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Lesson 10

We will write a multiparagraph response that demonstrates our understanding of change agents.

Lesson Goals

Reading and Knowledge

  • Gather and Organize Evidence: How well do I gather and organize relevant and sufficient evidence to demonstrate an understanding of texts related to change agents, support claims, and develop ideas about the characteristics of change agents?
  • Analyze Relationships: How well do I recognize and interpret important relationships among key details and ideas within texts related to change agents?
  • Compare and Connect: How well do I recognize points of connection among texts, textual elements, and perspectives to make logical, objective comparisons?

Writing

  • Use Conventions to Produce Clear Writing: How well do I apply correct and effective syntax, usage, mechanics, and spelling to communicate ideas and achieve intended purposes?
  • Organize Ideas: How well do I sequence and group sentences and paragraphs and use devices, techniques, descriptions, reasoning, evidence, and visual elements to establish coherent, logical, and well-developed narratives, explanations, and arguments?

Texts

Core

  • Digital Access
    • “How to Start a Movement,” Derek Sivers, TED.com, 2010
    • “The Danger of Silence,” Clint Smith, TED.com, 2015
  • Unit Reader
    • Excerpt from The Prince, Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, Gutenberg.org, 1532
    • “Inaugural Address, 20 January 1961,” John F. Kennedy and Ted Sorensen, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, 1961
    • “Introduction,” excerpt from The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell, Little, Brown and Company, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc., 2000

Materials

Tools

Reference Guides

Question Sets

Editable Google Docs

Activity 1: Write

We will undertake the initial stages of the writing process.

Review the Section 1 Diagnostic Checklist and your planning materials, including your Learning Log and Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tools. You will independently engage in the first stages of the writing process: brainstorming, organizing, and drafting.

Now, use the evidence collected in your Learning Log and Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tools to formulate ideas for a multiparagraph response that shares what you learned from each text. Use evidence from each of the texts to support your definition.

To use your Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool to compose a paragraph, you can follow the steps below:

  1. State the claim you have developed in response to the task question. This will be your topic sentence.

  2. Explain how making and analyzing connections among evidence in the text has led you to this claim.

  3. Identify or quote, then explain specific details from the text and how they support your claim.

  4. Explain how these specific textual details provide evidence that supports your claim.

Use at least one idea or quote from each text you encountered and include appropriate citations. Create a multiparagraph response outline.

Activity 2: Write

We will individually write a rough draft of a multiparagraph response on change agents.

Using your outline, draft your multiparagraph response.

Conclude your essay with a periodic sentence, modeling the structure after one of the mentor sentences you studied in previous lessons.

Activity 3: Write

We will read and edit our change agent multiparagraph responses for specific structures prior to submission.

Read your draft and make necessary edits. Respond to the following questions:

  1. Read the introductory paragraph. Does it contain a thesis statement? Does it contain your definition of a change agent?

  2. Do you have a general introduction to your multiparagraph response?

  3. Read each paragraph. Do you have a topic sentence? Do you have transition sentences between paragraphs?

  4. Did you use a concluding periodic sentence?

  5. Did you check for punctuation, capitalization, grammar, and spelling?

Activity 4: Write

For homework, we will finish revising our final drafts.

For homework, continue to finalize your response for publishing by reviewing and revising the following:

  • your introductory paragraph and thesis statement

  • topic sentences for each paragraph that present support for your thesis

  • your concluding periodic sentence

  • the entire response for correct punctuation, capitalization, grammar, and spelling

Activity 5: Write

We will assess our progress toward the Culminating Task.

Step 1

Choose at least three of the questions below and respond to them in your Learning Log:

  1. How well did you take necessary action to prepare for the task?

  2. What went well for you during the completion of this task?

  3. What did you struggle with during the completion of this task? How did you push through that struggle?

  4. How well did you actively focus your attention during this independent task?

  5. How well did you develop and use an effective and efficient process to maintain workflow during this task?

  6. What would you do differently during the next Section Diagnostic?

Now, find and review your Culminating Task Progress Tracker. Think about all you have learned and done during this section of the unit. Evaluate your skills and knowledge to determine how prepared you are for the Culminating Task.

  • Add or refine any skills and content knowledge required for the Culminating Task.

  • Evaluate how well you are mastering skills and knowledge required for the Culminating Task.

Step 2

Review the Central Question of the unit:

Who changes the world?

Use the following questions to guide a discussion with a partner or small group:

  1. What new knowledge do you have that relates to the Central Question?

  2. What are you still curious about that relates to the Central Question?

  3. What is the relationship between the Central Question and the texts you have read so far? How do the texts shed light on the question? How does the question help you understand the texts?

  4. How has your response to the question evolved, deepened, or changed?

In your Learning Log, write your response to Question 3. You will return to this response in later lessons to examine how your understanding of the Central Question has evolved.