Lesson Plan: Titles for Research Essays
Anthropology
Objective
To help students write better research essay titles
Estimated Time
30 minutes
Work Completed Before Class
Students will be asked to come to class with a draft title of their upcoming research essay assignment.
In Class
- First, go over the basics of essay titles. What is the point of a title? What do titles accomplish? When might you look at a title yourselves? (5 minutes)
- Based on the above discussion, ask the class what makes for a good title. Generate some general guidelines for effective titles as a class, and write them on the board. (After the discussion, if there are any guidelines you think are missing, add them to the discussion.) (5 minutes)
- Go over the colon title construction with the class (evocative, intriguing phrase: explanatory or descriptive phrase). Give some examples of titles of articles and monographs from the course syllabus that use the colon construction. Ask the class: do you like this kind of title? What are its strengths and weaknesses? (5 minutes)
- Mini Title Workshop: Ask students to take out their draft titles along with a blank piece of paper. Thinking about what we have discussed so far, ask them to write about the following prompts: (5 minutes)
- Do you like your draft title?
- What does it say about your paper to a prospective reader?
- If you were looking for sources, would you choose your paper based on its title? Why or why not?
- How might you edit or improve your paper?
- OPTIONAL: brainstorm one or two additional titles
- Then ask students to split up into small groups to share their titles with their classmates. Which titles do they like best, and why? How could a title be edited or improved? To wrap up discussion, ask for a student from each group to share their title with the class. (10 minutes or more if previous steps have taken less time)
Casey Miller
Developed at Brandeis University through a grant from the Davis Educational Foundation