Empoword

Part Three: Research and Argumentation 292 Part Three: Gallery Walk Begin to develop working and research questions by collaborating with your classmates to explore different curiosities. (This part of the exercise is designed for an entire class of students of about twenty to twenty-five students, including you. If you are completing this part of the exercise a small group of three to four total students, including you, return to Part Three: Small Group.) Write your three favorite list items from Part One, potentially modified by insights from Part Two, in the headings for your third piece of three-column paper. Every student should tape their papers to the classroom wall, just below eye-level, such that it forms a circular shape around the perimeter of the room. Each student in the class should stand in front of their paper, then rotate one position clockwise. At each new page, you will have two minutes to review the headings and free-write questions about each topic. No question is too big or small, too simple or complex. Try to generate as many questions as you possibly can. Then, rotate through clockwise until you’ve returned to your original position. Review the questions your classmates compiled on your sheet. Have they offered anything that surprises you—issues you haven’t thought of, relationships between questions, recurring themes or patterns of interest, or foci that might yield interesting answers? After completing all three parts of this exercise, try to articulate a viable and interesting research question that speaks to your curiosity. Make sure its scope is appropriate to your rhetorical situation; you can use the exercise “Focus: Expanding and Contracting Scope” later in this chapter to help expand or narrow your scope. If you’re still struggling to find a topic, try some of other idea generation activities that follow this, or check in with your school’s Writing Center, your teacher, or your peers. Idea Generation: Mind-Mapping By organizing and exploring your current knowledge, you might find an area of interest for your research project. A mind-map, also known as a “web” or “cluster,” is a graphic representation of your thought processes. Since this form allows for digressions, free association, and wandering, it allows for organic thinking and knowledge-building. Start out by putting a general subject area in the middle of a blank piece of paper in a circle— for the example below, I started with “education.” (If you don’t have any immediate ideas, try Part One of the Curiosity Catalogue exercise above.) Then, branch out from this general subject to more specific or connected subjects. Because this is a pre-writing activity, try to generate as many associations as you can: don’t worry about being right or wrong, or using standardized