Day 21: Thesis Statements

What are all of the main parts of an introduction paragraph? 
Short List

1. Attendance Check and Warm-up
2. Review from Friday
3. Introduction to Thesis Statements
4. Testing Out What You Think Know About Thesis Statements
5. Review of the "Rules" of Thesis Statements
6. Returning Paragraph Portfolios and Midterm Grade Reports

Homework:
By Friday, write a 300-word self-reflective paragraph/essay responding to one of these prompts.  Please do not rush through it, but take your time to write something thoughtful to help yourself grow in your writing and learning:

• How you have seen areas needing improvement that you did not previously know you had. 
• How you have seen specifically seen yourself grow as a writer in ESL 111. 
• The most useful assignment/project/lesson/activity to you personally and why it was so useful.  
• A review of the goals you set at the beginning of the semester and your progress on meeting them--both your successes and failures.  
• The most important thing to know about ESL 111 and academic writing and why it is the most important. 
• Advice you would give a new student about to come to the U.S. for the first time from your country who is going to take my section of ESL 111.  

Please leave these in your Google Drive folder and name them anything you like so long as the word "Reflection" is somewhere in the title.  

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The Details
Schedule of events:

1. [5 minutes] Attendance Check and Warm-up

2. [5 minutes] Review from Friday
We are going to be teachers in here a lot today.  So, to facilitate this, follow these steps:

Step 1:
If you were not here on Friday, please raise your hand.

Step 2:
If you are raising your hand, find one or two people who can tell you all they know about introduction paragraphs from (a) Friday's lesson and (b) their own preexisting knowledge.

Step 3:
Move and share.  This should not take much longer than 3 or 4 minutes.

Useful Resource: Use the materials and the lesson from Friday in your teaching and learning.  

3. [10 minutes] Introduction to Thesis Statements
So, the last part of the introduction paragraph is the thesis statement.  What do you know about thesis statements?  In partnerships, discuss what you know, and teach the rest of us here.

4. [10-15 minutes] Testing Out What You Think Know About Thesis Statements
With your partners, look at this next document.

Then, decide which of the thesis statements are good thesis statements.  Then, each partnership will need to test their knowledge more by explaining why the thesis statements for one of the numbers is good or bad (e.g. everyone will judge every thesis statement, but only the partnership assigned number 1 will justify their judgment for number 1 while partnership 2 will do the same for number 2, etc.).  You can post your justifications to the same padlet.

5. [10 minutes] Review of the "Rules" of Thesis Statements
In short, our thesis statements should meet these requirements:

Look back at your reasons--how close were you?

6. [last 10 minutes] Returning Paragraph Portfolios and Midterm Grade Reports
As I return your Paragraph Portfolios and give you a Midterm Grade Report, please remember these things:

1. I strive diligently to be fair in all grading (and if it is ever not fair, I want it to be in a way that helps my students, because that is most fair) 
2. If you feel I have not been fair, I will not be surprised, because grading writing is difficult work, especially when there are more than a couple of papers.  I admit that I may not always be as perfect as a computer grading due to: 
• the difficulty of grading writing
• the possibility of imperfect grading rubrics
• and a host of other human-element factors 
3. If you feel I have not been fair, and you would like to "protest" your grade, please follow these guidelines: 
• You may discuss my grading with you if you disagree with it 24 hours after you receive the grade back from me.  That gives you some time to cool down and to think about it logically. 
• Any changes in grade will only come via written justification.  If you tell me a great argument for why my grading is unfair, nothing will affect your grade until you write your argument.  This is a writing class after all. :) 
4. I have not had this happen very often in my classes, and when it does, it is usually not for something very major.   

Homework:
By Friday, write a 300-word self-reflective paragraph/essay responding to one of these prompts.  Please do not rush through it, but take your time to write something thoughtful to help yourself grow in your writing and learning:

• How you have seen areas needing improvement that you did not previously know you had. 
• How you have seen specifically seen yourself grow as a writer in ESL 111. 
• The most useful assignment/project/lesson/activity to you personally and why it was so useful.  
• A review of the goals you set at the beginning of the semester and your progress on meeting them--both your successes and failures.  
• The most important thing to know about ESL 111 and academic writing and why it is the most important. 
• Advice you would give a new student about to come to the U.S. for the first time from your country who is going to take my section of ESL 111.  

Please leave these in your Google Drive folder and name them anything you like so long as the word "Reflection" is somewhere in the title.