Certainty and Doubt

1 & 3: After checking out the new scoring rubric for argumentative writing, which is much more conducive to comprehension in a one page format, you received feedback for your team jingoism or team identity essays. Big lessons from these readings is to go immediately into your example for the hook, have a solid transition that moves from the hook's example to the eventual claim idea/abstract noun, and a claim that ends that first paragraph. For those body paragraphs, you need a sub-claim/set-up of the example, warrants throughout to connect the understanding of the concept to the example, and a superwarrant clarifying the big idea at the end. For the counterclaim, complex sentences work the best, which is also the same advice I would give you for setting up the rebuttal as well. Following those meetings, we looked at a philosophical argument prompt on certainty and doubt, and you completed the pre-writing chart for this prompt. Overall, I read a great deal of original examples and a few twists on the counterclaims that convey a great deal of sophistication! Lastly, you began scoring the rangefinders for those prompts with 1-6. As noted in class, absolutely none of these essays warrants a 6, so judge each essay as an individual and not as one number that fits in with others. Make sure to score the essays (skip the last one) for next class so we may further discuss the importance of specificity, organization, and overall argumentative skills.

7: We haven't had class yet, so I'm figuring it will go something like this: first, you have your charts for the certainty and doubt prompt prepped, and I will be meeting with you to take a looksee at your examples and plan; second, we will then analyze the rangefinders for this prompt, which obviously are not up to the standard we would like them to be; third, you know that you will be writing to this prompt next class, so make sure you bring back your chart; fourth, we selected our new topic for tone, which is ice cream flavors. The paragraph for this tone cycle will be due on Monday as you will be busy writing in class on Friday. Emma, your tone word for this topic is derisive.