September
9
ELA 20: Sept 9 Creating a thesis statement and the format for a body paragraph….
- Though there’s not much to list as far as tasks we accomplished today, it was a very productive class! Yesterday, we looked at the process of brainstorming, creating three topic sentences, reducing their main ideas into phrases and then adding them together to create the thesis statement. Today, before moving on to do anything else, I asked them each to repeat that exact process in response to a ‘random’ essay question given. Since we’ve studied the essay “Back to Wolf Willow” recently as a class, we reviewed the essay quickly and students were given the prompt of creating a thesis statement regarding the main points of reflection the author of the “willow” essay comes to.
I was extremely pleased to see that they all followed the pattern we’d gone through yesterday and were able to create a good thesis statement. We may not have progressed through what I’d have liked to today, but the progress in accomplishing that on their own was worth it! - Once finished, we started again to finish the powerpoint from yesterday. The point we were at was Body Paragraphs. Before the bell went, we discussed the difference in types of references you’d need to support a body paragraph, depending on the type of essay you were writing. They took notes in their books to show the basic functions of the 5 or 6 sentences for a body paragraph in a reflective essay, like the one they’ll have to write. And then the bell went!
- We’ll keep going tomorrow but we’re getting closer to being sure everyone has a solid understanding of the basics of writing an essay. Then, they’ll actually have class time to go through the process, start to finish!