Philosopher’s Friday: Academic Readings

 

Every week you are asked to read an Academic Reading from the Course Pack. The evaluation of these readings will come in three ways:

 

  1. Philosopher’s Quiz – beginning of every Philosopher’s Friday class.
  2. Discussion and Analysis of Reading based on Guiding Questions.
  3. Tests, Mid-term, and Final Exams: All materials contained in the readings will be considered “testable”.

 

A few notes on readings these articles:

 

Active Reading:

-         Make sure that you practice the “active reading” techniques from class.

-         Read with a pencil in hand, extracting main arguments, interesting facts or details, and add your own notes.

-         You will find that if you do this you will avoid “daydreaming” which can turn a 20 minute read into a 3 hour odyssey.

-         You will be able to retain more content, and will only need to read the article once. For future reference your margin notes will trigger your memory to the content and main points.

 

Guiding Questions:

-         Use the guiding questions posted on the Online Course Pack, to help you highlight the main ideas within the article, and prepare you for the Friday quiz.

 

Philosopher’s Quiz:

-         The Philosopher’s Quiz will precede the discussion and analysis of the article (which will typically be every Friday).

-         The Quiz will be treated as a completion mark and will ask 5 basic questions to discern whether you have read the article.

-         The Quiz will only be administered in the first five minutes of class, afterward this time it will be assumed that you have not completed the reading.

 

Discussion and Analysis:

-         Be sure that you have your Course Pack so that you can present arguments referring to evidence.

-         Please feel free to bring in current events, articles from other journals or newspapers, or relevant newscasts, or even tv shows, stories or music that could add to the discussion.

 

BE CRITICAL!!