Reviewing Leads on the Overhead
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Summary

Students write an essay about someone they know, making sure to incorporate various elements examined in class, including a Lead, a Description, a Dialog, a List, and a Metaphor/Simile. When they arrive in class, they separate these elements from the complete rough draft and drop them off in separate dropoff subfolders labeled accordingly. The instructor then opens the Lead dropoff subfolder and puts one student-submitted Lead after another on the overhead screen. Along with the students, the instructor makes suggestions for improvement. With all the Leads left open on the overhead screen but moved to one side, the class keeps track of the winning submissions. If time permits, the instructor then proceeds to another dropoff subfolder, such as Description, and repeats the process.

 

Target Courses I observed this lesson in a UWP 101 Advanced Composition course, although it has wide application in other UWP courses. It would work well for any writing assignment which includes a hook, trigger, or lead sentence or paragraph. It would also work well for elements or writing sub-tasks in documents other than essays (in engineering or science texts, for example).	Amount of Time Required The lesson took the full 80 minutes of class time to look at two or three essay elements. For the Leads, the class closely examined a dozen in about forty-five minutes; less time was necessary for ensuing essay elements.
Software You’ll Use Word, and the Classroom Dropoff Folder.	Prep Students write an essay about someone they know, making sure to incorporate various elements examined in class, including a Lead, a Description, a Dialog, a List, and a Metaphor/Simile. Before class, the instructor makes dropoff subfolders for these categories. Students arrive with their rough drafts read to submit.

 

LESSON PLAN

Background

In a previous class, students have examined various essay elements in class, including a Lead, a Description, a Dialog, a List, and a Metaphor/Simile. For the Lead, they have reviewed “Sample Leads by Susan Orlean.” They arrive in class with the rough draft of an essay about someone they know, a draft which incorporates these various essay elements.

Step 1: Students Drop Off Sections of Their Drafts in the Appropriate Dropoff Subfolders

Learning the following trick will help you view how many students have submitted their pieces very quickly. On the overhead projector, the instructor opens the list of all classroom folders, scrolls down to his class in particular, but instead of opening it, he leaves it on the “tree” and clicks on the + to view all the subfolders available inside. In this case, they include Lead, Description, Dialog, List, and Metaphor/Simile.

He now asks students to open the Word versions of their current drafts on their computers and identify the various essay elements. (Students might have bolded these elements while writing their essays so they can locate them easily.) For the next five minutes or so, students copy and paste these elements into new Word documents, naming and saving them, then dropping them off in the appropriate dropoff subfolder.

“Copy the lead,” the instructor says, “paste it into a file, give it a name, drop it off.” He circulates around the class helping students do so. “If you don’t want your name on the overhead screen,” he says, “then don’t paste it in.”

Since the “tree” is open, the instructor can quickly open any dropoff subfolder on the tree and view how many documents have been submitted so far.

With about fifteen or so submissions, the instructor says, “A couple more minutes and then I’ll settle for what I have.”

Step 2: The Instructor Solicits Class Input Evaluating the Submitted Leads

The instructor opens the dropoff subfolder title Leads and then opens the first Word document submitted. He usually enlarges the document to 150% or even 200% so we can read the type on screen.

As in most of the cases that follow, the lead is typically a short paragraph, which enables the instructor to read the paragraph aloud and make a few quick, obvious editorial changes. For example, he might cut a there-is construction and rephrase it, bold problem words like this without a following noun, cut any unnecessary words such as adverbs and very’s, separate any sentences that seem to belong to another paragraph. In many of the submissions, he’s able to point out what will probably be pervasive problems in the very first sentence.

Gradually, however, the instructor moves the discussion away from editorial work to deeper criticism of the lead. In many cases, the student is obviously imitating Susan Orleans’ lead strategies. The instructor notes as much, and usually makes a few initial positive statements about the lead before soliciting input from the class. What does the lead leave out?

“My only confusion is this,” he says, and zooms in on a problem area which either he or the class can sometimes fix. “Is there a way of making this specific?” he asks the class, and pushes them to come up with concrete examples that can serve as proof backing up a statement in the lead. Where a paragraph seems too general, he notes that an anecdote would help make the lead more specific. Sometimes he is able to supply an anecdote from his own personal experience as an example.

Contradictions in a given lead, even in tone, also offer opportunities for discussion. He might at times bolds what is obviously an untrue a claim, a “lies,” so he can interrogate it skeptically. In some cases, he might bold the best couple sentences or claims and delete the rest of the lead, allowing the class to focus on the usable material. Repeatedly, the instructor returns to the main topic of this particular essay, which is supposed to focus on a person the writer knows: “As a reader, what do I know about this person after reading the lead?” Often he bolds the best sentence in the lead, or the sentence he wants to see elaborated, the sentence that most intrigues.

Once he has finished with a lead, the instructor asks, “Does anybody want to argue with this as the winner?” If not, he closes it and moves on to the next lead. If he or someone in the class likes the lead, however, he says, “Let’s keep that one alive at least,” and leaves it open but shoves it aside on the overhead screen. He can then jump back to a superior lead to contrast it with an inferior one.

In the class I observed, students stayed interested in part because it was their writing being criticized on the overhead screen.

Step 3: The Instructor Picks a Winner and Continues to Another Dropoff Subfolder

Once the instructor has made his way through the list of submitted leads, he might have four or five finalists still open on the overhead screen. With the class’s input, he selects a winner, then moves on to another subfolder.