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Below you will find all the handouts/information you need to do each assignment, each step, of the first academic essay we will write this year. Please scoll down the page to find the new information as you need it. New assignments and information will be put at the bottom of the page. The due dates are kind of hard to keep track of, because of the rotating block schedule. So do your best to keep up. Also, you can refer to classwork calendar to help keep you on track.
Yes, I do realize that there are times when my calendar is a little behind where it should be, but you should also have your own notes taken from class.
Day One:
Today we will begin our first academic essay on Fahrenheit 451. In small groups begin by discussing/answering the following study questions/topics.
Essay study questions:
1. God and Religion: Referenes to these themes in the book 2. Politics: There doesn’t seem to be any obvious politics., but the government rules everything. So who controls the government? 3. Maturity: What contributes to the development of the individual? What kinds of “growth” count? Why is it that the most mature person in the book is a teenaged girl? 4. Why are the personal relationships so strange and cold? 5. Are books important? Or, are the ideas contained in them more important. Why are books like birds? 6. Why are the characters doubled?
You got an in-class participation grade for this work worth a possible three points. If you missed this day, you cannot make up the work, but it won't count against you, either. Day Two and Three:
451 Essay Topics
Step 1
1. There are numerous references to God and religious writings in F. 451. In a world that seems to be against religion and faith, why do these references occur? What do they say about the dystopian society described in the book?
2. What is the role of the government in F. 451? Why is it that it seems to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time? Why are the firemen the only visible portion of the government in this novel?
3. What causes Montag to grow emotionally and intellectually? We know that his discussion with Clarisse begin this transformation, but what mechanisms actually cause his change? Use specific references to language and plot details to make your case?
4. Why are interpersonal relationships so impersonal in F.451? We see into various marriages and work relationships, but it seems to be the new friendships formed around the written word (books) that are most important. Why?
5. Why are characters doubled in the book? The major characters all seem to have their “evil twin” throughout the text. Beatty and Faber, Mildred and Clarisse. Granger and Faber? And even Beatty and Montag? Why does Ray Bradbury use this technique to make his point? What is this point?
Part 1: Choose a Topic. After decoding the essay topic and writing it in your own words, pick a topic and stick with it. Part 2: Look for bits and pieces of text that seem to be related to your question. You shouldn’t know exactly what they do to support your topic yet? Part 3: Look at your evidence. Analyze it. Talk about it. What does it do? How does it work? Part 4: Answer your question in a direct, argumentative statement, THIS IS YOUR THESIS!
Essay Assignment Part One:
1. Create a Google Doc with the fillowing Name: (Name) 451 Essay Research (Block) College Prep
Share this document with me before beginning any research. At the top of the page tell me what essay topic you have chosen.
2. Find ten quotations from the text that you believe will help you to understand the essay topic you've chosen. They should have exactly the same format as annotations (they may even come from your annotations).
3. For each quotation you should say what you think this quotations says about your essay topic. How does it relate to your essay topic? What language makes it seem important? What is going on in the book at this point? Why do you think it is important?
**There are two assingments here, each worth 10 pts. The first is the research.
**The second assignment is your original analysis of each quotation.
Day 4:
Workshopping the Thesis for an Academic Essay
Today you will be drafting your thesis. If you're not sure how a thesis works or what a thesis is, please read the web pages I showed in class. I don't think I should have to retype or rewrite information that is readily available on the web page. Just look at the bottom of the homepage for writing resources and read away. The two that I used today as examples in class were Jack Lynch's page on "How to get an A on an English Paper" and "Harvard University's Writing Center Resources.
Please begin the class by creating the follwing google doc and sharing it with me: (Name) 451 Essay Draft (Block) College Prep.
At the top of the page you should have the following information on the top left corner (see example below)
Eric Lister
451 Essay Draft
B Block
College Prep English
Thesis: (and then write out your thesis)
Below this you should have, in bold letters: We won't begin working on the actual introduction until the end of our paper. Our next step will be to use paragraphs to test our hypothesis (our working thesis). Homework: Generate a thesis that I can check in class. The next assignment will clarify how i think you should generate a thesis, but I want you to try this on your own before you try my way of doing it. Why is my way different than everyone else's? It is just a different way to solve a problem you've been working on for the past several years. Try it, if you don't like it you can always go back to the way you used to create theses.
Thesis worth five points.
Day 5:
Drafting Individual Paragraphs:
Your classwork today and your homework for tonight will be to draft the three (at least) body paragraphs that you are going to use in your paper. Don't worry about the conclusion; don't worry about the introduction. We are just going to begin to test how you are going to support your thesis.
Earlier this week you should have collected all the evidence and analysis that constitute the "research" for your paper. You then printed and cut out these pieces of evidence and looked at them to see how they might fit together. Once these quotations were grouped in ways that made sense to you, you should have taped or glued these bits of evidence on full sheets of paper. Since each topic, or each idea that supports our topic has been grouped properly, we can be said to have "blocked out" the research for our paper.
Now that we've got these larger groups of quotations together we should be able to answer the following question: How does this group of quotations answer my essay question/topic? The answer to this question should be the seed for your topic sentence for that particular paragraph.
Eventually, when we start putting the whole paper together we'll begin to ask,"How do all of these paragraphs support my thesis? Or do they? But for now, concentrate on each individual group of quotations and analysis.
So how does one draft an essay paragraph?
Each paragraph should have at least the following parts.
1. An analytical topic sentence that proves what your research and analysis say about your essay topic.
2. Proper context for your quotations.
3. Properly quoted evidence.
4. Full analysis of your quotation.
5 (repeat steps three and four as necessary. Lather, rinse, repeat)
6. A statement of summary or of transition that naturally leads to the next paragraph. (Don't worry about this statement too much now. It will make more sense when we've finalized the structure of our essay, the order of our individual paragraphs.)
Homework: Draft all three body paragraphs. Each paragraph will be worth 10 points for an assignment total of 30 points. Please note that our point total for this assignment is already 55 points. This is an enormous amount for this class. So keep up.
Day 6 and 7: Marking up your body Paragraphs and Drafting an introduction.
Today in class we marked up our body paragraphs using the following colored highlights:
Green: Topic Sentence
Yellow: Context for your evidence
Blue: Your actual evidence
Red: Analysis of your evidence.
The idea of this assignment was for you to literally see what each sentence of your paragraph does, what role it plays. If you have any sentences that don't seem to fit into one of these categories, then you need to question what they are doing taking up valuable space.
A couple of key things to note:
1. Make sure you've got sufficient contextualization for each quotation. Does your reader understand what is happening in the book before you quote your evidence. You cannot say, "On page fifty-four.." Nobody knows what that means. On the other hand if you say, "The very first time Clarisse meets Montag she surprises him with her strange thoughts on the world" your reader knows exactly what is happening.
2. Make sure that you follow MLA documentation for in-text citations. We covered this, but if you are lost, look to the OWL web page linked to our homepage.
3. You should always have more analysis than evidence. You have to explain what the evidence mean and that takes effort and plenty of language. If you have less red than blue, then you are probably only using your evidence as an example.
Part II: Drafting the introduction
Introductions are hard--they are an art and, like conclusions, it takes writing dozens of them before one really gets the hang of it. So I'm going to ask that you try to write your introduction right now in class. Just give it your best shot. Use what you know and attempt to do the best you can to situate your thesis (the one that you've already written) in the best possible light.
On the Google doc you've already shared with me (Name) 451 Essay Draft (Block) College Prep, Add a new subheading just below your thesis:
Introduction:
Then go ahead and give it a try. Make sure you save. And remember, these must be done in class. You will earn a possible of ten points for effort.
When you've finished, read the following web pages--which are also linked to our homepage. This is also your homework! Quiz on Friday.
College Writing: http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/college_writing.html
Introductions: http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/introductions.html
Paragraph Development: http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/paragraphs.html
These pages use some slightly different terminology, but they show you what comes next in college level writing.
Home Work:
Evaluation: For Marking up your body paragraphs and for drafting your introduction you can earn a total of ten points:
Day 8: Drafting the conclusion and cleaning up the second draft.
Yesterday in class I showed you where you might find information on how to write conclusions. To be perfectly honest, writing conclusions is a art form that takes a long time to develop. So although we will eventually spend some quality time looking at them and thinking about them, they really aren't going to be the focus of this particular paper.
If you write the best conclusion in the world, but your introduction and thesis are weak, the paper will not be successful. Therefore, if we're trying to make as much progress as possible with writing academic essays, then we really need to make sure that we can write strong introductions, theses and body paragraphs before we tackle conclusions.
You will notice that we've actually taken on the process of writing based upon matters of relative importance: Before you can begin to write a good essay, you've got to know what you think about the book and a topic (research, locate quotations, analyzye them). Before you can begin to draft your individual body paragraph you need to decide exactly what you want to argue, based on your research and Analysis (Thesis). Before you can begin to draft your body paragraph, you need to make sure that you know how the paragraph is going to prove your thesis (Topic Sentences).
Cleaning up the second Draft: Watch the video if you are confused! Just hit the link below.
We can let computers help us with the editing process.
Homework: 10 pts
Get a second draft of your paper proofread (spell checked and grammar checked like we discussed in class) so that I can read this draft.
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Welcome! Mr. Eric Lister
English Department
Winchester High School
80 Skillings Road
Winchester, MA 01890
781.721.7020
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College Prep >
Fahrenheit 451 Essay Topics |