Gentlemen,
Just to give everyone a head's up on where things stand. Every class should now have at least one draft of their first three paragraphs of their four-paragraph essays on the two poems, "Death Be Not Proud" and "On Death, Without Exaggeration." A few of you have finished the whole thing, and now your job is to put it all together for a final grade.
To review, the first paragraph is your thesis graph, which should consist of four sentences: thesis statement, main point one, main point two, and the conclusion (which, as always, "ties it all together"). Your second and third paragraphs should begin with a statement of the main points and then three supporting quotations from the poems. Most of you have broken up the paragraphs by poem (one paragraph, one poem, next paragraph, next poem) or by the parts of your thesis (first supporting graph proves point one, second graph proves point two). Both ways will work. When we return for class Monday, you should have redos ready in your notebooks for all three of these.
The fourth paragraph is the conclusion, which should probably be about three to five sentences long, depending on how you structure it.
For now, don't worry about rules against repeating PT's in paragraphs 2 and 3; it's usually easier to deal with any stylistic issues once you've got your structure set.
So, Monday plan to start your concluding paragraphs. I will expect final, typed versions of the four-paragraph essay handed in to me this Friday. After that, we'll do some more work on complex sentences and several exercises on correcting mistakes that I see in your essays. More on that soon.
So far, I should add -- to you and your parents alike -- the essays are coming together splendidly. You guys probably don't know it, but your writing is much improved since September. Keep up the good work.
Mr. C.
