At a glance
Individual · six class periods, drafted and rewritten · 900–1100 words · assessed on all four categories
The task
One argument about Romeo and Juliet, proved with three passages, and complicated once.
“Complicated once” means: somewhere in the essay you deal with the best evidence against your reading. That single move is what separates a level 3 from a level 4 at this grade, and it is learnable in an afternoon.
Choosing a question
Start from your annotations, not from a list. Questions that have worked:
- What does the play do with characters who are never left alone on stage?
- Is the Friar’s failure one of judgement or of nerve?
- The play’s imagery of light reverses in Act 3. What does the reversal argue?
- Whose tragedy does the Prologue say it is, and does the play agree with its own Prologue?
Bring your question to the conference in period 2; we will sharpen it together. A question sharpened early saves two periods later.
Structure
Thesis, three body paragraphs, the complication, a conclusion that says what follows. The Essay has the detail; The Paragraph has the shape of each unit; Writing About Literature has the conventions.
How it is built
| Period | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1 | Question chosen from your own annotations |
| 2 | Conference; passages gathered and paraphrased |
| 3 | Outline: thesis, three claims, the complication |
| 4 | Draft |
| 5 | Workshop: a partner marks every claim without evidence, and the weakest paragraph |
| 6 | Rewrite, read aloud, check every quotation and citation |
How it is marked
| Category | What I am looking for |
|---|---|
| Knowledge | The play is known accurately, including the parts your argument does not need |
| Thinking | The thesis is arguable, the evidence supports it, and the complication is the real one |
| Communication | Paragraphs are ordered and cohesive; the reader never has to reread to follow |
| Application | Conventions of literary writing are used correctly, including verse quotation and citation |
The single most common failure
Writing about the play in general. An essay that could have been written after watching a summary is an essay with no passages in it. Three passages, quoted short, analysed at length.
Curriculum connection
C1.2
generate, expand, explore, and focus ideas for potential writing tasks, using a variety of strategies and print, electronic, and other resources, as appropriate (e.g., free write or consult a writing journal to evolve or focus a topic for a narrative; identify and rank focus questions for further investigation; brainstorm in a small group to create a list of potential topics and questions for enquiry; conduct an electronic search for information on an author for a class project; summarize and paraphrase information and ideas in point-form notes; use formal debate strategies to explore ideas prior to research)
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C1.4
identify, sort, and order main ideas and supporting details for writing tasks, using a variety of strategies and organizational patterns suited to the content and the purpose for writing (e.g., use a clear statement of their topic or thesis to highlight the main points they plan to cover in a persuasive magazine article; identify appropriate classification categories and use them to itemize the characteristics of a protagonist in a story or play; use a cause-and-effect chart to organize an argument for an essay; develop an extended metaphor as a prompt for writing a poem; use a web diagram to show how quotations from a text support their argument in an opinion piece; classify images from song lyrics for a music review; use a timeline to trace the development of a tragic hero for an in-class essay)
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C2.4
write complete sentences that communicate their meaning clearly and accurately, varying sentence type, structure, and length to suit different purposes and making smooth and logical transitions between ideas (e.g., use a variety of sentence structures, including compoundcomplex sentences; use prepositional and participial phrases and adjectival and adverbial clauses to add details and/or qualifying information; insert rhetorical questions for emphasis in an argumentative essay; insert a sentence fragment to interrupt the flow in a paragraph for effect; use subject-verb inversion to vary sentence rhythm)
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B1.3
identify the most important ideas and supporting details in texts, including increasingly complex texts (e.g., flag key passages that reveal character in a text; highlight or make notes about ideas or details that support the author’s thesis; prepare a series of tableaux to represent key events in a story; determine what essential information is conveyed by the captions in a graphic text)
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C3.5
proofread and correct their writing, using guidelines developed with the teacher and peers (e.g., consult print and electronic resources to ensure that words with more than one connotation are used appropriately in the context; discuss with a partner how to correct identified problems)
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C3.6
use a variety of presentation features, including print and script, fonts, graphics, and layout, to improve the clarity and coherence of their work and to heighten its appeal for their audience (e.g., format written work to meet the requirements of a particular publication; use an engaging design and layout for an anthology of their poetry; choose appropriate fonts and design an eye-catching layout for the front and back covers of a teen magazine)
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C3.7
produce pieces of published work to meet criteria identified by the teacher, based on the curriculum expectations (e.g., adequate development of information and ideas, logical organization, appropriate use of form and style, appropriate use of conventions)
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C4.1
describe a variety of strategies they used before, during, and after writing; explain which ones they found most helpful; and identify appropriate steps they can take to improve as writers (e.g., explain the benefits of sharing their brainstorming list with a partner; identify the graphic organizers they find most useful for organizing their writing ideas and the characteristics that make them useful; identify the proofreading technique or tip they found most helpful)
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