignment

ENGL 270 American Literature | Gregory Eiselein | Fall 2002

Discussion Assignment: Panels

Basic Assignment. Seven times this semester, I will give a three-person panel of students the charge to facilitate class discussions around a particular text for the class period. Each student will serve on one panel.

These panels will give you the chance to work in small groups to develop questions, ideas, presentations, and approaches for directing class discussions. The class will be yours to lead. If you like kinesthetic activities and think you could devise one to help the class understand the assigned text better, then do an activity. If you like lively aural discussions, formulate some questions and instigate a conversation. Organize the class and the discussion in whatever way seems most productive and most interesting to you and your group. Whatever you do, your panel aim should be to help the other students in the class understand, contextualize, appreciate, or think critically about the assigned text.

I will expect each member of the panel to participate in both the planning of the class as well as the in-class discussion.

Written Work. The final part of this panels assignment involves writing. One week following your panel, you should turn in to me a typed (double-spaced) two-page reflection on your panel. In this short paper, discuss:

• What were the major aims of your panel? What were you trying to do?
• Which part or aspect of your panel did you find most successful? Why?
• Which part or aspect of your panel did you find least successful? Why?
• What did you learn about your text (or yourself) while preparing the panel?
• How did your group work together? Who did what? What was your major contribution to the group effort?

Scheduling and Preferences. In order to coordinate the various class sessions and the reading schedule with your interests as students, I need to know which authors and texts most interest you. On the attached preferences sheet, rank the authors and texts. Keep this sheet for your reference. Complete and hand the attached sheet on or before Monday, September 9.

Dates. On or before Monday, September 9, I will collect panel preference sheets. I will schedule panels during a regular class session sometime between September 23 and December 6. Your panel response papers are due exactly one week after your panel. The very last day to hand in a reflection paper would be Friday, December 13.