Common Core Standard: (A piece from WR. 2)
Develop the topic with well-chosen, relevant, and sufficient facts, extended definitions, concrete details, quotations, or other information and examples appropriate to the audience’s knowledge of the topic.
Big Idea: Support and Evidence
Essential Questions:
How can you use appropriate evidence to inform your audience?
How can you effectively use relevant facts to support your idea?
How can you organize your supporting ideas to clarify meaning to an audience?
Common Core Standard: (A Piece of WR. 2)
Use appropriate and varied transitions to link the major sections of the text, create cohesion, and clarify the relationships among complex ideas and concepts.
Big Idea: Transition
Essential Questions:
How do you use a variety transitions to show the relationship between your ideas?
How can you smoothly shift your reader through ideas and concepts?
How do connections create clarity?
2. Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content. (Matches with district – WR.10 & WR.05)
2. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing. (Matches with district - WR.17)
Dear Student,
This unit will give you the skills necessary to write and revise an expository essay. The lessons I have planned for you meet the common core standards for Writing 2 and Language 2. Through all the writing and revising you will be doing you will be practicing your use of conventions your command of English language conventions. You will also have ample practice with explaining your ideas with clarity and relevant support. You will communicate an opinion and back it up with a variety of support. This specific unit—writing an expository essay—will give you the tools to be successful throughout your language arts experiences, in our classroom, through college and in testing. During the process of writing our essays, we will be reading some great examples of effective narrative essays that can be guides and inspirations for your own essay. Reading these narratives will also help you learn how to utilize other authors’ opinions and writings to support your own ideas. Language arts is not only a core high-school requirement, but also a core college requirement. In language arts, we cover two aspects of the required standardized state and national tests—reading and writing. In this unit, you will learn how to support your ideas with authority and variety. You will be expected to use the five paragraph structure type of essay writing throughout your high school and college years. After this unit, you should have the building blocks for continued success in language arts and other content areas. Not only will the five paragraph format help you academically, but also in a variety of other aspects of your life.
This unit will also help you in your personal and social life. You will learn the skills to effectively communicate your wants by knowing how to state your ideas and opinions and back them up with a variety of evidence. Wouldn’t your mom, or another family member, be impressed if you had valid reasoning behind wanting to go to a specific event? Knowing how to express your ideas with support will give you the tools necessary to impress people. You will also be able to express your ideas to friends who just don’t get you, or a sibling who can’t understand why you want privacy. By knowing how to support your ideas and beliefs, you’ll be able to clearly portray them to others. In general, people are much more likely to listen to you if you have a valid idea supported with details, which is exactly what you will be learning in this unit. Besides helping you with verbalizing your wants, I hope that this unit will give you confidence in your individual writing ability through all the in-class time I will provide for you. Having confidence in your writing can be a useful tool in all aspects of your life, from friendship to academia to careers.
In many instances, you are introduced to people through written communication. If your writing is the first impression, it must be clear and appropriate for four intended audience. From resumes to college applications, your writing can put you at the top of a pile or in the trash can. This unit will also help you organize your ideas so that you are easily heard. For instance, you may wish, some day, to write a letter of complaint to the mayor or in response to an editorial. By having the tools to clearly set up your argument with support, you will be much more effective and more likely heard. If you want to be heard, you have to communicate your thoughts in a way your audience can identify with and understand. You can’t change an injustice, on any level, without this skill. I think it’s safe to say that Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech, “I have a dream”, was understood and effective because of the way he wrote it. Many people, of all professions and identities need and use the skills we’re learning in this unit, to effectively communicate their ideas and wants. You can open up any magazine, news paper, blogs, or even a facebook page, and see how people use support to emphasize their ideas. You’ll also be able to recognize when someone is proving their point with good support, and when they are not clear. By knowing how to communicate your thoughts and back them up with appropriate support, you will have an essential skill that you will use throughout your entire life. With this unit, you will be more successful at obtaining most any dream you’d like to reach, at a daily or lifelong level
Students knew how to:
Common Core State Standards: WR. 2 and LANG. 2
WR. 2. Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content. (Matches with district – WR.10 & WR.05)
The following is how they broke it down:
● Introduce a topic; organize complex ideas, concepts, and information to make important connections and distinctions; include formatting (e.g., headings), graphics (e.g., figures, tables), and multimedia when useful to aiding comprehension.
● Develop the topic with well-chosen, relevant, and sufficient facts, extended definitions, concrete details, quotations, or other information and examples appropriate to the audience’s knowledge of the topic.
● Use appropriate and varied transitions to link the major sections of the text, create cohesion, and clarify the relationships among complex ideas and concepts.
● Use precise language and domain-specific vocabulary to manage the complexity of the topic.
● Establish and maintain a formal style and objective tone while attending to the norms and conventions of the discipline in which they are writing.
● Provide a concluding statement or section that follows from and supports the information or explanation presented (e.g., articulating implications or the significance of the topic).
LANG. 2. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing. (Matches with district - WR.17)
Goals
1) Students will know how to effectively convey and support their ideas.
2) Students will be able to use a variety of transitions to convey complex ideas, concepts, and information.
3) Students will make use of their own experiences, opinions, observations, and ideas as sources for genuine writing.
4) Students will be able to write an expository essay in a five paragraph format.
Objectives
1) (Affective—Create) Students will be able to connect their experiences and values to a piece of literature through an expository essay explaining how their ideas relate to the theme in a memoir.
2) (Cognitive—Create) Students will be able to organize their ideas and information in an outline before writing their essay.
3) (Cognitive—Evaluate) Students will be able to revise a rough draft of an essay, by identifying any spelling, punctuation, and capitalization errors.
4) (Psychomotor—Application) Students will be able to identify a variety of convincing types of evidence from the text and their lives to support their ideas in an expository essay during a twenty minute work time.
5) (Affective—Anelyze) Students will be able to connect the relationship of ideas through clear transitions in an expository essay.
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