This reading guide created for the Rhetorical Toolbox OER source focuses on rhetoric in the name of places and things. It emphasized the idea that there are various research methods to use for your projects that may not come as intuitively as the more standard methods of research. Observations of a place, thing, person, collection, etc. were all components that this chapter highlighted as beneficial. When creating reading guide questions for this chapter, I summarized the main takeaways from the chapter as being the priortization of “things” as research (even the things you may not expect), in addition to noting patterns and relationships in your research through recording and observation. Therefore, these were the points I tried to emphasize through the creation of my questions, with group activities that asked students to incorporate examples of research topics from their own life to rhetorically analyze in the name of places and things.

I felt this was important for students since sometimes, it is easy to forgo the aspects of research that don’t seem inherently “researchable” for your topic. Emphasizing this will help students remember tips from that reading that may not come as naturally to them in the actual research process. Additionally, students who learn the importance of time and place within research will form their own sense of Kairos, also known rhetorically as the proper moment for decision or action (which can be helpful when working with places and things). When creating these questions, I try my best to follow the guide of Blooms Taxonomy. This is essentially a hierarchial structure that arranges questions in accordance with their function, from an active recall question, to evaluative, and eventually toward the student producing their own work. In structuring this reading guide, I had some of the more important key terms, like Ephemera, towards the beginning of the reading guide, with a mix in functions of recall and application. This will help drive home the point to students about what was important within the chapter, in addition to applying it with a class activity (as seen in #4), to build memory.

During our weekly meeting, Dr. Maynard and I edited some of the existing questions I created to be more expansive, with “a” and “b” sections to elaborate on the current idea of Mapping your Research (specifically in #8, for example, where students now get to elaborate on the patterns they notice in their own daily experience to apply as a method of research). This helped ensure that students will be covering the most important parts of a concept as far as they can go. Overall, I was the most proud of the group activities I created for this guide (considering there were three of them, and they were substantial). They allow the students to be interactive with the chapter’s topic and relate their own experiences to learn the importance of working with places and things.