Get the PDF of this in-class exercise.
I think this is a pretty good example of how paragraph structure can be taught in connection with thesis focus, paragraph organization, and source integration. This would be a late Comp One integration of previous teaching or an early Comp Two effort to gather the strands of previous teaching and translate it into a fresh vocabulary. As executed, we would have had students read and annotate the Roth essay, and then we would be looking at an example essay that discusses Roth together in class. This document would be generated while we talked it out together, in this case in Word on a projector (though one can use any number of media, including just plain chalkboarding, to the same effect–I have). I might also, depending on time and need, have the students in groups attempt to mark the parts of various paragraphs in the example essay.
Note, incidentally, how the subject matter complements the liberal-arts aims, here.
