{Topic Sentences

Tuesday, February 12th , 2013

Grammar for Writing Workbook:“Subject-Verb Agreement” Page 163 Exercise B

SPONGE Remember, you have homework

due today!

You WILL need your Source Books today.

Standards: ELACC8L1: Demonstrate command of the conventions of

standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.

ELACC8L6: Acquire and use accurately grade-appropriate general academic and domain-specific words and phrases; gather vocabulary knowledge when considering a word or phrase important to comprehension or expression.

ELACC8W10: Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.

ELACC8RI2: Determine a central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.

EQ: Why is it important to stay on topic?

Two pre-selected students will act out a short skit where one of the students gets off topic frequently. When the skit is over, the whole class will discuss the skit (or answer questions about the skit depending on the needs of the class period).

Activator

The students will be provided with examples of a variety of writings. They will first underline what they think is the topic sentence.

  The students will then participate in a mini-lesson

on topic sentences and how to identify them.   The students will then go back to these examples of

writing and highlight the topic sentences (whether they had chosen correctly or not in the beginning).

  If time allows, the students will then create their

own topic sentences within the context of a BCR on topic sentences.

Subject-Verb Agreement

Creating Topic Sentences: For this section, read over BOTH of the links below. Write a 3+ sentence summary in your Source Book explaining how to create a topic sentence.

http://eslbee.com/topic_sentences.htm http://www.writingcentre.uottawa.ca/hypergrammar/partopic.html

Topic SentencesGo to: https://sites.google.com/site/7thela/topic-sentences

Topic Sentences Practice: For this sentence, choose any 4 of the exercises below. Write down the title of the page or exercise and then write a 2 sentence summary of what you did, learned, and thought.

http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0073533890/student_view0/chapter1/topic_sentences.html

http://www.uefap.com/writing/exercise/parag/paragex3.htm

http://www.victoria.ac.nz/llc/academic-writing/tsent1.html

http://esl.fis.edu/learners/read/topic1.htm

Topic Sentences

1. Brazil is a great place to spend a year as an exchange student.2. Spending a year as an exchange student changed my whole life. 3. Every student should visit another country.

      _______________________________________ When I was seventeen years old, I applied to be an American Field Service exchange student. I was very proud and excited when I was chosen, but I never realized how much that year would influence the rest of my life. From the moment I got off the plane in Rio de Janeiro, I felt like a new person. At first I was nervous about speaking Portuguese, but the Brazilians soon helped me to feel at ease. Before I left my home, I had been shy and quiet. In Brazil I became much more confident and outgoing. Most importantly, I had thought I would become an engineer. In Brazil I learned to love music and realized I wanted to become a professional musician.

Topic Sentences

1. Traveling abroad can be very stressful if you aren't used to it. 2. Many people enjoy foreign travel and go away every chance that they get. 3. Although many people find traveling to foreign countries exciting, people like me should never leave home.

      ____________________________ I have traveled to Mexico, England, Germany, and Japan. I must admit that I am nervous all of the time while I am away. I cannot relax until the airplane lands in Chicago, where I live. It's not that I don't like foreigners. I have several friends from other countries. And it's not that I hate foreign food. My husband and I often eat out at ethnic restaurants at home. However, I just do not feel comfortable on foreign soil. I am always afraid of making mistakes and offending people. Even when I know the language, as I did in England, I still get confused with the money, the transportation system, and all the different ways of doing things. My husband is a great traveler. He loves every minute he spends out of the country, but I'm afraid from now on he'll have to go alone.

Topic Sentences

Identify the topic sentences in the following paragraphs. Paragraph 1 The maintenance of order in prestate societies is rooted in a

commonality of material interests. The greater the amount of common interests, the less need there is for law-and-order specialists. Among band-level cultures law and order stem directly from the relations between people and the natural habitat from which subsistence is derived. All adults usually have open access to this habitat: the rivers, lakes, beaches, oceans; all the plants and animals; the soil and the subsoil. In so far as these are basic to the extraction of life-sustaining energy and materials they are communal "property." (Marvin Harris, (1975), Culture, people nature, p. 356)

Topic Sentences

Paragraph 2 Though the United States has spent billions of

dollars on foreign aid programs, it has captured neither the affection nor esteem of the rest of the world. In many countries today Americans are cordially disliked; in others merely tolerated. The reasons for this sad state of affairs are many and varied, and some of them are beyond the control of anything this country might do to try to correct them. But harsh as it may seem to the ordinary citizen, filled as he is with good intentions and natural generosity, much of the foreigners' animosity has been generated by the way Americans behave. (Edward Hall, (1973), The silent language, p. xiii)

Topic Sentences

Paragraph 3 Anthropology is the study of humankind, especially

of Homo sapiens, the biological species to which we human beings belong. It is the study of how our species evolved from more primitive organisms; it is also the study of how our species developed a mode of communication known as language and a mode of social life known as culture. It is the study of how culture evolved and diversified. And finally, it is the study of how culture, people, and nature interact wherever human beings are found. (Marvin Harris, (1975), Culture, People Nature, p. 1)

Topic Sentences

http://www.laflemm.com/dynamic/online_practice.php?practice_id=19

http://wps.ablongman.com/long_henry_er_1/0,7989,1832680-,00.html

http://www.pearsonhighered.com/showcase/inconcert/assets/pdf/McWhorter_0321850378_C05.pdf

A reading from the our new extended text Divergent.

CLOSING

Read for 30 minutes.

Continue working on

your Guided Book

Reviews (Due

TOMORROW).

HOMEWORK