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Lesson 4

We will read an article that discusses different aspects of online communities in order to broaden our understanding and engage in a more in-depth discussion of roles and responsibilities.

Lesson Goals

  • Can I express an accurate understanding of the central ideas of texts?

  • Can I recognize and interpret important relationships among key details and ideas within texts?

  • Can I identify the claims, reasoning, and evidence used to develop arguments and explanations?

  • Can I recognize points of connection among texts, textual elements, and perspectives to make logical, objective comparisons?

Texts

Core

  • Digital Access
    • “The Internet Doesn’t Need Civility, It Needs Ethics,” Ryan M. Milner and Whitney Phillips, Motherboard by Vice, November 20, 2018
    • “The Reason #BlackTwitter Exists (And Is Totally Awesome),” Say It Loud, PBS, YouTube, May 30, 2019
  • Unit Reader
    • “It Wasn’t Just the Trolls: Early Internet Culture, ‘Fun,’ and the Fires of Exclusionary Laughter,” Whitney Phillips, SAGE Publishing, 2019

Materials

Tools

Question Sets

Editable Google Docs

Activity 1: Read – Write – Discuss

We will review our discussion of online communities and determine what lingering questions remain that will set the focus for our learning in this lesson.

Review your responses to the questions about online communities and your notes taken from the #BlackTwitter video.

Respond to the following questions:

  1. What questions do you still have about online communities?

  2. What intrigues you about online communities?

  3. What would you like to learn more about on this topic?

Share your ideas with a partner and revise your responses as necessary.

Activity 2: Read – Write

We will read an article in search of additional information that furthers our understanding of the topic.

Step 1

Choose to read either "It Wasn’t Just the Trolls" or "The Internet Doesn’t Need Civility, It Needs Ethics." While reading, annotate the text while keeping the following questions in mind:

  1. What specific communities are mentioned in the article?

  2. What are the roles and responsibilities of online communities?

  3. How do these compare to the roles and responsibilities covered in articles and videos from this unit?

  4. What connections can you make between the information addressed in the article and what you have studied throughout this unit?

Step 2

Write an objective summary of the article in your Learning Log.

Activity 3: Listen – Discuss

We will share summaries and insights from our reading with a partner.

Step 1

Pair up with a classmate who read the other article.

Share your summary with your partner. As your partner summarizes, listen for points of connection to the article you read.

Step 2

With your partner, find connections between your two articles, as well as connections to the other texts you read in this unit. Respond to the following question with your partner:

  1. How does what you read connect to something previously read in this unit? Why?

Share your ideas with the whole class during the debrief discussion.

Activity 4: Discuss – Write

We will study important concepts and challenging words from the text, paying attention to their use and meaning in the context in which the author presents them. We will use the Vocabulary in Context Tool as needed and write down important words in our Vocabulary Journals so that we can refer back to them later in the unit and incorporate them into our own work.

For this activity, you will use a Vocabulary Journal. If directed, you might use a Vocabulary in Context Tool for words you can decipher from the text; for others, you might use morphology to decipher the meaning, or a reference resource to check if your meaning is accurate. For some words, your teacher might present you with definitions.

Working as a whole group, review the Vocabulary List for the words for this text. Locate the words as they are used in the text, using the provided page number, and consider the following questions for each:

  1. What does the context suggest the author means when using the word? What is its connotation, and how does that compare with a dictionary definition?

  2. Why is this word and its meaning important in the author’s ideas in this part of the text?

  3. How might I use this word in my own thinking, speaking, and writing?

Write down the words and definitions with your notes about their meaning and importance in your Vocabulary Journal. For each word, identify the vocabulary strategy (e.g., context, morphology, reference resource) you used to determine its meaning.

Share your responses with the whole group during discussion.