A (Dinner) Party for Perspectives

I'm going to open with something crazy: I invented the dinner party activity. Not solo, I had the benefit of an AP Seminar partner in crime for many years (we each had two sections of the class, and we planned together like CHAMPS) and together we came up with the dinner party metaphor.

We were trying to find a way to help students put their sources into conversation and synthesize their perspectives. Like a couple of English teachers, we created a metaphor and thus an activity to help students more concretely visualize this otherwise abstract concept.

You can imagine my shock when I'm at APSI this last summer (I WAS TOLD THERE WOULD BE AN ADVANCED SESSION FOR EXPERIENCED INSTRUCTORS!) and our facilitator starts teaching the new Sem recruits about an activity called the Dinner Party. I was racking my brain trying to remember if I had learned about the Dinner Party or if my teaching partner had. I could have sworn it was our invention.

However, my next realization was that the version presented at APSI was very different from the one I use. So, below the e-mail wall (it's free if you haven't signed up yet!) I have included my version, which includes a rubric and additional writing activity.