Period 4/5 Writing 8th Grade

Unit Focus: Arguments 

Essay Topics

• Argument Paragraph: Should zoos be abolished?
• Argument Essays Topics (students choose one):
  
  • Should smoking cigarettes be made illegal?
  • Should P.E. be an optional class for middle and high school students?
  • The driving age should increase to  18 years of age. 
  • Is it necessary to reduce the number of working hours to 25 per week?
  • Stress is most effectively dealt with using humor.
  • Beauty standards of today cause unhealthy attitudes towards the human body.

 Skills taught in this unit:

• Finding reliable resources during research
• Forming notes that are well-organized and purposeful
• Categorizing notes into main ideas to form body paragraphs
• Developing a one sentence thesis statement
• Writing intriguing introduction and conclusion paragraphs
• Revising for concise sentences
• Revising to include a variety of purposeful sentence structures (simple, compound, complex, compound-complex)
• Appropriate placement of commas  
• Quoting correctly with explanations and in-text citations
• Paraphrasing with explanations and in-text citations 
• Submitting MLA formatted essays which include a Works Cited page 
• Forming commentary that argues the writer's claim