INTRODUCTION - Maupin House Publishing

INTRODUCTION
Now more than ever, the well-developed persuasive essay has become a major
instructional focal point for the high-school English teacher. Classroom writing
assignments and assessments have long required good persuasive essays.
Increasingly, however, Advanced Placement exams, state assessments, the College
Board, and the new SAT demand strong persuasive essays, too. These high-stakes
essay exams require students to state a clear point and support it with sufficient
evidence and explanation. They require students to balance reason and imagination
to produce essays that stand out from the crowd.
Style is the component of writing that creates the stand-out essay. As used in this
resource, the word “style” refers to four key strategies that all good persuasive
writers must use. They begin with a strong structural foundation, first crafting
a strong and logical claim and premise. They support their theses with appropriate
diction: examples, vivid verbs, and concrete examples, manipulating their words
for specificity and effect.
Strong persuasive writers use appropriate figurative language, those compelling
comparisons and allusions that bring a piece to life and make for interesting reading.
Finally, they add syntax techniques, making sure their sentences are clear, varied,
and rhythmic. Their deliberate choice of techniques like parallelism, antithesis,
alliteration, and anaphora add a deeper dimension to their arguments and further
enhance the pleasure of reading their essays.
The components of style are no great mystery. Too often, unfortunately, it’s the
missing component in student writing, and teachers are often at a loss as to how
to teach it, especially given time and curricular constraints.
This professional resource and idea book is designed to provide teachers with
the background, instructional knowledge, and student exercises they need to help
students make the leap from adequate to outstanding persuasive essays. With these
points, students gain practice with strategies that will sharpen their persuasivewriting
skills and help them develop a distinctive voice and writing style.
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WhAT yOU’LL FIND IN ThIS BOOK
Part I (Chapters 1-12) presents the writing strategies individually, with instructional
notes and student exercises and reference sheets. Part II (Chapters 13-15) gives you
tools to help students apply their practice to draft, revise, and edit their essays. Part
III deals with problem-solving and assessment and includes student practice with
scoring several essays against a rubric. Also in Part III are additional skill-sharpening
games and activities for the whole class, some questions for close reading, a glossary
of terms, a quiz on the terms, and 101 writing prompts. Together, this resource
presents a metaphorical Swiss Army knife of writing strategies that you and your
students can use to tackle any writing task with confidence.
In Part I (Chapters 1-12), each chapter begins with an explanation, followed by
reproducible student activities and worksheets that provide definitions, examples,
and practice. “Teaching Notes and Answers” at the end of each chapter provide you
with instructional information, examples, and activity answers.
A Style Points Quiz with answers follows Chapter 12 as a culminating assessment
activity. Use this assessment to guide instruction and assess understanding.
Part II (Chapters 13-15) focuses on helping your students apply their style-points
practice to the essay-writing process. Chapter 13 includes a powerful pre-writing
strategy, summaries of the major points, two student-revision strategies, and ways
to help your students edit for coherence and organization.
Chapter 14 provides you with problem-solving and assessment information to pinpoint
problems and to give your students practice scoring an essay against a provided sixpoint
rubric. Finally, additional whole-class games and activities in Chapter 15 add even
more effective spice to your instruction. The “Resource” section also provides you with
101 writing prompts and a glossary of key terms, along with a final quiz that tests their
knowledge of the terms you’ve taught.
An important organizational note: After you assess the worksheets, return them
to the students for reference. Students can keep them in a binder or portfolio. This
allows them to track their progress, review past strategies, and return to past drafts
for revision. It will be especially helpful as they bridge the transition from learning
and practicing Part I writing strategies to applying those strategies in Part II essays.
x Introduction

hOW TO USE ThE STyLE POINTS LESSONS
IN yOUR CLASSROOM
Because the needs of teachers (and their students) vary so widely, this book
is designed to give you as much flexibility as possible. Here are two basic approaches
you might take.
Option 1: Go through the book’s exercises in sequence. The student lessons in the
first twelve chapters are cumulative: They progress from introductory exercises that
introduce each strategy to short composition activities in which students apply each
strategy in their own writing.
Each of the student worksheets contains some background definitions, examples, and
explanations. But you will get the best instructional results if you introduce and teach
the lesson first. The notes in the beginning of each chapter give you ideas of how
to introduce and teach each concept that the students will work on.
Additionally, the “Teaching Notes and Answers” that follow each chapter provide you
with specific instructional tips and information that applies to each exercise, as well
as examples, definitions, and student-worksheet answers.
As you lead students through the lessons’ concepts, focus on the examples and models
provided to help you. Take time to read these aloud with students so they can see the
strategies in action before they do their own writing.
Allow at least one class period (forty–fifty minutes) for each activity. Using this approach,
the first part of the book will take at least twelve weeks to complete (more if you
do every activity in each chapter).
Once students have completed Part I of the book, Part II will guide them through the
process of applying the strategies by writing fully developed essays. The activities
in Chapter 13 support students throughout the entire writing process: pre-writing,
drafting, revising for coherence and organization, and self- and peer-revision.
For the first essay you assign, spend at least one class period on each activity to ensure
that students are well-grounded in each stage of the writing process. This groundwork
will pay off later, as it equips students with strategies they can use at each stage.
The whole-activities in Chapter 15 are designed to reinforce the strategies learned
in Part I; these can be used at any time to practice and sharpen students’ use
of these strategies.
Option 2: Jump around based on the needs of your students. Each chapter in this
book is self-contained so that you can use it individually out of sequence. If, for example,
your students need work on verbs, use the activities in Chapter 3. For planning purposes,
each activity is designed to take approximately one forty- to fifty-minute class period.
Chapter 14 provides a section on “Pinpointing Problems,” which will help you identify
specific strategies that you might teach based on past student-writing assessments.
Because no two teachers use any one book the same way, this book is designed so that
you can flip back and forth between Part I and Part II based on your preferences and
needs. The Chapter 15 activities are the one exception; these activities, which provide
whole-class options for practicing and reinforcing skills, presume knowledge of the
strategies from Chapters 1-12.
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