RULE OF 3

RULE OF 3

A crucial part of college involves coming up with and then shaping/controlling an idea or concept. When students first try to answer questions posed in class or on essay prompts, almost always their ideas are too big, too general--with the result that it appears clichéd. Students can’t handle these big ideas—they get over whelmed or lost or jumbled. Our job is to help them take control of their own mind. (One thing I do is to let students know it is GREAT that their ideas are too big. Because Student Capacity can be honored and put into play.) Like Goldilocks trying to find the right bed, we talk about an idea being too big/too small/just right. By “just right” we mean an idea that is just right for dealing with inside of one single paragraph. Soon this becomes a mantra type question in the class. A student offers a response to a question or raises an idea and we ask “too big/too small/just right?”

As we said, most of the time a student’s first concept choice is TOO BIG. The “Rule of 3” is one very powerful way to get a handle on an idea, carve it into smaller more easy-to-handle ideas that can then be turned into a paragraph. “Rule of 3” means when you have a concept, you should see if it can be broken into 3 (sometimes 2 or 4 can work too) smaller concepts. Similarly, when you are asked a question, see if you can give more than ONE answer by offering 3 (sometimes 2 or 4 can work too) concepts in response. When students practice doing this they are amazed how powerful their brain is and how much content is really IN THERE! Why do Rule of 3? Doing so gives students more ideas to work with. Doing so allows students to see that that bigbigbig paragraph probably has a bunch of smaller ideas jumbled inside. That is a problem because we want only ONE specific concept per paragraph.

(Below are notes from a class discussion—the underlined concepts were “too big” and so the class did “Rule of 3” on them.)

Relationship: love, family, friend   Responding to mistakes: Repent, Move on, Try it again

NOT Responding to mistakes: Regrets, Do it again, People angry, Punishment

Analysis of mistakes: Why did I make the mistake, Why am I still making mistake, How to stop, Lessons learned       

Areas in my life where I am making mistakes: Office, social world, school

This Rule of 3 exercise below came out of a discussion around “Into the Wild.” We were talking about Chris and what he values in life and someone said “Nature.” The class quickly realized that Nature is too big of a concept----how can we RULE OF 3 it?

• Living off the land
• Spiritual connection with nature
• Push himself and be tested by nature
• Nature as place for Adventure
• Nature’s rhythms effect Chris: Emotionally, Mentally, Physically (You can Rule of 3 a concept that was already created by a previous Rule of 3 exercise!)

Of course 3 is just a number. In this case the class generated 5 or so smaller concepts. These concepts were much more “handleable” for students when it came time to write paragraphs. Once students get a right sized idea, they need to know how to talk about it, how to spend time developing it inside an academic paragraph. Below is a paragraph template that can help them “package” the concept…