31.5. On Writing Prompts Writing Prompt W2.

31.5. On Writing Prompts Writing Prompt W2.
What Are We Learning Today?
We're writing a collaborative, explanatory essay on how to write good individual, persuasive essays. I know that it's a little confusing, let me explain.

What Do We Need to Know?
We've picked up a great many new techniques this year for writing our logical essays, and now is an apropos time to summarize and synthesize them into something bigger. We'll be talking about research reports in May and June, and those are different animals.

Writing Prompt
Next year, I'll greet a new bunch of students and spend a great deal of our time together attempting to help them write thesis-driven essays better, more easily, and more confidently. Think about all of the things that we've tried to incorporate into, master, and refine with our logical essays this year. One of the things I always have trouble with is that I am an English teacher, and think about English 40-80 hours a week, so I can sometimes think some things are easier than they are for students who have a million things to worry about. However, I am proud of the progress that my students make; I have felt for three years or so that everyone who tries in my class gets much more comfortable planning essays, writing well-structured paragraphs, and taking compositional risks in their work.

Writing Prompt
With you group, open up a file in Google Drive and share it with all four members and me. Write a letter to my class next year explaining to them how to write a thesis-driven essay well. Since there are four of you, this essay should end up being pretty long I would think, since there is so much to talk about -- planning, paragraphs, vocabulary, sensory details, transitions, kinds of examples -- if I were writing this, I think I'd need ten to fifteen paragraphs. Make sure to split up the work.