"You can draw a four-pronged fork if you want to avoid drawing a gang sign"

I introduced my students to the essay tree organizer thing Aaron showed us last class. I like it better than the other ways of organizing because you can fit a lot of different details on a page, and things won’t get jumbled up as easily. I used it along with some pre-made handouts on how to construct a thesis and find supporting points. The assignment was to prepare to write an essay onCall of the Wild by filling out the chart. They had to select a thesis (One theme in Call of the Wild is ….. which is shown by (issue 1, issue 2, issue 3).

I ran into several problems with this assignment. The first is that I did not have anything concrete due by the end of the period. They were told they should have a thesis selected and their three issues chosen and be started on the evidence. In almost every class I had at least one student refuse to do it. Usually it was a student who was a struggling reader. It took a lot of prompting to get then started – wasting my time and giving them a delayed start. I spoke with Ms. Serkedakis and we agreed that they needed to have something to hand in each period, so the next day I told them it was due at the end of the period, completely filled out and it would be worth a test grade. That really lit a fire under their butts. I also called the parent of the student who was most reluctant. She was not pleased to hear he’d spent an entire class period not working. He was all business the next day.

Another problem was that they had never used a three-pronged thesis before. I had always thought that was standard, but I guess it’s not what the English II test requires and so they are not taught it. Although it does make for a cumbersome thesis sentence, I prefer to think of my main points as being part of my thesis. I think this drives home the idea that those three “issues” must support the “proposition.” The second day I clarified this and they adjusted well.

A third problem was that one class period refused to draw the chart because it looked too much like a gang sign.

One thing I did well was that the day before, I taught a lesson on theme and had the class list themes from Call of the Wild they could come up with on their own. This meant that once the assignment was given, I did not have to also field questions about what was or wasn’t a theme. They could just pick from the list if they wanted. I also made sure to tell them to start writing down page numbers now next to their evidence - they still don't believe me that you need to cite things, but they've started humoring my funny notions at least for the sake of their grades. I was also pleased with some of the quality of ideas that came from my honors class. They had a more difficult prompt - their thesis had to be (One theme in Call of the Wild is ..... and this relates to three of Nietzsche's ideas, (issue 1, 2, 3) OR One idea of Nietzsche that Jack London incorporated into Call of the Wild is ...... which is reflected in the themes ... (issue 1, 2, 3). On the flip side, some students with a solid grasp of the plot ofCall of the Wild had trouble figuring out what details might support a theme.