Starting our cause-effect essays

First, a bit of housekeeping:
I've done quite a bit of grading, and noticed that a lot of you have fallen behind. This progress report period, I graded claim-evidence-explanation structure, claim-evidence-explanation paragraphs, cause-effect structure, and cause-effect paragraphs. Oh, and one article of the week.

Speaking of the article of the week, you have one due today. Please turn it in. 

Out of 47 of you, only two students actually turned in the article of the week. Please remember that the articles of the week are 15% of your grade.

Wednesday at 3PM, the rough draft of your cause-effect essay is due (hard copy, not emailed). In order to get full credit (24 points), it must be THREE pages (6 points), double-spaced, Times New Roman 12-point font (6 points), with citations (6 points) and a bibliography (6 points).  Yes, this is going to require work at home in order to get it finished.

To get started, please comment in the blog on what you do to organize your thoughts before you start to write your essays.

Essay outlines should be emailed to me by the beginning of class on Tuesday. Yes, you'll probably have to finish them tonight for homework.

Friday, block one

 Take the first five minutes of class  to analyze this cause-effect paragraph. Identify the cause(s), the effect(s), and whatever language the writer used to signal a new cause/effect was being brought up. Send your response via blog comment (if you've been having trouble commenting on the blog, sign in to your gmail account and then "follow" the blog. that should take care of the problem.

          In recent decades, cities have grown so large that now about 50% of the Earth's population lives in urban areas. There are several reasons for this occurrence. First, the increasing industrialization of the nineteenth century resulted in the creation of many factory jobs, which tended to be located in cities. These jobs, with their promise of a better material life, attracted many people from rural areas. Second, there were many schools established to educate the children of the new factory laborers. The promise of a better education persuaded many families to leave farming communities and move to the cities. Finally, as the cities grew, people established places of leisure, entertainment, and culture, such as sports stadiums, theaters, and museums. For many people, these facilities made city life appear more interesting than life on the farm, and therefore drew them away from rural communities.

Your task for today: Please write a cause-effect paragraph of at least 8-10 sentences. You have three model paragraphs that you can use as examples. Email to me by the end of the period. In the body of that email, please complete the following sentence: On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being mastery, my understanding of the cause-effect structure is a _________ because ______________________.

Our next essay!!!

 As you know, our next essay (rough draft due Wednesday, November 2 at 3PM, final draft due Wednesday, November 9 at 3PM) is the cause-effect essay.

Today, we will look at the structure of a cause-effect essay, and tomorrow you will write a cause-effect paragraph as a way of getting comfortable with the concept.

Example A

Courage At A Cost
Many people believe that the act of courage lies within each individual, and these acts of courage can be brought out by three possible causes. The first cause, and the most obvious, is provocation. Often times this is seen in movies where the villain kidnaps and threatens to kill the hero's family. More often that not, the hero finds it within himself to put aside his fears and overcome near impossible odds to save the day. The majority of the time it is direct threats such as this one that provoke human nature to acts of courage. The second cause is a purpose. In 2001, the Twin Towers fell to terrorist attacks. Military enlistments reached all time highs as many men and women joined the armed forces. For many of these people, the prospect of serving their country, and gaining revenge for the cowardice acts of the terrorists were the only reasons necessary for their courage. The third cause is a belief in a higher power. The presence of God gives many people the courage to do things they would not be able to do otherwise. His words play clearly in their minds," Be strong and of good courage", because: "the lord thy god is with thee whithersoever thou goest"(bible reference). According to God and his followers, his presence is enough cause for courage. For these people, their courage knows no boundaries. Whatever your inspiration for courage may be, you can just about bet it was brought on by one of these three underlying circumstances.
~© Kyle Shearin 2005~

Example B

In recent decades, cities have grown so large that now about 50% of the Earth's population lives in urban areas. There are several reasons for this occurrence. First, the increasing industrialization of the nineteenth century resulted in the creation of many factory jobs, which tended to be located in cities. These jobs, with their promise of a better material life, attracted many people from rural areas. Second, there were many schools established to educate the children of the new factory laborers. The promise of a better education persuaded many families to leave farming communities and move to the cities. Finally, as the cities grew, people established places of leisure, entertainment, and culture, such as sports stadiums, theaters, and museums. For many people, these facilities made city life appear more interesting than life on the farm, and therefore drew them away from rural communities. 

Example C

             Many situations can cause a friendship to end. One of those situations occurs when a friend moves away and makes new friends; as a result, his or her old friends are often forgotten. In addition, sometimes friendships end because of a lack of communication. If one friend never calls or  e-mails, the friendship ultimately fades and dies. Furthermore, busy schedules can cause friendships to end. It is hard to spend time with a friend if one is busy with school, work, and other responsibilities. Eventually, in these situations, the friends drift apart. Another reason is the two friends no longer have anything in common or do not like the choices one of them has made. Perhaps one friend is taking drugs or is spending too much time with a boyfriend or a girlfriend. Unfortunately, some friendships end as a result of death. Perhaps the main cause is a fight. If two friends fight and do not make up or cannot forgive each other, there is no reason to be friends anymore. Friends may come and go in everyone’s lives, but no matter how long they are in them, friends leave a lasting impression.

Claim--Evidence--Explanation practice, day two

Please turn in last week's article of the week (the chimp-HIV article), and pick up this week's article if you weren't here yesterday. 
OK.....

Take the first fifteen minutes to complete your work from yesterday. If you were in class and did your work, I sent you an email with feedback. If I requested revisions, please make them.

Step One: Complete your paragraph, including two to three sentences of EXPLANATION.

Step Two: Reread what you wrote, either bold or italicize the claim and the explanation.

Step Three: Now, look at your document. Is at least half of it bolded or italicized? If so, awesome. See me for your revision partner. If not, expand your claim and/or explanation.

Step Four: CEE peer revision questions (you should sit with your revision partner, but type up whatever comments you want to share with them.)

Step Five: Reflection: What did you learn about analytic writing from this work?

Step Six: Send me ONE Word document which has attached to it your initial claim and evidence, as well as your paragraph. Answer the reflection question in the body of your email.

My take-away from the assessments....

Hi! Please turn in your article of the week ("Chimp to Man to History Books") and pick up this week's article, "Will Dropouts Save America." It is due on Monday.

After reading essays, I can say with certainty that our work on the analytic paragraph is not finished.


Get started: Take five minutes to either comment on the blog (if you can) or shoot me an email (if the blog is not working for you for whatever reason) and tell me what you struggled with the most in the WRITING of your essay (that means: don't tell me that you struggled with finding a topic or sources--that's not WRITING).

Here's an overview of the next three weeks:
Week of October 24 (this week):
Analytic Paragraphs
The cause-effect structure
Brainstorming cause-effect topics

Week of October 31 (next week): 
Cause-effect rough draft (3 pages), due by 3PM on Wednesday, November 2
Peer revision, focus on claim-evidence-explanation model.
Writing an introduction

Week of November 7 (Last week of progress report period):
Peer revision of introduction
Summary/analysis revision
Cause-effect essay final draft (3 pages, due along with rough draft), due by 3PM Wednesday, November 9
Class assessment and self assessment

Halfway through the trimester!!!!

Wow! The trimester is now 50% done!!! Only two more essays to go!

Please turn in a hard copy of your final draft, your rough draft, and make sure that you've emailed the final draft to me.

After you've done that, go to the attachments and download Q2 Self-assessment. Please complete and email to me before the end of the period. 

DON'T FORGET THAT YOU HAVE AN ARTICLE OF THE WEEK DUE ON MONDAY!!! PICK IT UP IF YOU DON'T HAVE IT!!!

Gah...

It's 11:30 PM; I should NOT still be awake.

Anyway... Today you can work on your final drafts. Remember, they are due TOMORROW at the beginning of class (hand in rough draft and final draft, email copy of final draft).

Tomorrow is the last day I'm accepting late work. I'm talking to all ya'll who haven't done last week's article of the week, or the website reliability worksheet. DO IT!!!

I was going to do a lesson on thesis statements and topic sentences, but decided that, in the interests of time, I'm not going to. Read the Power Point entitled "Thesis Statements"--it has everything you need to get started. Remember that you can also revisit the "Writing Is Revising" Power Point for additional pointers on how to revise your work.

Your final draft and your rough draft should look substantially different.

That is all.

Revising, Day One

Thank you for turning in your essay. I'm looking forward to reading the final draft.

Remember that Friday is the last day of the progress report period. Any work you want graded must be turned in by 3PM on Friday. I will NOT be accepting work over the weekend. Many of you are missing articles of the week, as well as the evaluating website reliability sheet. Please get that done BEFORE Friday.

 

 Today and tomorrow, you will be revising your essays. Today, you will be reading and critiquing each others' essays (I will be assigning your partners). You have thirty minutes to a. read the essay, and b. provide feedback (through answering the questions on the "peer revision worksheet," found in the attachments).
 
After thirty minutes, email your feedback to your classmate. That feedback will be the starting point for your revisions.

Last day to work on rough drafts in class!

Good morning!

Today is the last day to work on your rough draft in class. Tomorrow, at the BEGINNING OF CLASS, you must turn in a HARD COPY of your essay. We will work on revising for two days.

I couldn't help but notice that no one turned in last week's article of the week. Turn it in and pick up the new article of the week, located under the skeleton.

Many of you have A LOT of zeros, and have work to make up. If you're not sure about your status, see me.But don't complain to me next week when you see that you've failed for the progress report period.  

Get started!!!

The rough draft of your essay is due at the beginning of class on Wednesday, with no exceptions. That draft is worth 30 classwork points,so failure to turn it in will really hurt your grade.

That said, the criteria for grading your FINAL DRAFT (due along with the rough draft at the beginning of class on Friday) are:
The use of claim-evidence-explanation model for analytic writing.
Correct use of direct quotations, summarizing, and paraphrasing (including the citations!)
Use of a clear point-by-point structure.
Use of appropriate transition language.
Evidence of revision.

Plagiarizing will lead to a zero on the assessment, and failure for the progress report period.

Developing a topic

Get started: Two men play five games of chess, and each man wins five games. How is this possible? Email or post your response on the blog.(five minutes)

At the end of the period today, you need to email me the following: the topic of your compare/contrast essay, along with the 4-5 categories you are using for comparison. You must also provide a list of three Internet sources that you will use as references for your paper, and why those websites are reliable.

For example:

In this essay I will contrast bulimia and anorexia.
The categories I will use to contrast them are a. ways of dealing with food, b.sense of control over food, and c. health problems that result from the disease.  However, they are similar in that d. people who suffer from bulimia and anorexia both excessively exercise, and e. both diseases primarily affect young women. 

Use the following format for your list of sources (bibliography)

For an online article:
Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of article. Title of Newspaper. Retrieved from http://www.someaddress.com/full/url/

For a website:
CNN Interactive. 19 June 2003 (this is the date this information was posted). Cable
News Network. 11 July 2003 (this is the date you found the information)
<http://www.cnn.com/>.

List of SHAME

If your name is on this list, you are missing a significant amount of work (ie, everything) and need to come during lunch to get assignments/start make-up assignments. BOOOOOOO!!!!!

Amina                                                                         Justin
Cesar                                                                          Renzo
Christian C.                                                                 Virginia
Darrien (?)                                                                   Nichelle
Mijiery                                                                         Shalissa
                                                                                    Fatima
                                                                                    Max L.
                                                                                    Brynner
                                                                                    Natalie

Moving ahead...

Get started by taking the first fifteen minutes of class to finish your work from yesterday. We are then going to begin working on the compare-contrast essay.

If you are confident in your ability to write this essay without help, you can skim the powerpoint so that you understand the guidelines, and then move on to beginning your research and completing your graphic organizer. You will find the graphic organizer in the attachments, titled "compare contrast graphic organizer."

Another Sunday, another cappucino... (overview of the next two weeks)

It's a lovely, sunny, Sunday afternoon, but I'm trapped inside, thinking about the ins and outs of Internet research. I tried posting a picture of Roots Cafe, but it was rejected by the server. There's a VOYAGES buck for anyone who can show me how to take a picture with my phone and upload it to my blog. This is the barista at Roots Cafe, but this picture came from the Internet; I didn't take it.

And, here's a picture of a sadly typical customer at this cafe....  He needs some shoes; that's just disgusting.

 So, we're going to start writing essays this week. Today, we're going to talk about Internet research. Tomorrow, we're going to look at the structure of a compare/contrast essay, and Thursday we'll talk about developing a topic/creating a topic sentence. Friday and Monday you'll be able to work on your essays in class, but BE AWARE THAT WILL NOT BE ENOUGH TIME TO COMPLETE IT!!!! Organize your schedule so that you have some time next weekend to work on your essays at home.

Next Wednesday we'll look at a second revision tool. Wednesday and Thursday you can work on your revisions in class. Next Friday, October 22, your essays (rough draft and final draft) will be due at the beginning of class, and your self-assessment and class-assessment will be completed.

So, in an easier to refer to format, here is the information from above:
October 11--internet research
October 12--structure of the compare/contrast essay
October 13--developing a topic
October 14--research/in-class work on essays. (optional lesson on creating an outline)
October 17-18--in-class work on essays. HARD COPY OF ROUGH DRAFT DUE AT THE END OF THE PERIOD ON THE 18TH.
October 19--Revision lesson, start revising essays.
October 20--Revise essays
October 21--Essays (rough draft and final drafts) due at the BEGINNING of the period. Self-and course assessments due.

We're moving on!!

We've looked at direct quotations and paraphrasing, now it's time to move on and look at summarizing. If you have not completed all three practice sentences from Monday's blog, make sure you send them to me by tomorrow. I will be grading them this weekend.

Before we move on, though, answer the question below.

 

There are three light switches up in the attic of an old house, which control three light bulbs down in the basement.  The problem is that you don't know which switch is connected to which bulb.  You can make one only trip down to the basement to figure this out.

How are you going to do it?

This week's Article of the Week

If you did not complete Practice Sentences A, B, and C, please do so now and send them to me, via email or via blog comment. Either way, I will be stationed at my computer sending feedback. If you're sending email and there's no subject line, I'm not going to open it.

It's time for a reset on the article of the week. Too many of you didn't do it, and it hurt your grades. Others of you stated that you saw the value of reading and annotating, but not of the reflections.

So, from now on, I will give everyone the article of the week on Monday. You will have the week to read and annotate it (we will periodically learn new annotating techniques, and use them while reading the article of the week.) Because you are only reading and annotating, we will no longer devote a class period to it.  The article of the week will be due the following Monday.

This week, while reading, please pick four sentences you had difficulty understanding and paraphrase them.

We will begin working on the article, "You Love Your iPhone. Literally," today.  It is due at the beginning of class on Tuesday, October 11 (because of Columbus Day). Please remember that these are 15% of your grade.

Moving on....

We were going to start our first essay today, but we're not going to. You should thank VOYAGES graduate Isabel B. for that. I ran into her a couple of weeks ago, and she told me that this class would be improved if I spent more time teaching ways of dealing with difficult text. So, the essay start is going to wait a couple of days.

Today, we are going to look at paraphrasing. Paraphrasing is the restating of text in order to make the meaning more clear. Paraphrasing is a valuable tool for following an argument and its development; you'll use it all the time during college. You will notice that there are a couple of practice sentences below. Keep this page open, because you'll have to return to those sentences during the lesson.

Practice sentence A: "There may indeed be a downside to the cocoon of security. Why else would we continue to court risk in outdoor adventure and sports?"(Cannell, unpaginated)

If this is totally clear to you, move on to the "paraphrasing one" worksheet in the attachments. 

Practice Sentence B: "Professional football and other mainstream sports have laudably taken steps to minimize the dangers of concussions and other injuries, but the rising cult of extreme sports and the hairy shenanigans of the “Jackass” franchise come to mind as examples of a grass-roots culture that romances risk in defiance of conventional thinking." (Cannell, unpaginated)

If this is totally clear to you, move on to the "paraphrasing one" worksheet in the attachments. 

Practice Sentence C (ignore "Nietzschean"): "One wonders if we live less fully by marginalizing physical courage, both in our own lives and in the sports we follow. Do we deprive ourselves of some Nietzschean invigoration, not to mention the tingling pleasures of precariousness, by relegating risk to the realm of video games?" (Cannell, unpaginated)

Move on to the "paraphrasing one" worksheet in the attachments.