Small Group Activity: Brainstorming with Personal Artifacts

OVERVIEW

You’ve been asked to bring three personal artifacts to class today.  Effective writing often starts with effective storytelling, and each one of the objects you brought to class today tells a story – a story of a particular experience, relationship, or other representation of your identity.  Much of what we do this semester will ask you to start with your personal life – your interests, your hobbies, your major – and use that as a starting point for writing yourself into a community or communities.  This brainstorming activity, then, is designed to help you generate ideas for future writing topics by exploring the stories of these personal objects.

STEP 1

Get into groups of four.  Each person should take a turn discussing one of his or her personal artifacts, while the other group members take notes.  When presenting, each group member should answer the following basic questions about their object:

• What the object is
• Why the object is significant to you
• How did you first become drawn to the object, or the interest/activity/experience it represents
• Who might also share your interest in this object (or that which it represents)
• Controversies that the object makes you think of 

Group members should ask additional questions as appropriate to prompt additional critical thinking about each object.  When one group member has exhausted discussion of his or her first object, the next group member will take a turn discussing his or her first object, and so on, until each group members has had at least one turn.  Continue discussing your objects until I direct you to stop.

STEP 2

Using the notes you took during your peers’ presentations, draft a short letter to each one of your peers with some feedback about their artifact stories.  About which of their artifacts did they seem the most excited, passionate, or able to talk about?  Which of their stories did you find most compelling as an audience member?  About which objects do you still have questions that you’d be interesting in hearing more about?
 

STEP 3:

Review the feedback provided by your peers.  Based on what they wrote – as well as your own personal preferences – which of these objects might prompt a viable line of discussion for a future assignment?