Page 23 - SpringBoard_Writing_Workshop_Grade7_Flipbook

Writing Workshop 2 (continued)
12. You have learned that a well-organized body paragraph includes the following elements:
• Topic sentence that includes a reason for supporting your thesis
• Evidence, which includes facts, stories, etc., to support your reasoning
• Transitions, which are words or phrases that make the relationship between
ideas obvious for the reader
• Commentary, which includes an explanation of the significance of the
evidence or the connection to the topic sentence.
With your class, use these elements to draft the body paragraphs for your class essay.
13. Working with your teacher, draft the conclusion to your argument. In this last paragraph, provide a call to action (encouragement to the audience to take action based on your claim), and highlight the urgency or importance of the issue you are presenting. The conclusion should offer closure to the topic without introducing ideas not addressed in the essay.
Check Your Understanding
Once the class argumentative essay has been drafted, refer to the Scoring Guide to help determine how well the essay meets the expectations. After looking at the Scoring Guide, consider the following in the evaluation:
• Underline the topic and the claim or thesis in the introduction.
• Identify the reasons in each paragraph that prove the thesis is correct.
• What audience concerns and opposing viewpoints are addressed?
• Is there a strong connection (relevance) between the evidence and the claim in
each body paragraph?
• Are the body paragraphs placed in an order that is logical and clearly supports the
argument?
• Does the essay contain examples of logos and /or pathos? Pathos should be used
sparingly to avoid too many emotional appeals.
• Does the conclusion include a call to action and offer closure? • What transitions have you used?
Revising for Language and Writer’s Craft
Writers add interest to their arguments by varying their sentence structures. An argumentative essay with only simple sentences would be somewhat dull to read, while an essay with a variety of sentences would add interest. Working in groups, you will be evaluating an assigned body paragraph and revising the sentences to add complexity.
Sentence Complexity: The complexity of a sentence can suggest the importance of the content within that sentence. How a sentence is constructed can communicate the relationship between the ideas it expresses. There are four types of sentence complexity: simple, compound, complex, and compound–complex.
14. Each of the sentences below was taken from the sample essay. Read each sentence and underline the independent subject and circle the simple predicate in each set. Then, in the space provided to the right of each sentence, explain how the complexity of the sentence helps clarify the content.
8 SpringBoard® Writing Workshop with Grammar Activities Grade 7
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