Objectives:
- To reinforce the concept that the comparison or contrast of two things must proceed from one set of criteria or points
- To begin the drafting process for the students’ essays
- Overhead projector
- Blank transparency (optional) and transparency markers
- The students’ pre-writing charts, reproduced on transparencies (See Procedure Option 1)
- A "pair" of paragraphs from each student, reproduced on transparencies. These paragraphs should represent the analysis of one similarity (i.e. one row of the chart) with one paragraph on hearing students and one paragraph on deaf students. (See Procedure Option 2)
- If you are going to do both Procedure Option 1 (drafting paragraphs from students’ pre-writing charts) and Procedure Option 2 (reviewing students’ paragraph pairs), begin with Option 2 (see footnote 13) and continue with Option 1.
- Collect the transparencies of the students’ charts.
- Quickly place on the overhead and read through as many charts as possible to give an overview of the students’ views regarding the similarities between deaf and hearing students. Commend especially clear criteria and reasons and especially vivid detail.
- Compile a master chart on the chalkboard of criteria and reasons that seem especially intriguing or that are repeated in several students’ charts. Criteria and reasons should be fairly complete but evidence can be sketchy. Three chart rows should be sufficient.
- Situate the overhead projector and screen so that the chalkboard chart is still visible. Place the blank overhead transparency on the projector.
- Select one row of the master chart on the chalkboard and begin working from the deaf student “side” of the chart.
- Begin drafting the first paragraph. 10 At every opportunity ask students for suggestions, preferably on a sentence-by-sentence basis. For example, say to the students: “The first criteria is ‘interest in sports’ and the first reason is ‘you (the deaf student) are a big football fan.’ What would be a good topic sentence or sentences or this paragraph?”
- Continue drafting this paragraph in a similar fashion. In moving to the body of the paragraph, emphasize the need for vivid, descriptive evidence or detail.
- When this paragraph is completed, move on the to the other “side,” the analysis of the hearing student under the same criteria/reason. Using the master chart on the board, proceed as above eliciting student suggestions for the topic sentence and then the body of the paragraph.
- Whenever possible in drafting the second paragraph, emphasize the need for balance and continuity between the two paragraphs. For example, if the first half of the paragraph on the deaf student's love of football emphasizes the number of hours he watches football on T.V., mentioning the number of hours the hearing student watches baseball at a similar point in the second point will “knit” the two paragraphs together. However, attention to continuity should not outweigh attention to unity and development at this stage and should not be artificial.
Encourage students to be very “conversational” and to write to their audience, in this case the hearing roommate. A good topic sentence might be: “Hey Roomie, one thing we have in common is we both love sports. In fact, I'm a real big football fan.”
- Collect the transparencies of the students’ charts and paragraph pairs. Be sure to keep each student's chart with his or her paragraph pairs.
- Quickly place on the overhead projector and read through as many charts as possible to give an overview of the students’ views regarding the similarities between deaf and hearing students. Commend especially clear criteria and reasons and especially vivid detail. 11
- Select and place on the overhead projector the first student's paragraph pairs.
- Read through the first paragraph and ask for revision suggestions from the class beginning with the topic sentence and proceeding to the detail in the body of the first paragraph. 12
- Move on to the second paragraph and proceed in a similar manner. At the topic sentence, emphasize the need to consider the same criteria/reason as the first paragraph. In the body of the paragraph, suggest ways of achieving paragraph-to-paragraph coherence as discussed Option 1 Procedure above.
- Continue eliciting revision suggestions on as many student paragraph pairs as possible. 13
10 See Workshop Three: Continuing to Evaluate for a more detailed description of this before-the-class drafting.
11 If Procedure 1 and Procedure 2 are going to be done in one workshop, compile a master chart on the chalkboard at this point.
12 The "Body Paragraph Checklist" from Workshop Four: Revising the Evaluation Essay can serve as your guide in forming questions.
13 If you are doing both procedures, end this workshop by drafting a sample pair of paragraphs using information from the master chart on the chalkboard and especially vivid details from student paragraphs.
Workshop 6 / Workshop 7 / Workshop 8 / Workshop 9 / Workshop 10 / Credits
