"Julius Caesar" Analytical Paragraph Notes and Handouts

On Friday, we began an analytical paragraph over a prompt relating to "Julius Caesar." One main reason we are composing this paragraph now is to begin to transition away from STAAR prep and into English 3 prep. Students in English 3 will be composing literary analysis essays which differ in a few major ways from persuasive and expository essays. Our analytical paragraph is meant to be a practice to prepare English 2 students for the additional rigor of English 3 and literary analysis.

We began by reviewing the notes from the first page of the document below, then proceeding to completing the notes on the second page together.



Here, you can see the notes each class took. Find your class if you were absent and be sure to copy these notes when you return to class.



First, we drafted out what we knew about superstitions and omens and how we see them throughout the first half of the play. Based on our brainstorming, we selected an idea and began writing our analytical paragraph beneath. On Monday, we will complete this paragraph, annotate it based on the different parts, and then students will complete their OWN paragraph using the prompt and document below.



For students who may require additional help or graphic organizers, you can use the document below. It is not required for students to use these handouts, but it may be beneficial for students having difficulty getting started.

Clocking

Below are the slides we used for our clocking activity this week. If you were unable to participate because you did not have a finished essay, please look through it and complete these activities on your own paper so you will be ready to rewrite your draft in class on Monday.

Thesis Practice and Emotive Language

For the past two days in class, we have been focusing on revising and improving our essays that we wrote at the end of the 3rd quarter for our "Anthem" test. Here is the prompt we originally addressed.



To begin, we took a look at our thesis. Many of us had great thesis statements, but a few needed some work. So, to review, we practiced thesis writing with the handout below. (The notes written in are from working together as a class; they are not my personal opinions, but examples)



A thesis can be written many different ways, but it should include 3 big things:

1. Topic (what the prompt is asking you to write about)
2. Position (which side you are taking)
3. Reasons (these should not be specific scenarios, but rather general reasons or benefits/consequences of the position)

Your thesis should also avoid:

1. First and second person pronouns (I, me, my, you, your)
2. Personal opinion statements (I think, I believe, personally, in my opinion)
3. Any reference to the quote in the prompt

Students made minor changes to their original thesis statement and then rewrote them onto a notecard to be approved. I read them over Monday night and returned them with feedback on Tuesday. If you still have not turned yours in, be sure to do so as it will be worth 25% of the formative grade given at the end of the week!

Next, we took a look at how we could possibly improve our word choice to increase our emotional appeal. We discussed how an essay should not maintain the same scope of focus throughout the essay, but should have more of an hourglass shape.

The beginning of your essay should be a broad view of the topic and position, giving reasons that apply to many possible examples and scenarios.

In other words,

Instead of: Stealing is sometimes acceptable because a person could be hungry. 

Try: Stealing is sometimes acceptable because it could mean the difference between life and death for some. 

The second thesis could apply to MANY examples, not just those involving food or starvation. The writer wants to take a broad look at all the possible reasons it may be acceptable to steal.

However, when the writer begins their body paragraphs, they narrow their focus down to one or two SPECIFIC scenarios and examples and gives specific details. Then, the focus begins to widen again as the writer gives their analysis and commentary, explaining how the example relates back to and proves the thesis.

Then, we move into the conclusion and restated thesis, where the focus broadens out again.

So what does this have to do with emotive language?

Well, your introduction and conclusion are the best places to add this emotive language.

Of course, you can add emotive language to any point in your essay, but it has the most impact as an attention grabber and a clincher.

At the beginning of your essay, your reader is still trying to figure out where you stand on a topic and why. In the body paragraphs, you are trying to prove your point. But by the end of the essay, you should not have only convinced your reader that you are right, but you should transfer your passion to them as well! You don't just want them to agree, you want them to be your ally!

To examine how we can use emotive language, we watched three different motivational speeches from classic movies. While we viewed them, we filled out the handout below.



You can view the movie clips below:


Braveheart (Begin at 3:30 to 5:10)


Rocky (Begin at 1:45 to 3:55)


Pursuit of Happyness (sic) (Begin at 0:24)

On Wednesday, we will discuss how we can add emotive language into our on writing and begin our revising and editing activities that will take us through class on Thursday and help us rewrite our final essays.

Grammar - Quincunx (cont.)

Today, we discussed complex sentences, subordinating conjunctions, and dependent clauses. We added notes to our quincunx over all three of these topics.

Both compound and simple sentences do not involve dependent clauses, but complex sentences do. A complex sentences is when at least one independent clause and one dependent clause are joined with a subordinating conjunction (we call them AAAWWUUBBIS words!)

A subordinating conjunction is special because it has the power to transform a clause, whether it's independent or dependent, into a dependent clause.

So, how exactly does this work? Here's an example.

A clause consists of a subject and a predicate (everything after the subject). A predicate can include a verb and an object or just the verb. Here's two examples of the same subject with different lengths of predicates:

1. the students wrote
2. the students wrote an essay

Both of these contain a subject (the students) and a predicate (wrote/wrote an essay). If we attach a subordinating conjunction to the beginning of it:

1. while the students wrote
2. while the students wrote an essay

Neither are complete thoughts. They need to be joined with an independent clause in order to become a complete sentence.

Now, since complex sentences involve two different types of clauses, the reader has to be able to tell when one clause ends and the other begins. And since the subordinating conjunction can be in the middle or at the beginning of the sentence, there are two ways to signal the change from one clause to another.

If you start with your dependent clause (the part with the subordinating conjunction), you need to use a comma to signal the transition:

While the students wrote, the teacher helped out.

OR

While the students wrote an essay, the teacher helped out.

Notice that both dependent clauses work even though one has a longer predicate than the other. 

If you want to start your sentence with your independent clause (the part that doesn't contain a subordinating conjunction), the subordinating conjunction itself will tell the reader where your dependent clause begins.

The teacher helped out while the students wrote.

OR

The teacher helped out while the students wrote an essay.

After we completed our notes, we went on the hunt for each sentence type in Lord of the Flies and our own writing and added them to the underside of each flap. 

When pulling your example from reading, don't forget to format your quote like this:

"Quote from the book." - Page #, Title

A few things to remember (SERIOUSLY, YOU SHOULD READ THESE):

• Transitions and prepositions (words that indicate location or time) do not alter the sentence type. For instance
• "Later, we went to the movies" is a simple sentence. If you remove the word "later", which is a transition, you have "we went to the movies," which does not contain any conjunctions and is an independent clause.
• "We wrote poems for each other" is also a simple sentence. "For" may be a coordinating conjunction (FANBOYS), but that is not its function in this sentence. The best way to test if something is a compound sentence is to remove the FANBOYS and replace it with a period. If both of the new sentences make sense, then it is a compound sentence. If not, then it is likely the FANBOYS is actually a preposition instead
• "We wrote poems. Each other." Yeah, that doesn't make much sense.  
• The answer to the bonus question this week is to write two example sentences: one compound and one complex. The catch? They must have something to do with cats. You may email them to me before 3 on Friday for 5 extra credit points on an assignment from this week or write them on a pinboard card and submit it to the pinboard during class. 

Grammar - Quincunx

This week, we will be focusing primarily on...GRAMMAR! Of course, the most EXCITING subject in all of English!

Okay, so grammar isn't totally exciting and amazing, but it IS important!

Today, we focused on grammar in terms of sentence structure by creating a tool called a quincunx (pronounced kwin-chunk). Creating the quincunx involves some paper folding, so watch the video  below to learn how.

Supplies needed: One piece of 8.5x11 or 11x17 paper, scissors (optional)



Once you have your quincunx created, we first wrote notes about the building blocks of sentences: words, phrases, and clauses.

Words are the smallest units; you can't have a sentence shorter than one word!

Phrases are groups of words that are connected in some way like "a brown dog" or "runs down the street."

Clauses are like phrases but they must have a subject (something doing some kind of action) and a predicate (everything after the subject, including the verb/action). For example "a brown dog runs down the street."

Independent clauses can stand on their own as sentences, like the one above: "A brown dog runs down the street."

Dependent clauses cannot stand on their own as sentences because they do not represent complete thoughts. For instance, if I attached the subordinating conjunction "while" to the clause above:
"While a brown dog runs down the street..."

The first sentence type we took notes over were simple sentences

Notice the sample sentence at the bottom of the notes.

The second sentence type we looked at were compound sentences. Compound sentences can be created by joining two simple sentences (or more) with a comma and a coordinating conjunction (also called FANBOYS).

We took notes over coordinating conjunctions on the inside of our quincunx.

On block day, we will discuss complex sentences, dependent clauses, and subordinating conjunctions as well as fill in examples from both our reading and writing of each sentence type.

Get some sleep tonight and remember, it's always in style to use proper grammar and punctuation!

HOMEWORK/IN-CLASS ASSIGNMENT: Persuasive Annotations - Partner and Independent Practice

Today in class, we applied what we worked on yesterday to another essay from our essay packet, specifically the essay with the header "Persuasive - 11." Follow the annotation directions from the half sheet to annotate this essay and then assign the essay a score point. Finally, using the language from the scoring guide, explain why you think the essay deserves that score point.

We then moved on to individual practice. Again, you are following the same process of annotating and assigning a score point, but you are just doing it on your own this time. You may annotate an essay of your own from your writing folder - for some of you this may be good because you already know where your thesis is and what your examples are - or you can annotate this sample essay.

The independent annotations are due Monday, January 8th after the warm up. 

Persuasive Essay Review: Annotating

Today, we began our review of persuasive essays by completing an annotation activity. We began first by reviewing what we would be annotating for and creating our color coding key.

So, we are looking for 8 different things in our sample essays (and eventually, our own essays).

1. Indented paragraphs, marked by an arrow
2. Thesis statement, which I will highlight in PINK
3. Topic sentences, which I have underlined in RED. Topic sentences should relate to the thesis. If they don't, they aren't topic sentences. 
4. Detailed examples, concrete details, and proper nouns, which I will underline in LIGHT BLUE. Proper nouns should be denoted with an exclamation mark. 
5. Commentary, or how your detailed examples relate back to your topic sentence or thesis,  which we will denote in the margins. You can't have commentary if you don't give detailed examples!
6. Restated thesis in the conclusion, which will be underlined. 
7. Illegible words, which we will circle and denote off in the margins. 
8. Transition words and phrases, which we will draw a box around. We will also note if they transition between similar ideas or transition to a new idea. 

Afterwards, we will use the scoring guide to determine what score point each essay deserves and why. 

We began with the first essay in THIS PACKET. It says Persuasive - 8 at the top. These are all sample essays over the prompt "Write an essay stating your position on whether it is better to live in a large city or a small town." 

First, we marked the indented paragraphs with arrows. This helps us see the structure of the essay, but also makes it easier to find things like the thesis and topic sentences. 

Next, we read through the introduction and found the thesis. We wanted the sentence that told us which side the author picked and why. 

We did find a sentence that told us the author thought that large cities were better and small towns were not so great, but it didn't really gives us a reason why, so we made a note of that off to the side. 

Now, we had to go through the body paragraphs and locate the sentence that told us WHY the author believed big cities were good and small towns were not so good. It took us a little while to get to it because the author begins by telling us BAD things about big cities, which doesn't really match their thesis. Finally, about three sentences towards the end of the first body paragraph, they state why they like big cities: because of what they provide. 

The second body paragraph also began by giving evidence that contradicts the author's thesis. It wasn't until the final sentence of this body paragraph that the author states a reason why they dislike small towns: it's "just not my choice."

Our next step was to go back into the body paragraphs and identify the detailed examples - those things that occur in real life or in our observations that prove our reasons are valid and logical. We identified two examples in the first body paragraph: things you need are close by and it could be considered safer in a big city. 

Notice that the author uses NO proper nouns! This means they really don't have specific examples or concrete details. Without these two things, it is unlikely that they scored higher than a 2.We made a note of the lack of proper nouns off to the side. 

When we looked more closely at the second body paragraph, we couldn't really find any examples. We found the author's opinion on the friendliness of small town citizens, but no examples or observations they could point to in their writing. Again, they used no proper nouns. 

For step 5, we determined that it was impossible for the author to give any commentary - to explain how their examples relate to their thesis - because their examples were too vague to comment upon. We noted the lack of commentary at the top of the essay. 

No commentary makes me a sad panda. 

Next, we turned to the conclusion to try and locate the restated thesis where the author restates that they think big cities are a good place to live. Out of the three sentences in the conclusion, we decided the first sentence most obviously reaffirmed the author's opinion that larger cities were a better place to live. 

Most of our classes agreed the majority of the essay was easy to read, but a few people made note of a couple words that may have been considered illegible such as "alot" and "automobiles" in the second body paragraph.

Finally, we located 3 transitions within the essay. They were annotated by drawing a box around them. We also observed that the third transition, "furthermore," was used incorrectly by the author. Rather than further explaining the same idea, the author actually transitions to a new idea. 

By the way, the bonus question this week is the purpose of transitions and at least two examples. To get credit, put your answer on your post-it note when I hand them out after the announcements on Friday. 

In order to determine the score point of the essay, we summarized our findings regarding the essays organization, examples/details, and use of language (transitions, spelling, punctuation, and grammar). 

In short, we agreed that this author had alot to work on, but ultimately had a coherent structure to their essay - intro, body paragraphs, conclusion. They also had a thesis, despite it not being very clear. They also gave a reason for their position, but did not clearly support it. Many students suggested that, based on these characteristics, the essay deserved a score point of 2. We highlighted a few key phrases in our scoring guide to justify this score. 

On Friday, we will continue to annotate essay examples with a partner before moving on to annotating independently. We will also complete the persuasive triangle handout students also received today.