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Chapter 29. EVALUATION          Introduction   Basics   Advanced   Samples   Activities --- Activities Using Evaluation See also "Activities & Groups." --- SPECIAL ACTIVITIES DIRTY POLITICS: Pretend you are a team of speechwriters for an important political candidate. As a group or in pairs, write an unfair political speech which uses promises, threats, guilt, emotional persuasion, and other non-logical techniques. However, be subtle: try to use these without being too obvious or sounding outrageously ridiculous. Play on people's fears and hopes, lack of logic and jumps to conclusions. Then trade these written speeches. Respond as a group or pair to the speech in front of you: list a fair but complete evaluation, examining its structure, lies, prejudices, and weak points. Also evaluate your evaluation--what might your own group or pair's point of view and prejudices be? HERE COMES THE JUDGE: Imagine you are the judge in a courtroom.  Make up a crime or dispute between two people.  Then write a description of how each person is right in some ways but wrong in others, arrive at a decision, and explain why you have arrived logically and/or fairly at this decision. EVALUATING A JOB APPLICANT: In a small group, make up a business or professional situation in which you are on a committee of job interviewers. Develop two lists of five or more judgments each.  In one list, write down the kinds of questions you would ask a job applicant to determine whether he or she could do the job well.  In a second list, write down the kinds of questions that you do not need to answer about the applicant's personal life, beliefs, habits, and background.  Then interview someone from a different group who knows what the job is; as you interview, be sure to avoid any hint of asking questions from the second list.  Finally, hire the person, but first work out a description of how well he or she meets the qualifications on the first list.   HAVING A BABY: (Note--This exercise may take two to three periods.)  Divide into at least four groups. This exercise may take two to four class periods. In your group, consider the following situation: You are a family, almost all of who are adults (father and/or mother, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and/or children 21 or older. You are a close family. In your family also is the youngest member: a sixteen-year-old daughter or son who has become pregnant or gotten someone else pregnant. The other responsible party also is sixteen, has a reputation among school and juvenile authorities for being quite wild, and lives with only one parent who is poor in a dirty, run-down, two-bedroom apartment. (A) SUMMARY/DESCRIPTION: Your first job as a group is to summarize, briefly, factually, and meaningfully in 50-100 words, your situation: your family, the son or daughter, the pregnancy, the other party and his/her reputation, the other parent, and the living conditions of both your child and of the other child. (B) RESPONSE  #1: Next, react to the situation for 50-100 words. Give, as a family, your intellectual, emotional, and physical reactions. Then pass your two writings (A and B) to another group. (C) RESPONSE #2: Pretend that as a group you are now the teenager in the family. You have come home late and discovered the sheet of paper from A-B lying on the kitchen table where your family accidentally forgot it. React to what you read: give your intellectual, emotional, and physical reactions for 50-100 words. Then pass the writings to another group. (D) EVALUATION #1: Now pretend you are a group of friends of the family described in the writings in front of you. Write your evaluations or judgements of what you think the family should do. Give evidence of what you know about the family to support your suggestions. Pass the writings to another group. (E) EVALUATION #2: Now pretend that you are a group of tough but fair psychologists or psychiatrists. The writings before you have been sent to you by the family named in them. You have therapeutically counseled both the family members and the teenager in question, and you are ready to make evaluations and recommendations. Write an evaluatory comment about the situation for each of five evaluatory categories from this chapter, and a recommendation (what should be done) for each evaluatory category.  You will not need to show your evaluatory comments to anyone in the family--they are just for your own diagnosis and treatment. (F) Finally, evaluate in writing, individually and privately, your group's work. Write one sentence for each evaluatory category listed earlier in this chapter. Share your evaluations with each other, and then compile a group evaluation with one or two sentences per category. (G) Read all of your results to the class. ROUND-ROBIN EVALUATION GAME: (A) As a class, you should move into a circle formation.  Each person then should take out a standard sheet of writing paper.  Then read this evaluative system from the "Basics" part of this chapter: GUIDELINES FOR EVALUATING Inconsistencies, contradictions, or untruths? Strong, weak, or missing ideas, examples, or supporting details? Strong, weak, or missing organization, style, or tone? Bias or unspoken assumptions that need clarification? Negative or positive comparisons/contrasts with similar texts? Negative or positive emotional impact? Negative or positive actions/responses by readers? Ethical considerations? (B) Each person then write the following sentence on a piece of paper, filling in the blanks: "1. A strange person might believe about ___________________ [choose any belief about politics, religion, sex, abortion, or anything else controversial] that everyone should ___________________." (C) Pass this paper one person to your left. (D) Read the paper now in front of you and add to it the following sentence, filling in the blank as you do so using one of the evaluative categories above.  Be respectful and logical: "2. Evaluation of this belief shows that it is ____________________ [use one of the evaluative categories above] because _______________________________." (E) Pass this paper one person to your left. (F) Read the paper now in front of you, add another about the paper's subject as follows, and fill in the blanks using a separate evaluative category from above.  Again, be respectful and logical: "3. Evaluation of this belief shows that it is ____________________ [use a second evaluative category above] because _______________________________." (G) Pass this paper to your left. (H) Continue until a number of categories have been used. Choose the most interesting several papers and read them aloud. ---     OTHER ACTIVITIES THOUGHTS ABOUT THE CHAPTER: As an individual or a group, read the chapter and take notes about it using one or more of the methods in "General Study Questions." ROUGH DRAFT: As an individual or a group, write a paper as described in this chapter.  Use the subtitles shown in the "Introduction" or the "Basics" section as subtitles of your rough draft, and write at least 50+ words in each body section.  If you are working as a group, you may, if your instructor allows, develop a fictional and fanciful background and subject for your rough draft. GROUP MAPPING & PLANNING: Divide into small groups of 3-4 people randomly.  In each group, one person each should volunteer to be       (i) the facilitator (the person helping everyone to do the work), (ii) the writer/recorder (who does the writing for the group), (iii) the reader/announcer (who reports the group's works to the class), and (iv) if there is a fourth, the timekeeper, the observer taking notes about the group's way of working, and/or the "social encourager"--someone who finds questions to encourage quieter members of the group.         The group should then follow these steps using a timetable given by the instructor, either in a small, close circle with the writer using pen or laptop, or at a segment of the whiteboard with the writer using a marker:      (A) What is the key or essence of this type of paper?  Brainstorm an interesting, fun idea (serious or silly) to write about.     (B) Then look at the "map" or blocks of how to build this type of paper, from introduction through the body sections to the conclusion.  The instructor can either project it on a screen or draw it on the board.  Then fill in the parts with 50-100 words for each main body section, and 20-50 for the intro and conclusion (depending on the instructor's directions).    (C) If your instructor suggests this, add a good made up illustration, graphic, or quotation or two to each section from an "expert" and give credit to your made-up expert.  (Note: Never add made-up detail or experts to a real paper.)    (D) Have your reader/announcer read your result to the entire class.    (E) After all groups have gone, then the "observer" in each group--or the facilitator--should answer three brief comments on how the group process happened: "What worked well," "What didn't," and "How could it be changed?"       GROUP CRITIQUE OF A LATER DRAFT: If your class has a paper all of you are preparing for grading, gather in a group to critique each other's developed drafts:       (A) Simply pass the papers to each other; your paper preferably should be checked by three other people.   (Some instructors prefer that you make several copies, distribute them to your group members, take the copies home that you receive, and comment on them there.)      (B) Write comments for each other.  To do so, use a a set of grading guidelines (or "rubric"): for example, "How are the contents," "How is the organization of parts," "Do paragraphs work well," and "How well have editing errors been corrected?"  Preferably, you can use the guidelines your instructor applies when grading.         (C) For each question or requirement in your guidelines, write one or more comments.  Your comments should be substantial and specific (more like a complete sentence, and more specific than just "Nice!" or "Needs work").  Your comments also should be positive or helpfully constructive: when positive, they should offer specific praise of a particular part, detail, or method; when constructive, they should offer specific advice about what to add or do to make the paper better.         (D) Add a final positive or constructive comment about how you think the average reader of this paper might respond to it, and/or how the paper could be changed or fixed for a stronger or more positive response from its audience.   (E) After receiving your comments from others, take them home.  Review what they have written.  Remember that your readers are not commenting on you as a person, but rather on how easily (or poorly) they have been able to read your paper as its audience members.  Pay attention in particular to comments that may have been repeated by more than one of your readers. For a wide variety of other activities and exercises, go to "Activities & Groups." --- Return to top.

  3. Thinking & Reading