Pre-Writing Highschool

• ​Describe and use the planning stage techniques in the writing process

• Use clarity, emphasis, economy, and variety in sentence structure​

Today's Objectives

1. Warm Up Poll/Discussion​: Essay Topics

2. ​Planning (Ch.4): Questioning Method, Examples/Practice Exercise

3. ​Thesis Statements (Ch. 5): Revising Five-Paragraph essay thesis statements, correcting structural issues: examples/Practice Exercises

4. Documentation Quiz (due by 11:59 p.m.) ​

Today's Agenda

​Wednesday, September 7th

Poll

For this class, you will not be given topics to choose from; rather, you will be given guidelines for how to develop a specific type of essay on a topic of your choice. How much of a challenge do you expect this to be?

• Extremely challenging

• Somewhat challenging

• Easy! I've got this!

​Student Challenge: Planning a Draft Around a Chosen Topic

The Issues:

​·       Supporting points are broad and lack a level of depth in analysis and critical thinking expected at the college-level. For example: A high school-level essay on Standardized testing may focus on arguing for the negative impacts based on the content being mismatched with what students are taught in the classroom, student anxiety around testing, and inability of the tests to accurately measure a student’s intelligence.

A college-level essay may still touch base on these aspects, but will go more in-depth to hone in on the ways in which standardized testing does/does not align or evolve with the changing climate of teacher shortages, technology-based learning, and non-college track students/professions.

·       Trouble meeting word counts and later in the course, trouble seeing the potential for expansion on a topic beyond established ideas.

·       Students approach a writing assignment in a timed format (some of this influenced by the role of standardized testing) and have trouble planning for a series of steps rather than completion in one sitting.

​Solution: Ask Questions to Narrow a Broad Topic (Ch. 4, p. 105, Pre-Writing)

​·       Can be used to plan any type of essay

·       For longer essays, like argument and research, it can provide multiple supporting points to pursue.

·       For shorter essays, it can help identify the most pressing parts of the topic to pursue or help you find a specific angle you want to pursue

·       For essays that include research, it helps you identify the type of information you will need to find before you head into a database or search engine

·       For a comparison essay, it can help you determine the most important questions to ask/points to consider when making a significant decision where both options may be appealing.

·       From a technical standpoint, it makes dividing your writing process easy—designate a question or two to explore in each sitting while drafting, identify areas for expansion when you get stuck or are short on word count

·       The terminology can be easily revised to suit the type of essay you are planning for (strategy essays vs. argument/research)

·       For a comparison essay specifically, it helps the writer avoid a one-sided comparison and begin to establish a criteria for comparing the two

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Open Ended

Brainstorm additional when, where, and why questions that will help us plan a comparison between online and face-to-face classes.

​Student Challenge: Varying the Structure of Thesis Statements/Avoiding the Five-Paragraph Essay Structure

The Issues:

• ​Thesis statements are consistently in list format, creating the potential for errors with parallelism and clarity.

• This format is limiting—often encouraging students to limit their essay to three supporting points. This also makes it difficult to allow your ideas to evolve as you write and leads to revising to fit the thesis rather than revising the thesis to fit the development of the topic.

​Solution: Use the five paragraph structure as a rough draft that can be revised; practice sentence variety, normalize thesis statements that are multiple sentences.

​This will also resolve many other problems that occur with thesis statements, as demonstrated in Ch. 5 on pp. 125-128.

​Two examples:

School start times should be pushed back because students need more sleep, behavior problems would improve in the classroom, and teachers would have more time to prepare for lessons.

Revised: Rested students who perform well in the classroom along with prepared teachers would be more likely with a later start to the school day.

Face-to-face classes are better than online classes because of student-teacher interaction, social opportunities, and time management.

Revised: Enrolling in a face-to-face course over an online course is the superior option for a student; with more opportunities to interact with an instructor and classmates along with assistance with time management, the student will be more likely to succeed.

Revise the following thesis statement:

​Cell phones should be allowed in the classroom due to accessibility to lesson material, ability to communicate during an emergency, and access to additional resources for learning.

Subject | Subject

​Textbook Exercise 5.4, p. 127