Building a First Draft, Part 1: September 7, 2017

Focus: How do I build a strong first draft?

1. Warming up with literal and metaphorical building

• Build a boat. What's the most important part about the structure of a boat?
• Build a tree. What's the most important part about the structure of a tree?
• Build a house. What's the most part about the structure of a house?

• Build an essay. What's the most important part about the structure of an essay? 

2. Workshopping a thesis statement together on the class blog for the following qualities:

Is it clear?

Is it specific?

Is it debatable?

Is it provable?

Which of the criteria above do you need to work on with your own thesis? Take a few minutes to either revise your thesis or to type yourself note with specific criteria to work on.

3. Taking your Lego ideas and applying them concretely to essay-writing (in small groups)

• Read the sample student essay.
• Help each other find structures for building an essay by generating a guideline sheet.

4. Figuring out where you need to go next:

• Reworking your thesis?
• Developing an outline?
• Researching more?
• Writing your introduction?
• Composing a body paragraph?

Note: Please start a new document called "Draft" and save it in your Cultural Hysteria folder.

HW:

1. For tomorrow (Friday): Compose one page of your first draft (double-spaced). It can be an intro and part of a body paragraph, or your first body paragraph and part of your second. Think about what writing routine works for you and for this particular assignment.

2. Take five more minutes to review your Puritan Words, List 1. Be strongly familiar with the words, but don't worry about strict memorization. We will have a creative assessment tomorrow.

3. Heads-up: FINAL DRAFT IS DUE NEXT FRIDAY, SEP 15 BY 3:00 PM in www.turnitin.com