Within your groups, form yourselves into smaller groups of two or three. Begin by summarizing for your group members what you did in the class's previous activity. Try to be brief (1 or 2 minutes at most), but do your best to get across the gist of the author's argument, the main evidence s/he relies on, and where you think your research might take you from here. Let each person explain his or her work before you move on to the next step.
1. Based on your reading so far, come up with a list of three key words or concepts that are central to your project. Write these three words in the middle of a sheet of paper and circle each one.
2. Working with your partner, for each term create a web around it by identifying as many related topics, concerns, or ideas as you can. Try to do this quickly and constantly… your pen should always be moving.
3. Once you have completed the initial brainstorming session for each member of your group, work on "deepening" your web by performing some preliminary research on the ideas that you brainstormed. For instance, if you are researching how the proposed highway through the Serengeti desert will affect the wildebeest, you might read more about wildebeests and their habitat or you might look for information about existing desert highways and their environmental impacts. As you skim these sources add new terms and concepts to your web to make it comprehensive. If you find a source that it might be helpful to return to later, be sure to bookmark it or make a note of how to find it again.
4. Hopefully by now you have an extremely messy sheet of paper in front of you. Working with your partner(s), compose a list of topics or ideas from your web that you want to research further. Order this list by priority, beginning with the ideas you think are most promising. At this point feel free to discard ideas that you're relatively sure are dead ends.
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