Image Credit: John Barkiple, Unsplash

Faculty Facing content: 

Goal: Integrating Reading and Writing

Rationale: Students in ENA 101 appear to struggle greatly with reading in many arenas. In particular, in my experience students have trouble selecting appropriate source material to support their specific points, instead defaulting simply to any source that they find tangentially related to whatever they are writing.  For this assignment, students are asked to create a topic sentence level outline for a paper and select material from pre-curated materials related to the essay we are working on and asked to specifically articulate how the material connects to both their topic sentence and thesis statement. 

Time frame: After teaching citation, during an essay cycle where students are required to use outside sources.  Sometime mid-term, generally. 

Material needed: Essay Assignment, Selection of 3-4 curated articles or other sources that are relevant to student research needs, after teaching the difference between summarization, paraphrasing and quotation, Outline Template (see below): 

Student Activity Sheet

You are in the process of drafting Essay #2. In this essay you have been asked to use at least 2 sources to support your thesis statement from our reading pack for this essay. In this assignment today, we will work individually for the first hour to outline our essay and select quotations and then in the second class hour we will work in small groups to peer review our source selections. Try to vary the way you are integrating sources: aim to use summary once, a paraphrase once, and a quotation with explication once. 

Part 1: Complete this outline individually: 

Working Thesis Statement: Put your working thesis statement here. 

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Topic Sentence 1

Evidence 1: 

Connection to thesis: 

Connection to topic sentence: 

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Topic Sentence 2

Evidence 2: 

Connection to thesis: 

Connection to topic sentence: 

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Topic Sentence 3

Connection to thesis: 

Connection to topic sentence: 

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Topic Sentence 4

Connection to thesis: 

Connection to topic sentence: 

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Part 2: In small groups, share your outlines. Explain one by one what evidence have you selected and why? 

As you respond to your peers consider:

•  Is the connection to the thesis clear?
•  Is the connection to the topic sentence clear? 
• What would clarify this information? 

Quick Write: 

Minute Paper

Reflect for a minute on what your classmates said. What is your next step for integrating these sources into your next draft?