English Mock IOP (group of 5) tips needed

[Guest Aniruddh]

Hey Guys,

 

School has just started, and our English teacher has already asked us to give a mock IOP on the assigned pages of the book Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh. The class has been divided into groups of 6, and we have the presentations starting day after tomorrow (my group is the sixth, and the last group).

We are still in the early discussion phase and none of us has read the book before and we've hit a roadblock, and a guy in our group who acts like the leader has asked one of us to work on characterization, one on how violence is portrayed and used, and well you get the idea. I don't really like that approach, but my brain wasn't really working at that time so I didn't give in my own input.

Now that I think deeply about it, I don't think our teacher would appreciate all of us talking for 10 minutes each. I was thinking of doing it in a more organized manner as in 2-3 people speaking, one guy making the slides in the background and another actually reading the whole book (the speakers will only read and analyse the assigned pages; we are a group of 5). Division of labour, yeah.

Also, what really are we supposed to do in the IOP? I still don't understand how we are supposed to choose a topic. Topics like 'characterization' and 'theme' sound too vague.

 

-Aniruddh

[lcdrz]

Wow, five people doing one IOP? That's a lot... In my class everyone did their own individual IOPs.

I think that would be a better idea, but you may have to explain that to your teacher so it doesn't look like only 2-3 people did the actual work and the rest slacked off.

 

I can't really help you specifically on the literary work which you are doing your IOP on as I've never studied it. But for my IOP, I largely focused on theme -- I chose 'Death of a Salesman' by Arthur Miller (out of 2 works we had studied) and wanted to focus on the idea of the American Dream, so from that I developed a more detailed topic question and went from there. 

 

I ended up exploring whether 'Death of a Salesman' was a critique by Arthur Miller on the American Dream and of the capitalist society. 

I looked at how Miller criticised the American Dream through several aspects of the play e.g. character, ending of the play etc. 

 

For the IOP you generally take something which you find interesting, develop it into a specific topic or question and try to answer/explore that. (For example you could explore how the author portrays X through Y character or something like that.) I recommend that you look at the topics on the IOP on IBS, as there are some sample questions and topics which people did and generally search around on the internet.

 

I hope this is helpful to you, and sorry I couldn't be of much specific help. 

Edited July 9, 2014 by lcdrz

[Negotiation]

I think that would be a better idea, but you may have to explain that to your teacher so it doesn't look like only 2-3 people did the actual work and the rest slacked off.

I disagree entirely. The IOP is graded individually, so the teacher would have no idea what quality input the people had. This is a bad approach.

 

The optimal approach in such a group situation (while groups in themselves are not optimal) is what was suggested: dividing up the labor into single focus points with one person per point. That way everyone gets to show original input.

[lcdrz]

 

I think that would be a better idea, but you may have to explain that to your teacher so it doesn't look like only 2-3 people did the actual work and the rest slacked off.

I disagree entirely. The IOP is graded individually, so the teacher would have no idea what quality input the people had. This is a bad approach.

 

The optimal approach in such a group situation (while groups in themselves are not optimal) is what was suggested: dividing up the labor into single focus points with one person per point. That way everyone gets to show original input.

 

My bad! I have no idea what a group IOP is supposed to be like at all, as our school doesn't allow us to do our IOPs in groups rather than individually. Thanks for calling up on that issue!

[Guest Aniruddh]

Thanks for the tips!

 

@icdrz the teacher just wanted us to get  a feel of how it is done. Are 'real' IOPs are in early-February.