Lesson Plan: 7 Steps to Your Position Paper
Objective: The goal of this lesson is in a way just to comfort the students about beginning to write their Position Papers. At this point, they have already researched and written about their self-chosen topic; now, it's time for the big paper. After doing so much with their topics already, I can understand that some students may feel overwhelmed or overwhelmed on where to start an 8-10 page position paper. I made a short presentation giving them just 7 steps to help guide them through the process. Half of the material is stuff that they have already done at this point (chosen a topic, researched, etc.) so hopefully that should naturally make them feel more prepared to write such a long paper. I hope that by the end of this lesson plan, the students feel not only more comfortable but ready to tackle on their Position Papers. I also want them to understand and clarify what makes a position paper unique compared to other papers that they've already written on their topics.
Materials:
Outline of lesson: Write out the sequence of the lesson from start to finish, with time stamps.
Materials:
- Internet access (UTA)
- Projector (UTA)
- Presentation is provided at the end of the lesson plan (UTA)
- Students don't need to prepare anything other than giving their undivided attention during the presentation (put away laptops and phones).
Outline of lesson: Write out the sequence of the lesson from start to finish, with time stamps.
- 0:00-0:02: Introduce the topic to the students. This is really just to give advice to the students and suggestions about how to make the process of writing the position paper. Talk about how at this point in the semester, you've done research on your topic and written about it in the Inquiry and Digital Forum. Now it's time for everything to come together with your position papers!
- Also note when you introduce the topic that it's completely normal to feel overwhelmed at this point because you've done so much work (even written full papers) and yet might not know where to start with the position paper.
- 0:02-0:25: Deliver the presentation (provided). I have provided explanations of each section of the presentation below.
- Short Intro Discussion: The purpose of this slide is to just get some student engagement started. It's a simple, open-ended question, "How are you feeling?" that will hopefully encourage students to say if they feel ready or overwhelmed at this point before starting to write the Position Paper. Have as many students participate as they want (they don't have to raise hands) but try to get at least 2 students to respond before moving on.
- Pick Your Topic: This is in the presentation to make students feel as though they've already started on their Position Papers before actually writing it. It's an 8-10 page paper so knowing that they've already chosen a topic is actually a big accomplishment for a writing assignment as big as the Position Paper. Emphasize that picking a topic that they're passionate about is important since they had the freedom to choose their own topics because it will leave the students hopefully interested to do research and figure out what their position is.
- Research: This slide is for multiple things. The students should feel comforted with this slide as well because they've already done a lot of research with their library workshops and Annotated Bibliographies. This is to also advise them to group their research together so that they can see in which places they might need more research, because you can never have too much of it. Then, talk about credibility of sources (what makes a credible source, how to introduce credibility in their papers, etc.). The next slide shows a color-coded example of how a credible author should be introduced, quoted, and cited.
- Thesis: Make sure that the students understand how the thesis of a Position Paper differs from a thesis of an Inquiry (since they're both on the same topic.) The thesis of the Position Paper should describe what plan of action he or she wants to take on their topic. So, when coming up with a thesis, you need to ask yourself where you stand on your topic. One must think about what they want to be changed about their topic or how to resolve the conflict involved. Emphasize that knowing your thesis is one of the very first steps with writing the Position Paper. You can't write anything unless you know what your plan of action is. There is time set aside for students to jot down their answers to the questions in the slide and then discuss with their peers.
- Outline: To me, this is the most important part in preparing for not just the Position Paper, but any paper at all. Especially when it comes to longer papers like this one, which is 8-10 pages total, outlining makes the process much easier and more comfortable. Outlining basically prepares the entire paper in a shortened version, so you can start to imagine in your head what your finished product is going to look like. Making an outline makes you think about everything together before you actually write paper; in doing so, the contents of your paper will connect much smoother and make your paper stronger as a whole. Emphasize that if they get anything from this presentation, outline! Another part of this slide is that outlining is very open-ended and everyone can find their own way of how they want to make theirs. It's simply a strategy to get started and prepare something before you actually start. There is an example of an outline that I did before in which we will discuss traits of my outline and then give students time to write down how they are going to format their outlines.
- Write: Writing is the hard part. Hopefully with their outline, writing shouldn't be as stressful and daunting as it was before. I added some tips like taking breaks (sometimes food breaks because of how much energy you use when you write) and putting your phone away when writing because I thought that they were good tips to help with focusing. I also added to take it only a couple paragraphs at a time so that you're never writing too much at once. Here we will also ask if there's anything else that they have found helpful when they're writing papers.
- Review & Edit: This slide includes tips for the review and editing process. It's important to remember that the first draft is just a draft; the review process is important. I added that the thesis should be around page 2 for reference (looking back at my Position Paper) as a tip to help them with their introductions since I wrote that if they feel confident in anything, have it be the introduction. This is because it's easy to get lost when writing pages upon pages of a position paper, so whenever things feel like they've hit a roadblock, they can simply read over their introduction again and relate it back to the content in their current working body paragraph.
- Turn It In: I ended on this note that with such a long way to go, once you turn it in it's done! I wanted to end the presentation on a positive note and emphasize that once you're done, you're done.
- 0:25-0:30: Wrap up. Allow time for students to have questions.