23 Final Draft // Due the week of March 3, 2015

Hi Everyone!

This week, just revise your final draft (I will be checking for big changes so make sure to actually take the advice of some of your comments—mine at the very least) and put it on the blog (local-option.blogspot.com).

There is the same login information as there is to get into our Google Drive account. If you don't remember that or have trouble getting on—email me!


Thanks!

22 Peer Reviewing // Due the week of Feb. 24, 2015

Hi Everyone!

Today, your rough draft should definitely be on Google Drive (if it's not on by Feb. 18th, it is half-off).

You'll want it to be there so that your classmates can peer review your writing! This means that they will read through your essay and make comments as to what is good or what could be improved.

So that is your homework everybody:

Write (Monday: 15) (Tuesday: 12) comments** total, spread out between all of your classmate's papers. Because your classmates are relying on you to be a good peer reviewer, I will be grading this assignment quite harshly—be sure to sign each comment with your name, and follow the following guidelines very closely :)

• PEER REVIEW GUIDELINES:
• Finish each comment with your name at the end.
• Look for big picture suggestions
• Organization: Does it follow the organization we learned in class? Is it missing certain pieces?
• Evidence: Is there enough good evidence about each reason? What specific evidence would you like to see?
• Relevance: Is everything on topic an useful for defending the thesis?
• Language: Is the language varied, with good vocabulary, metaphors, imagery, etc?
• Formatting: Is there a title? Is it double spaced, Times New Roman, 12 Pt font? 
• Don't worry about little picture suggestions
• Grammar
• Spelling
• Typos
• BE SPECIFIC and KIND!
• GOOD:
• "I would like to know more about the international space station that you bring up—I don't really know what that is. —Bob"
• "I like how your attention grabber is really tragic and moving—that's a tough goal to achieve. —Sally"
• "I notice that you don't have your sources cited within your paper. Remember to put parenthesis with the source number after each fact. —John" 
• BAD:
• "Nice intro! —George" (Not specific enough)
• "This paragraph needs more information. —Louis" (Not specific enough)
• "This part is boring. —Ronda" (Not specific or nicely put)

**To write a comment on Google Drive: 

1. Select a word or phrase of the paper.
2. Right click on that word or phrase.
3. Go down the menu that appears and click on "comment."
4. Write a comment in the bubble that appears in the right side of the screen.
5. Press "Comment" when you are done to save your comment. 

21 Rough Drafts // Due the week of Feb. 16, 2015

Hi Everyone!

Next week, the rough draft of your research paper is due! It doesn't have to be perfect, but I'd like to see a genuine effort at each of the five paragraphs of the essay.

Please follow the following general outline (but use complete sentences and essay paragraph format)

1. Introduction
1. Attention Grabber: Gets the audience interested; choose one of the following:
1. Ask a question
2. State a shocking fact
3. Quote an interesting quotation
4. Make a joke
5. Feel free to try something not on the list, as long as it's attention grabbing!
2. Thesis: Opinion because reason1, reason2, and reason3.
2. Paragraph about Reason1
1. Evidence from your notecards
2. Possible Evidence types:
1. Logos: Facts, Statistics, Reasonings
2. Pathos: Emotional stories, personal accounts
3. Ethos: Expert opinions by doctors, teachers, professors, scientists, etc
3. Paragraph about Reason2
1. Evidence (See above)
4. Paragraph about Reason3
1. Evidence (See above)
5. Conclusion

Make sure it's all on Google Drive in the Rough Drafts folder. We will be doing peer review, so make sure you like your work enough to share it :)

Email me if you have questions!

20 Notecards // Due the week of Feb. 10, 2015

Hi Everyone!

This week, we went back to the sources you collected last week and started looking for information that would be useful to your research papers!

Materials you'll need:

• 12 notecards of 3 different colors (4 of each color)
• If you don't have colored notecards, you can distinguish them in other ways like shapes in the corners, or you can cut colored paper into notecards.
• I gave you notecards in class, so if you have lost those, you'll need to find your own.

Assign one color of notecard to each reason from your thesis. For example, if your thesis is:

• Cats are the best animal because they are clean, cheap, and cute.
• Then all evidence about their cleanliness will be blue, all evidence about their cheapness will be pink, and all evidence about the cuteness will be yellow.

Write one piece of information on each notecard, until you have 12 notecards of information.

Be sure you label the notecards in their corners with which source the information came from—you can write the number of the source (from your works cited page) or the last name of the author—or whatever you want, as long as you remember where you got the information.

Consider the following types of evidence to write down:

• Logos: Facts, Statistics, Numbers, Reasonings
• Pathos: Personal stories, emotional stories
• Ethos: Expert opinion: Doctors, Scientists, Politicians, people who've experienced it before

Email me if you have questions!

19 Finding Good Online Research and Works Cited Pages // Due the week of Feb. 2, 2015

Hi Everyone!

This week we talked about two main things:

1. 5 Rules for finding good research online
1. Do not use Wikipedia as a source**
1. **You can sometimes use facts from Wikipedia if you cite the place where the facts came from—instead of just Wikipedia. You can find the citation information if you click on the little blue number that can be seen right after the good fact. 
2. Do not use websites that get their information from the public—such as Answers.com, or any other comment-sourced pages.
3. Be wary of ".com" websites. The most trustworthy are ".edu," ".gov," and ".org."
4. If a website is not well-designed or well-written, it's probably not very legitimate.
5. Websites associated with well-known news sources or programs tend to be trustworthy on their facts (although not always unbiased in their opinions)—i.e.: Time Magazine, BBC News, etc
2. Using EasyBib.com to create a works cited page for your paper.
1. Every research paper needs a "works cited" page in order to show readers where information was gathered.
2. Each citation on this page must have a particular formatting (in this case, MLA)
3. Easybib.com asks for specific necessary citation information, and then takes it all and puts it into the format for you—yay!
4. Make sure to tell it to include the URL (or copy and paste it at the bottom of each citation yourself) so you can easily visit the website later on.
5. Copy and paste each finished citation into a document (saved with your name at the top) in Google Drive in the folder marked: "Works Cited Pages."
6. Title it: Works Cited 

So that said, your homework is:

1. Find at least 6 websites that look like they have good information.
1. Scan through the information.
2. You don't need to write down any facts yet—just make sure it looks like a helpful website for your topic.
2. Using Easybib.com, create citations for each of your 6+ sources.
3. Create a works cited page in Google Drive in the folder "Works Cited Pages."

Email me if you have questions or still are having trouble getting onto Google Drive!!!

18 Research Strategy // Due the week of Jan. 27, 2015

Hi Everyone!

This week in class, we talked about a way to reduce the time it takes to read an article—thereby helping you all in your future research!

The theory behind this strategy is this:

Every body paragraph (in general) should have the following outline:

1. Topic Sentence (Introduces the topic of the paragraph)
1. Evidence
2. Details
3. Facts
4. Reasonings
2. Conclusion Sentence (Wraps it up, reflects the topic sentence)

Given that, you can read the topic sentence (and also look at the conclusion sentence) of most good paragraphs and find out the general topic—without having to read it! Then you can see if you should read the paragraph or not—based on what information you are trying to find.

So your homework is:

1. Find an article about your chosen topic that has at least 6 paragraphs.
2. Print it out.
3. Read the topic sentence (and look at the conclusion sentence) of each paragraph.
4. Label each paragraph with 1-2 words that you think describe it well.
5. Check out the rest of each paragraph to see how well it worked.
6. Turn in!

17 Pre-Research Topic Choice // Due the week of January 20, 2015

Hi Everyone!

We are now beginning our yearly research paper!

We are beginning a new blog as a giant project between several of my advanced English classes, which you can visit at: local-options.blogspot.com! Nothing is posted there yet (as we haven't written anything for it yet), but by the end of the first assignment, we should have about 30 projects on there, in a Time Magazine-esque creation—on which you research paper will be posted!

This week, we looked at some pages in Google Drive that are there to assist you in your choice of topic for the research paper. Email me if you do not remember the login username and password and I will send it to you.

The two parts to your homework are listed below (**Unless you are on Monday):

Topic Choice:
The first part of your homework is to choose and claim a topic.

Go to the page on Google Drive: "01 Research Paper Topics." This is a list of over 60 topics from you can choose your topic. Once you have chosen a topic, you will write your name next to it, as well as your chosen thesis*. Do it soon though, because if someone else claims your topic (and has written your same opinion on it), you'll have to choose another one.

If you want to write on a topic that is not one of these 60 topics, just add your topic to the list, and then write your name and thesis next to it.

*Thesis = Opinion because Reason 1, Reason 2, and Reason 3

• ie: Cats are the best pet because they are clean, friendly, and inexpensive.

Pre-Research Worksheets (**TUESDAY ONLY)

Before you choose your topic, I want you to make sure it is a topic you will truly enjoy! 

Therefore, go to the page: 02 Pre-Research Worksheets. Copy the template and paste it three times into a new document which you save into the folder: Pre-Research Worksheets Here under your first and last name.

Then fill out the templates for three different topics that interest you. Then choose one, and claim it—using the directions from above!

I know that is a boatload of information, so email me if you have questions!