Writing & Rhetoric Book Book 10 Student: Thesis Part 1 Program

Program Overview:  The Writing & Rhetoric series emphasizes fluent reading, careful listening, models for imitation, and progressive steps. It assumes that students learn best by reading excellent, whole-story examples of literature and by growing their skills through imitation. Each exercise is intended to impart a skill (or tool) that can be employed in all kinds of writing and speaking. The exercises are arranged from simple to more complex. What’s more, the exercises are cumulative, meaning that later exercises incorporate the skills acquired in preceding exercises. This series is a step-by-step apprenticeship in the art of writing and rhetoric.  The full series is 12 books that will train students over 6 years, starting in grades 3 or 4.

Book 10: Thesis, Part I is a one-semester course for grades 7 or 8.  Students will write well-crafted persuasive thesis essays with narrative, descriptive, expository, and comparative elements. The thesis essay is perhaps the most important form of academic writing. In fact, in every major in college, successful exams and term papers depend on excellent thesis writing. Each composition requires strong critical thinking skills, an understanding of audiences and how to “hook” them, and a logical progression of ideas and evidence. The thesis exercise employs all of the skills students have gained in their study of the progymnasmata and adds something more: the consideration and rebuttal of counterarguments. By thinking through opposition to their main ideas, students grow in their ability to think flexibly and to defend their position. In addition, the thesis essay will help students to examine and sustain ideas, two skills much needed in today’s public discourse. In this 1-semester book, students will learn to:

• • create complex thesis statements
  • write thesis essays with an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion
  • sustain arguments for 6 paragraphs
  • use topic sentences for organizing paragraphs and information
  • incorporate supportive facts and details, including quotations, paraphrases, and allusions
  • understand audiences better, “hook” their attention, and consider the purpose for reaching them
  • appeal to readers though credibility (ethos) and logic (logos)
  • build copiousness
  • improve essays using speaking as an aid to revision
  • revise essays for redundancies, padded writing, informal tone, dangling modifiers, and faulty predication
  • analyze literature excerpts for theme
  • annotate texts and narrate them both orally and in summary form
  • work on delivery in public speaking—volume, pacing, and inflection

The student edition is a consumable book.  Answer key not included.

If you are not teaching multiple students, we suggest you purchase Book Set 10. It includes one student book along with the teacher’s edition (answer key, teacher notes, and explanations), and Mp3 audio files (to help engage their sense of hearing and listening).

Placement: In Writing & Rhetoric, placement is based on the student’s current experience in writing. The publisher first suggests looking through the table of contents included in each of the free Writing & Rhetoric samples (found on the individual product pages). Reviewing both the table of contents and the sample lessons will help you determine a good starting level for your student. They encourage parents to download and print the sample chapters of the textbooks (student book) to assist in determining placement. Other suggestions are:

• If you have a student in 4th–7th grade and are considering Writing & Rhetoric, the initial identifier of placement is to evaluate whether your student can acknowledge the 5 W’s (who, what, when, where, why) in an essay or is comfortable writing 6-paragraph essays. If not, we recommend looking at Book 3: Narrative II. Starting here will provide review from the first 2 books in the series, as well as more age-appropriate material with longer stories and more thoughtful questions in the lessons.
• If your student is confidently working through the 2 skills mentioned above, we would then suggest looking through Book 5: Refutation and Confirmation. In this book, students begin to support a cause or refute it. This is the beginning mark of persuasive writing (pre-thesis work) and helps them to begin research for an idea they will support in an essay.