Wednesday, January 14, 2009

1-14-08: Introductory Paragraphs (A Days)

Today we started our punctual piece by looking at a poem called "Marginalia" by Billy Collins (The poet laureate of the United States).

You were asked to try and figure out a reading strategy the poem is talking about.

We found that marginalia is the notes that are written in the margins of books or articles. So the reading strategy is annotating. Remember annotating is very effective in helping you both understand and remember what you read. It is a great strategy that saves you time when you will be quizzed or tested on material. If you take notes while you read, you can quickly review your notes, instead of re-reading long chapters.

After the punctual piece we reviewed TCDR and talked about how TCDR applies to Thesis Statements and Introductory paragraphs. Remember Topic+Description+Relevance = a Thesis!
And the Class portion will come as part of the background information in the introductory paragraph.

To practice looking at good/bad thesis statements, we completed the Thesis Statement Practice Sheet.

Then we applied our practice with both thesis statements and annotating as we evaluated two introductory paragraphs. We used the 6-Traits Rubric for IDEAS to score the two paragraphs, and we provided a detailed annotated explanation justifying the score we gave each paragraph.

Finally after talking through each paragraph, we completed the Investigation Sheet for the "Keeping Music Secure in Public Schools" paragraph, and the Revision Sheet for the "Identity Theft" paragraph.

For Friday:
1. Finish the Investigation and Revision Sheets if you didn't in class.
2. Get your outside reading book!
3. Writer's Notebook #2

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