Unit #5
11th and 12th English
Read pp 68-72 (stop at "avoiding whiplash")
Assignment 5.1; Take notes over this reading.
When you turn this assignment in, you must have at least
14 "bullets" or ideas about "Paragraph Coherence"
(1 hour)
Submit Assignment 5.1 (10 pts) due Sep 20
Assignment 5.2; at this point, for your essay on "A Time I Was Scared", you have a thesis statement and three main points you will be discussing. Also, within your three main points you have 2-4 supporting points that are examples, brief stories, statistics, etc. to support each of your three points. Now, I would like you to start putting this info together in sentence form. So, take your first point and the support points and make a paragraph out of them. Don’t worry about perfection, we will work on that.
**Important: Your first main point of the three you have come up with will be put in sentence form and called your topic sentence of your paragraph. It will occur as the first sentence in your paragraph.
Reread pp 50-55 for additional ideas on the topic sentence. (30 minutes)
So, ONE paragraph on your first main point is what I want for this assignment
**Please Include Your Outline With This Assignment
Submit Assignment 5.2 (30 pts) due Sep 21
Assignment 5.3; You submitted your first point and supporting sentences (all of this will make up your first paragraph), now do the same thing for the next two main points. So, for this assignment, you need to submit the following:
1) your thesis statement and essay map on "being scared"
2) your outline on "being scared"
3) your first paragraph on "being scared"
4) your next 2 paragraphs on "being scared" (this is the new stuff)
(1 hour)
Submit Assignment 5.3 (40 pts) due Sep 22
Info below will lead us into Assignment 5.4
Read pp 79-83 on the topics "How to Write a Good
Lead-in" and "Avoiding Errors in Lead-ins"
especially noting the paragraph just above
"Avoiding Errors in Lead-Ins of page 82 (20 min)
Most of the papers you will be writing for me are called
“5 paragraph essays”. Take a good guess why…
A “5 paragraph essay” is made up of the three paragraphs you wrote for Assignments 4.6 and 5.1 as well as an “intro paragraph” and a “concluding paragraph”.
At this point, you have done the "hard stuff". Now you will start filling in the blanks and making the paper flow, make sense, and be just doggone awesome.
This section deals with writing the intro paragraph.
Look at the 15 examples of “lead in” devices on pp 80-82 to get some ideas of different methods of writing the Lead-in
The intro paragraph must “grab” the reader’s interest, start in a general manner and then focus to your specific topic, with the last two sentences your thesis and essay map.
Going from a general manner and focusing on your specific topic is the confusing part sometimes.
Let me give an example.
Let’s say you are trying to convince people to eat poptarts for breakfast in the morning. Generally speaking you could mention that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and carbs are good to get your energy level up quickly. Being more specific, you could then say, poptarts are simple to fix thereby making sure you don’t skip breakfast and they give you the carbs you need for that jumpstart in the morning.
Notice I went from general (breakfast is important)
More specific (carbs are a good choice for breakfast)
Even more specific and leads into thesis statement (pop tarts fill that need for breakfast and carbs)
As you noticed from the examples on pages 79-81, there are lots of different ways to write the Lead-in. Pick one and try it.
Remember, do something to get my attention, go from general to specific, and then finish the paragraph with the thesis statement followed by the essay map as the last two sentences of the intro paragraph.
The intro paragraph should be about 5-7 sentences long. Don't get carried away with a story and have 50 bazillion sentences in the intro. Just give me enough info to make me want to read the rest of the paper.
Assignment 5.4
OK, let's get a little more familiar with "attention getters". Look at the following advertisements and tell me what the attention getter is. In other words, what is the advertisement saying to make you want to stop and read the ad?
So, for this assignment, there will be a list of pages below....look these pages up and there will be advertisements on that page. Advertisement success is to get the reader's attention...the are always full of attention getters. Look up each advertisement and write down the attention getter. It may be in the form of a statement, or picture.
Here is how I want it:
1) give me the page number
2) give me a short title of the ad (for example, on page 312 you might title it, "Teddy Bears and Guns"
3) tell me what the attention getter is
Here are the pages:
162, 190, 220, 300, 301, 302, 304, 305, 306, 308, 309, 310
(50 minutes)
Submit Assignment 5.4 (15 pts) due Sep 23
Done for the week!!
Sep 19-23
