May
4
ELA B10: May 4 Integrating references from literature into your sentences…
- Students know we’re gradually getting closer to the point where they will actually choose an essay question and then work to create that essay, but before assigning that I want to ensure they fully understand the specific aspects of this Literary essay.
Some of the distinctions or steps we’re reviewing are:- The difference between an expository essay and a literary one.
- The proper way to integrate support from literature to help strengthen your topic / point in a lit. essay.
- Popular errors made by students, like a “dropped in quote”, not maintaining subject-verb tense, or focusing too much on integrating references and ending up with very simple sentences.
- We will also look at a handout of the most common essay errors made by former students of mine. (These are the things I encounter the most, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that these students will be guilty of them.)
- We’ve studied the specific format of a body paragraph for a literary essay. It does not need to be supported with three details for each body paragraph, the way they are used to in an expository essay. This format is intended to ensure they a) avoid plot summary in their essay, b) ensure they’ve adequately supported their topic with reference from the literature, and c) ensure that each sentence nicely leads into the next within the paragraph (transitions between sentences, not just between paragraphs).
- Today we went through the handout that broke down the things to consider when writing a sentence with a reference from the literature included. We did several examples together on the board: I gave them a topic and the page number that topic’s reference could be found from the novel. They had to find the right phrase that could be used to support the topic and nicely added to their own sentence. I explained that they would be tested on their understanding of it tomorrow.