Persuasive writing.

We began class with a review of how the portfolios, were graded.  IN general, grades for this "grade-so-far" were most affected by missing work and missing class.  I emphasized that for your final grade, the "weight" of grading moves from participation to graded writing assignments.   I also pointed out that the Evidence of progress grade will be your final exam, and that for the final grade I will drop your three lowest attendance grades.

Persuasive writing.
We discussed the sample essay in the book on gay marriage and evaluated its "effectiveness".  As a class we generated the following list.

strengths
- begins with ethos appeal (establishes authority) and connects to the readers feelings (asks them to "feel" how it feels to be cast outside of "traditional values")
- works from less controversial material to stronger, more polarized claims
- uses lots of support to develop, explain + illustrate points

weaknesses
- does not seem to focus directly on gay marriage
- transitions between different subjects seem abrupt (essay doesn't flow)

With these considerations in mind - you then workshopped your "Should women be drafted?) essays.
You worked with a partner to explore the following questions:

• what is the essay's main point?
• what are the supporting points?
• what is the order of the author's "moves"  (ethos, pathos, logos)
• how does the author connect to the audience (establish common ground) before moving to more direct (aggressive) points?
• what makes this essay persuasive?
• what should be strengthened?

You composed an email answering each of these questions.

We then reviewed what you are learning about persuasive writing, took a look at the assignment sheet for the persuasive essay (posted at the right), and you did some brainstorming to find a topic for your essay.

For Thursday:

Write: exploratory writing to find your topic.  This might be freewriting - it might be a list of 5-10 topics with ideas associated to them (a detailed list); it might be "looping" = some detailed freewriting in response to ideas that came up in your free writing.  It might be a list of websites.  Or it might be just a description of some things you care about and are interested in followed by "arguments" associated with those interests.  This writing will be posted at on your portfolio at the Persuasive essay section, under prewriting.

Come to class Thursday prepared to talk about your topic for your persuasive essay.