In this class the students were asked to read and analyze film reviews. I think this was a hard task for them, especially since it was a lot of reading. Professor Gleason scaffolded this task though by asking the students whether they thought the review was mostly positive, negative, or mixed. She also gave them a question to keep in mind guide them to annotate: What do you agree with?
I think students liked this exercise. Though they struggled to focus on so much reading, they liked seeing that professional critics agreed with their ideas. I really liked the use of authentic reviews as well. I think students benefit from not only reading model pieces like this for content, but they also see other examples of structure, development, and style.
I am curious to see whether students use these reviews as secondary sources in their paper. I personally feel that the credibility of Roger Ebert would add some great texture and ethos to a paper and I would use it if I was writing this essay as a student. However, I think that even by the end of the semester students struggled with incorporating sources and as a result might have avoided it. To be fair, they were writing about words and images in this essay, so they had more sources than they were used to anyway.
I think students liked this exercise. Though they struggled to focus on so much reading, they liked seeing that professional critics agreed with their ideas. I really liked the use of authentic reviews as well. I think students benefit from not only reading model pieces like this for content, but they also see other examples of structure, development, and style.
I am curious to see whether students use these reviews as secondary sources in their paper. I personally feel that the credibility of Roger Ebert would add some great texture and ethos to a paper and I would use it if I was writing this essay as a student. However, I think that even by the end of the semester students struggled with incorporating sources and as a result might have avoided it. To be fair, they were writing about words and images in this essay, so they had more sources than they were used to anyway.
I think that many of the students did use the ideas stated in these professional reviews, and some students quoted from the reviews. I agree that students appreciated seeing their own ideas and opinions validated by professional film critics. I can see now that it really was best for students to draw their own conclusions first, and then read the reviews.
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