Starting the IWA

trompe l'oeil painting by William Michael Harnett

This week, I'll discuss my strategies for helping students to understand and begin developing their IWAs.  Today's post is about unpacking the stimulus materials.

The IWA, in my opinion, is much harder for students to write than the IRR.  Where the IRR is basically a literature review, the IWA is an argument.  In addition, while students can write an IRR about just about any topic, the IWA has to fit within the theme of the stimulus materials. 

I always take a week to go over the stimulus and begin question development with my students.  I don't recommend spending too much time on this since the IWA requires a lot of research in order to write properly. 

I assign one or two articles to read per night.  For each stimulus item, each student must come up with two related ideas.  For example, one of the stimulus materials this year is about sidewalk art.  One related idea could be trompe l'oeil art.  I don't require my students to come up with actual themes for their papers at this point.  The idea is just to begin the brainstorming process.  I recommend to my students that they have a pen and paper handy as they read so that they can make notes about anything that they find interesting.  The next day, students discuss the stimulus items and the related ideas.  They attempt to take some of the related ideas that they've come up with and develop them further. 

Once they've read and discussed all of the stimulus items, I have my students discuss the overall theme of the stimulus.  At this point, I break them up into smaller groups so that they can continue the process of developing IWA topics that fit into the theme of the stimulus materials AND use one of the stimulus items in a meaningful way.