Thursday, February 17, 2011

Blogger Award: Snow Day Letter

I was very impressed with your persuasive letters to Dr. Berry. I was primarily looking at three things:

1. Thesis statements - Did you have one that took a side AND included subpoints that previewed your paper?

2. Refutation - Did your second paragraph show the other side of the argument? Addressing the opposition is a key part of a good persuasive essay.

3. Organization - Was your paper organized similar to the models we looked at? Did you follow the paragraph pattern of TS, CD, CM, CD, CM, CS?

For the most part, our organization and refutation was solid. We still need to work on thesis statements.

One thing that many people omitted was discussing the background of the problem. That is something I obviously need to address before our next persuasive writing. Many people had a hook, and then jumped straight to the thesis statement. If I didn't know what you were writing about, I would have been lost understanding the situation without the background of the problem. Assume your audience is clueless about the situation, so you need to fill them in on the background.

Let's get to the winners of this week's Raven Blogger Award:

Andrea uses excellent support and commentary, including ETHOS, to support her argument. (4th Hour)

Katie does an outstanding job of appealing to Dr. Barry's emotions (PATHOS).  (5th Hour)

Braden took some chances on his letter, and it paid off. He uses LOGOS to support his opinion. (7th Hour)

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