Writing Workshop Day 3 - Thematic Essay
Aim: How do you make an essay analytical rather than descriptive?
Do Now: Answer the following in your notebooks:
- How is something Analytical?
- How is something Descriptive?
Lesson Overview:
| Item | Approx Time |
| Do Now | 3-5 Min |
| Mini Lesson | 15-20 Min |
| Activity | 15 Min |
| Discussion | 5-7 Min |
Thematic - Body Paragraph
Descriptive Writing
The primary purpose of descriptive writing is to describe a person, place or thing in such a way that a picture is formed in the reader's mind. Capturing an event through descriptive writing involves paying close attention to the details by using all of your five senses. Teaching students to write more descriptively will improve their writing by making it more interesting and engaging to read.
Analytical Writing
An analytical essay is a specialized form of assignment that is written in order to help the reader gain a better understanding of a particular topic or theme.
Regardless of what the subject matter will be for your analytical essays, the first step is to take the object apart in order to examine each of its components closely. Obviously, this doesn't mean that you physically take the subject apart. Rather, you break it down into smaller pieces. For example, if writing about history you can break it into geographical, political, social, and economic sub-topics
After you have broken the subject down into smaller parts, you will then examine it within its historical context. If you are writing about religion, for example, you might consider how the religion impacted the world at the time it was created as well as the impact it has on the world today.
As you analyze the sub-topics that you will be writing about, it is important that you write down all of the ideas that come to mind. Although you may not use everything that you write down in your analytical essay, simply writing down your thoughts will help you with tying them all together. This also makes it easier for you to refresh your thoughts and ideas after you have completed your analysis.
When you write down the thoughts that occur to you while analyzing your sub-topics, you should feel free to write down even those thoughts that might seem unusual. Often, these are the thoughts that make a solid base for a great essay. In fact, it is often the reports with new and unusual ideas that have the greatest impact on readers and receive the most positive feedback.
The body of your analytical report should tell the reader all of the facts or evidence that you have gathered in support of your introduction and topic sentence. Each of the paragraphs in the body of your essay should include all of the information, which serves to support the theme, as well as additional sentences that further support the sub-topics.
Analytical Options
Classwork & Homework
Activity:
- File:Causeeffectchart.pdf Cause & Effect Chart]
- File:Positivenegative.pdf Positive vs. Negative Chart]
- File:Comparecontrast.pdf Compare & Contrast Chart]
Homework: Assignments