Lesson 76

Students handed in their theme webs - those who put some effort into them will certainly find them beneficial in the writing to come. 

We discussed issues with AI use in trusted publications, and society writ large, via this article about the Chicago Tribune.

We used the notion of buying food locally to talk about  how to go about organizing either the points in a paragraph, or the body paragraphs in an essay.

Students who did not receive proficient on their previous formal paragraph will be writing another formal paragraph for The Marrow Thieves. 

Those who received proficient or extending are welcome to write a paragraph, or to stretch and write a 4-5 paragraph essay. 

Reasons to write an essay:

• You feel you have mastered the paragraph, and would like to stretch further.
• You already felt confined by the paragraph form, and need more space to fully express your ideas.

Reasons to write a paragraph:

• You still need to work on mastering the form.
• You suspect you will not have the time you need to write a full essay, due to outside commitments. 
• ***You sometimes struggle to ensure clear, linear thought on the page and/or your ideas are good, but your expression still needs refinement/clarity.

Students have basic outlines to take home over the weekend - while there should not be entire paragraphs/essays written on these in tiny font, they should come back with arguments and evidence ready to go next class.

Those planning on writing a theme-based essay should pop in for tutorial to run ideas/theses past me as needed. Monday is also fine for that!