I hope you are thawed out from trick or treating in the snow!
Today I handed back "Theme" papers to students completed after the Three Little Pigs video. If I spoke with you, it means you need to pass your paper in tomorrow. If you need to view the video and/or get the paper, go to my blog post of Oct. 28. Some students said the video didn't link, but mine does. If not, any basic Three Little Pigs video will be ok to watch.
Today I introduced "Literary Essay/Argument" writing. For now, we are relating this to Three Little Pigs. I taught the structure of the essay, and the job of the students is to fit their content into the structure. This topic revolved around the most admirable of the pigs, which we decided was the third. Here is an overview:
1) Thesis/Claim: The third little pig is an admirable character because A, because B, and most of all because C.
We decided A was he was a hard worker, B was he is brave, and C is that he outwits his enemy.
2) For the first body paragraph, we wrote a topic sentence. After that, we came up with three pieces of evidence which proved he was a hard worker. After each evidence statement, we followed it with an explanation of how it supports the topic sentence. We wrote an outline for this paragraph that looked something like this: (Evidence is bold, explanation is in italics.
Topic Sentence: The third little pig is admirable because he was a hard worker.
- Evidence: He used bricks to build his house, and bricks are heavier than sticks or hay.
- Evidence: He carried the bricks to his building site, which means he was willing to do the work by himself even thought it was tedious.
- Evidence: The pig took the time to decorate his home. The pig used perseverance to make his home comfortable and safe.
Concluding sentence: This evidence shows the third pig worked very hard to build a secure even
though it took longer than the homes his brother built.
H/W: Write an outline for each paragraph. After the outline, write it as a paragraph. After that, write the essay as a whole (5 paragraphs). Your thesis statement and conclusion are short...just one sentence for now. Period 1: Canned Food Drive!
Thank you for your attention today!
