This is a rubric that gives students feedback on three important areas of topic shift
paragraph writing; Content Presentation Grammar/Vocabulary.

WritingRubpara.doc

Goals of the Activity

This is a consciousness raising activity to raise students awareness of how to support paragraphs. It has four parts.
Part one, Reading- here students read examples from authentic texts of the four common ways to support opinions in paragraphs; 1) an example 2) an explanation 3) an expert opinion 4) a statistic.
Part Two Reading and Labeling – here students read four more examples from authentic texts and try to label them under the four supports 1) an example 2) an explanation 3) an expert opinion 4) a statistic.
Part Three Reading and Analyzing- here students read an example paragraph and discourse analyze it for the four supports 1) an example 2) an explanation 3) an expert opinion 4) a statistic.
Part Four Read and Compare – here students compare the paragraphs they have written, based around the same topic, with the example paragraph in three. How can they improve their paragraphs based around the four supports and the patterns offered in the example paragraphs?

Potential Problems with the Activity

It is important to point out to students that the distinction between the different types of supports can be blurred, (e.g. statistic can easily be used to give an example). The activity is just designed to raise awareness of the need to support opinions and offer some tools for doing so.

student pages

teachers pages

Students can use this rubric to evaluate their classmates presentations. This should help to keep themPresentationRubric23.doc focused.

Students can use this sheet to evalaute their classmates presentations.This should help to keep them focused during the presentations. Level Presentations Student EvaluationLevel Presentations Student Evaluation