Lesson Materials: See below
Lesson Objectives: 1. Continue preparing to employ outlining as a tool to organize content and articulate a thesis statement along with its support; 2. Understand the most important criteria of an argumentative essay in terms of organization, content, and rhetorical awareness; 3. Practice providing and revising with detailed feedback on an argument paper
Connection to Major Paper/Project: Today’s lesson offers the opportunity to start building an argument by articulating what your argument claims and outlining how specific content can support your claim
Connection to Course Goals: In this lesson you will consider the rhetorical situation particular to the argument assignment and the conventions that best serve this genre; you will explore ways to adapt conventions to your rhetorical context and to organize information and evidence in ways that are appropriate to audience, genre, and purpose.
Activities:
- Examining Genre Features of Undergraduate Argumentative Student Writing: 1. Find an upper level paper in this corpus that is closest to yours, and examine its organization and other features that stand out to you as unique to this kind of academic writing. 2. Share your findings with a classmate and discuss what you both learned. 3. Share with the class and discuss together the features of excellent undergraduate academic argumentative writing. Note that, while there are some general features, each rhetorical situation is unique, including what your instructor will expect from your future classes.
- The Meal Plan Method: 1. Use this method to organize a sample paragraph; 2. Share with a partner and give each other feedback on how well you applied the method; 3. Read your paragraph with the class and present the revisions you made to apply the method to enhance the organization of your writing.
- Outline Review for Organization, Content, and Rhetorical Awareness: The instructor will through one student outline and comment on its various features to show you how you can revise yours. For example, the instructor will look at the thesis statement and make sure it states a position and provides guidance on the main points for subsequent body paragraphs; you will discuss ways to make sure that each paragraph has strong topic sentences and appropriate evidence from reliable sources.
- Argument Draft Review Handout for Content, Organization, and Rhetorical Situation: Following the peer review protocol, you will comment on each others’ first drafts, giving most of your attention to content, rhetorical awareness, global organization and coherence.
- Revision Time: The remainder of class time will be spent making revisions and addressing peers’ notes in order to strengthen your outline.