Teaching Analytical Writing
The diagnostic writing assessment I gave to students at the beginning of year showed that most students were reluctant to use direct quotes to support their ideas in a paragraph. The same was true in my first year at Briggs Chaney, when I revived the "Quote Sandwich" model I used in my English 11 classes while student teaching. I started students small and slowly led them toward the essay.
However, at the end of my first year at Briggs Chaney, I felt that some students struggled because they were unable to see the big picture and the relationships between the small steps they had taken to get there. Thus, this handout was born. It introduces the three "levels" of argumentative and analytical writing I use in my classroom. Students this year were introduced to the big picture first, before we took our first steps with the quote sandwich. I also felt that students left without knowing where their writing should go next, which led me to develop and implement a lesson on breaking the Five-Paragraph Essay formula this year. |
At the Quote Sandwich level, students are learning to incorporate quotations into their writing at a very basic level. They make a claim and then support it using a quote from the text. Finally, they explain how the quote and claim are connected.
After mastering the paragraph, students are ready for the Five-Paragraph Essay. They learn to write a three-prong thesis that outlines the body paragraphs in the essay. They also learn to write introduction and conclusion paragraphs.
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At the paragraph level, students learn to craft a topic sentence and then develop two quote sandwiches to support that topic sentence. Students learn that their explanations must now connect their quotes back to both the claim and the topic sentence.
Finally, students learn to manipulate the formulaic Five-Paragraph Essay to create a more sophisticated piece of writing called the Premise-Based Argument. Students learn to craft a more elegant thesis that takes multiple, logically organized paragraphs to prove.
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