April
3
ELA 30: Ap 2 Formal Paragraph review and assignment…
- Students haven’t been asked to do any formal essay writing for a while and will have a formal essay to complete coming soon. Before doing that, though, we reviewed the structure for the formal paragraph, the six functions of each sentence in their order so that the paragraph has all the necessary parts and reads smoothly for the reader. To review this, students were given a handout that lists the six sentences and has three examples of paragraphs that follow that structure. We also viewed a powerpoint I made that showed three other student-generated paragraphs and we went through the sentences step-by-step. Hopefully, it helps to focus on the purpose of each of the sentences. formal-literary-paragraphs.ppt
- Once done, I explained the formal paragraph assignment. There are three essay questions on the handout for students to choose from. They have to pick one, brainstorm how they “would” respond to that essay, and then write only “one” of the body paragraphs for it. They can choose whether their paragraph would be the first of the three body paragraphs in the essay, the second or the third. (This would be made clear by the use of transitions in the topic sentence, like “The most important …. ” or “Another example…” . They had to focus on their summary sentence, as well, as many students forget this sentence but it is as essential as any other.
- Students had about twenty minutes or so to work on writing their paragraph before I allowed them to get together in their groups to do some planning for their monologue presentations on Monday.
- The paragraph is due Friday and needs to be typed.