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Lesson 4

We will read each other’s essays in order to improve the writing and analysis in our essays.

Lesson Goals

  • Can I work productively in various roles with other participants?

  • Can I revisit, refine, and revise my understanding, knowledge, and work based on discussions with others and feedback and review by myself and others?

Texts

Core

  • Tradebook
    • Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe, Penguin Random House, 1994

Materials

There are no materials for this Lesson.

Activity 1: Read

We will read each other’s essays to improve our writing.

Trade essays with a partner and read each other’s drafts. Use the following questions to focus your feedback:

  1. Does the evidence and analysis presented relate specifically to the working thesis?

  2. What additional evidence do you recall that relates to the analysis in your partner’s paragraphs?

  3. What additional analysis can you add to your partner’s interior paragraphs?

Share your feedback with your partner.

Activity 2: Write

We will revise our essays based on the feedback we received.

Continue to revise your draft using the feedback you received from your partner and focusing on the following questions:

  1. Have you summarized Okonkwo’s story, experiences, and motivations?

  2. Have you developed your thesis through a sequence of claims?

  3. Have you used enough specific examples from the text? Are your direct quotations cited correctly?

  4. Did you clearly communicate your analysis through effective word choices, sentence and paragraph development, and transitions among ideas?

  5. Did you correctly use the conventions of usage, mechanics, and punctuation?

For homework, continue to revise your draft. Then prepare a clean copy of your essay for editing and proofreading.