No, not the girls, but this is similar to my trio of students.
Today's lesson for my three high school students was "Writing and Citations."
We took our content from the headlines of the last few days. Their in-class assignment was to find an exemplary essay or opinion piece from the news and determine what kind of references, examples, or testimonies were used (or not used) to prove a point or identify a truth.
I asked the girls to use their laptops to look at several online newspapers, web sites, and, of course, Facebook, to find writing that met the criteria of backing up or illuminating a thesis to establish truth or fact. The landed on The Political Pundits of TickTok in The New York Times and proceeded to analyze the validity of the article.
I presented scholarly styles of citations but they much preferred the embedded hypertext links in the article. Indeed, they said they expect embedded links in all online documents. They followed the links in the article and decided that the sources were credible. Besides, they said, they know first hand that TikTok is where they and their get news, along with Instagram, Twitter. Facebook? Not so much. "My mom uses Facebook a lot," one of the girls said.
Their homework is to keep track of articles they read and determine if the writer properly uses references and citations to prove their point or illuminate their opinions. I know, it sounds dry, but I could tell from the girls' reactions, they had not thought a great deal about proving a point or establishing truth in writing with references. This is advanced for their age. I hope I am not expecting too much from 15-year-olds.
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