The Minute Thesis (p.106-107)

Does anyone use this activity in their classes and/or want to try it? I am going to try this in my British Literature to 1800 class (we're currently reading Twelfth Night) to help students make connections between Elizabethan poetry and the ideals of the Renaissance that Shakespeare is repsonding to. After I do it, I'll repsond to this as a comment. If anyone else wants to try, respond as a comment and let me know how it went. I realize this is geared toward literature/humanities in his quote, but I think it can be used in a wide variety of classes--but let me know if you see obvious limitations. 

Here's the relevant passage:

"My single good idea consists of a game called the minute thesis, and it represents in some ways the germ of this book, in that it constitutes an ideal small teaching ac tivity: free, easy, and capable to use in any size class, for any length of time as you wish, from 10 minutes to the full class period...I wrote the name of the seven novels we had read on the board in a single column; in a second column, I wrote a list of themes that we had seen in various novels throughout the semester. I handed a marker to a student in the front row, asked her to walk up to the board a circle a single theme, and then asked her to draw lines connecting that theme to two different novels. Then I asked the students to spend 1 minute thinking about a thesis for an argument that would explain how those two novels connected to that theme" (106-107). 

Comments

  1. Ken HadaOctober 11, 2017 at 3:20 PM

    I often do something similar, but not on the board (I don't remember that). I have them write / list discussion points in their notebook, then ask for oral responses to what has been listed. Then comment, and ask others to respond to those who volunteered some of the content of their lists. In literature, especially, I find it necessary to often be reminding of turning hunches, observations, ideas into relevant questions, leading toward significant writing points they use/develop later.

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  2. Joshua GrassoOctober 13, 2017 at 12:50 PM

    That's great, since Lang often talks about how students' hunches and raw ideas can be transformed into something more significant if we latch onto them early enough. Often, students have ideas and just throw them away, or disregard them, not realizing that a true thesis, or paper, or even a book is built out of such uhnches! I think what you're doing is pretty much the same thing...I do like the idea that a student goes to the board and makes a connection that the entire class has to quickly follow up on.

    One thing I noticed, though, is that students tend to only go for the most obvious connection. So I had to make some 'stranger' connections and ask them to build a thesis from that. Students often look for explicit connections (such as, two stories where people die the same way, or two stories where prophecies are fulfilled, etc.), rather than more implicit connections, that are more thematic or even rely on a linguistic connection (poems using similar metaphors, for example). So I think it's more fun to make an off-the-wall connection to a theme and two works they wouldn't expect. The students scowled a little at first, but we had a great discussion from it ultimately. And I chose works where I didn't even see an obvious connection...but by gosh, we found it!

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  3. AnonymousOctober 16, 2017 at 11:22 AM

    Though I've done something like this before, I find even in my writing classes, that if I do a short fill in the blank quiz about the essay they're writing, as they're drafting, they can better figure out how to stay on purpose. So, it's not thesis driven, but the thesis is part of the quick quiz. Lang talks about those earlier in the book. In the Capstone class, we used something like this to make connections over the whole Language unit. I told them to look for Power, Education, and Geographical themes. It helped them stay focused with all the information about the History of the English Language module.

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    Replies
    1. Joshua GrassoOctober 17, 2017 at 3:19 PM

      That's a great approach going into a unit, since it reminds them that there's a method to our madness, and we're expecting them to follow the "crumbs' of thought as they travel. It makes things seem much less disconnected and keeps them on track. That's a clever variation on his theme and something I would like to consider throughout the semester.

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  4. Holli WitheringtonOctober 16, 2017 at 12:38 PM

    I love this. I have to admit, I just finished reading Chapter 1. In re: to Chapter 1...While retrieving exercises are nothing new for my classes, it was nice to get this reinforcement and to think about way to expand or slightly change these exercises. Chapter 1 also reminded to better utilize opening questions each class period to review prior classes.

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    Replies
    1. Joshua GrassoOctober 17, 2017 at 3:21 PM

      THat's okay, even if we just read Chapter One, that will give us plenty of food for thought (and there's a lot in Chapter One to discuss, anyway). I think it's important not to rush into new material but to take time to review and recapitulate themes from last class or even previous classes. I do this instinctively, but I'm not always aware of doing it, so I might utilize it better if I told myself, "okay, do an informal review for the first 5-10 minutes." I also like to see if the students are following at all, and when they come back with repsonses, it's clear they are...and if not, maybe I shouldn't be so keen to push on in the first place!

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