Out of Her Mind -- Musings on Education and Life

Claim/Data/Commentary Mini-Lesson--Writing a Strong Argumentative Paragraph Claim What is a claim?  A claim  is the point you are trying to prove.  When you are writing an essay, you make several claims.  The first claim is the major one that you will make in your essay, and this claim appears in the introduction in the form of your thesis statement.   In an essay on characterization and Heller's book, Catch-22 , the thesis statement might read, "Heller uses both direct and indirect characterization to develop the character of Yossarian, a character who is a lazy coward."  You should be very familiar with this type of claim, the thesis statement that appears in your introduction.   However, you are probably less familiar with the notion that each of your body paragraphs should ALSO start with a claim.   This type of claim is more commonly known as a topic sentence.   If you were continuing to write the same essay above, a topic sentence claim might read, "T

Catch-22 Mini Essay Topic #1: Characterization DIRECT and INDIRECT CHARACTERIZATION Direct Characterization Two techniques that writers use to create character are "direct" and "indirect" characterization. Direct characterization TELLS the reader about the character. For example, an  omniscient  narrator may tell the reader that Jacob was a patient and kind man. Indirect Characterization In contrast to "direct" characterization, "indirect" characterization SHOWS the reader who a character is through speech, thoughts, and actions, either the speech, thoughts, and actions of the characters themselves or of other characters in reaction to/about that other person.  An example of indirect characterization may read:  Jacob did not yell at Sally for taking two more hours to get ready when she had promised "Five more minutes!" over two and a half hours earlier.  Instead, he patiently waited, taking the time to finish up r

Lesson Introduction The following is an assignment I like to use in my English classes when watching clips from Freedom Writers   and teaching with the book.  I have successfully used this assignment with all manner of students in grades 9-12, and they all flourish from this type of focused reflection, while learning to be more articulate both orally and written, and while getting comfortable in front of a small live audience.  Not only do students love writing about themselves, they also enjoy the integration of media, and they learn how to write better essays as they transfer knowledge learned from their work writing effective speeches. Feel free to message me Common Core connections.  I know they exist, and I am quite admittedly being lazy with my alignment here.  But surely speaking is still an important skill?  I am only partly being tongue-in-cheek(y) here. Step 1.  Viewing.   Show all or part of Freedom Writers.   Be sure to at least show the part where the stud

Using JSTOR's Teaching Resources In Your (English) Classroom It Started with an Email... I recently received an email from JSTOR announcing their new  Teaching Resources , an email I am so happy to have received!  I developed the curriculum for my AP Literature and Composition course, a senior English class, last spring, and in several units, I linked to JSTOR as a resource.  The only caveat:  in order for students (or you) or me to access the articles, you have to register for free AND you can only have three articles on your book shelf at a time AND of course there is a limit to how often you can switch these articles out.  Although students found it tricky at times to get registered and to add items to their bookshelves, these articles are an amazing resource in a course asking students to learn to do some heavy thinking, thinking about and with literature in ways they never knew possible, especially given that I created my own online "textbook" using Haiku, teac

http://www.ltl.appstate.edu/prodlearn/prodlearn/summer_2007/Faulkner_Bobbi/art3.html Using I Poems to Teach Poetry, Literacy, and a Sense of Place to English Language Learners Context Then: This unit was created as partial fulfillment for RE 5130, Teaching the  Language Arts, with Dr. Beth Frye as I worked towards my masters in Reading Education K-12 at Appalachian State University.  With this project, we were introduced to the idea of using poetry to explore other content areas.  I am a lover of poetry, so I was enthused by this novel way of integrating poetry into content.  The focus of my communication skills class, a locally required class for 10th graders, is writing, mainly informational and research writing.  As soon as I was given this assignment, I began to think of ays to integrate the two types of writing we had been studying into the poetry unit.  The informational writing component of the course id geared to the NC 10th Grade Writing Test.  In order to make this ty