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Kristie 4
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Is there a hair pulling out emoticon???
We have done heaps of written narrations but I am wanting to have more focused essay writing. I have all the books (well, enough of them!) to teach it but it is in the topic area that we always get stymied.
Where do you folks find topics? How do you? I have spent four hours online in the past two days looking. looking. looking? My kids want to write on the books they are studying but can't come up with persuasive essay topics? They can argue, believe me, but can't seem to find good arguable theses.
Any ideas????
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Kristie in Canada
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Mackfam
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We choose books which present a theory or group of ideas - that don't or can't end conclusively. Evolution is a good topic.  Another good topic is a history mystery, like the lost colony at Roanoke, or whether Sacagawea died an old women, or shortly after giving birth to her daughter around the age of 25. There are others - think of topics that are controversial, have more than one side, and look for good books out there on those topics.
Here are a couple of good books that might jump start you....
Lost Colony of Roanoke by Jean Fritz
Chance or Purpose: Creation, Evolution and a Rational Faith Cardinal Christoph Schonborn
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Jen Mackintosh
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lapazfarm
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I think it is a good idea to use topics from the books they are reading in other subject areas.
Simply take whatever they are studying, pull out a person/place/animal etc and make it into a statement of opinion.
For example:
(famous person goes here) was the greatest/worst general/president/artist/explorer of all time.
(animal here) would make a great/lousy pet.
(place or time period here) would be a great/bad place to vacation/live.
If I could travel in time, the place/time I'd most/least like to visit is...
(invention here) makes life better/worse because...
Anyway, that's how I do it.
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Theresa
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SallyT
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Ditto what Theresa said. I pull all my kids' essay topics directly from the subject matter they're studying, or else I let them choose a topic of interest (typically I specify academic interest -- a topic in science, say, for my son who loves science -- though not always).
It's also helpful to ensure that all essays are not strictly "opinion" essays. That's why I like Jensen's Format Writing: we plug our own topics into various kinds of structures, writing about causal relationships, describing processes, comparing and contrasting, and so on. I also like to assign literary essays in which the student analyzes how a writer's use of a particular device (clothing imagery in King Lear, for example) serves a larger theme.
I used to read college writing course placement essays for a summer job when I was in grad school, and one of the things which divided the accomplished writers from the remedial ones was the ability to move from the particular to the abstract in writing, and vice versa. So as you formulate essay topics, think about prompts which ask the student to look at concrete details and draw a general conclusion from them, and also prompts which ask for the opposite: starting with a large idea and illustrating it with concrete details as evidence. (all that good inductive/deductive reasoning stuff).
Also, for literary essays, SparkNotes has remarkably good essay topics for just about any work of literature you can think of.
Sally
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Kristie 4
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| Posted: May 10 2012 at 4:37pm | IP Logged
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Thanks so much. This is great help.
My dd would really like to write on either The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream or possibly the LOTR. Off to think of some ideas (she is just not up to it this week!).
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Kristie in Canada
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MaryM
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Kristie 4 wrote:
| Is there a hair pulling out emoticon??? |
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I'm not going to be much help on the topic...but I can help with this... 
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Mary M. in Denver
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Mackfam
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I like Theresa's idea starters! 
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Jen Mackintosh
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lapazfarm
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| Posted: May 10 2012 at 5:03pm | IP Logged
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Some ideas:
The Tempest--does the end justify the means? (regarding Prospero's use of magic and trickery)
A Midsummer Night's Dream---are there any healthy relationships portrayed in this play, or are they all flawed in some way?
Lord of the Rings--Who is the real hero of LOTR? Frodo, Aragorn, Gandalf, or someone else entirely?
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Theresa
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Willa
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Kristie, maybe you should say what books your kids are reading! If others are familiar with them, maybe they would be able to give you starter ideas 
I usually give my high schoolers some choices and if they don't like my ideas, then they can formulate their own. But it has to be equivalent
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Kristie 4
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Thanks Mary M!!
Good ones Theresa!
Willa, my son would love to write on a Dickens novel. He has read them all and is thinking especially of Oliver Twist. He is also reading Crime and Punishment, but that is a bit too deep of a project at this time.
My dd is reading The Tempest, Tess of the D'Urbivilles and The Disappearing Spoon and Plutarch.
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Kristie in Canada
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SallyT
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For the Lord of the Rings:
*Consider the recurring motif of appearance vs. reality ("All that is gold . . . "): To which characters (besides Aragorn) might these verses apply? In what way does this motif serve a larger idea in the trilogy?
*How does LOTR define the idea of the hero? Discuss either three aspects of heroism as it appears in the story, or three characters who embody LOTR's vision of the heroic ideal.
I can mull some questions for the Shakespeare plays as well . . . themes to consider might include pride/humility (how characters arrive at humility), and the intersection of the natural and the supernatural (humans and fairies/magic) and what that reveals about Shakespeare's view of the universe.
Gotta get ready for Mass now, though!
Sally
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SallyT
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Back again. Change of Mass plans.
For any Dickens novel, the essay writer might consider the faces of evil in Dickens' universe, and especially the ways in which evil is deceptive.
Alternatively, you can look at the journey of a character like Oliver (or Pip in Great Expectations, or David Copperfield) and describe how the character is changed by what happens to him in the course of the novel: who is he going in, who is he coming out, and what has effected these changes? Most importantly, what does the character gain in the way of self-knowledge?
In the overall course of high-school writing, especially for a student considering college, it's important to explore many avenues of essay-writing, and to understand that making an argument in an essay is not always the same thing as participating in a debate. For instance, if the student writes that Christlike sacrifice is the ultimate aspect of the heroic ideal in the Lord of the Rings, that's an argument, and analysis of the various instances in which this kind of sacrifice occurs in the narrative is an extension of that argument.
Also, in literary writing, as the student matures as a reader and writer, it's important to begin to understand the characters in a given work as *characters* in a created universe -- the fact that they and their world exist as words on a page, and that they're given life and direction by a writer's choice of words (including imagery and other literary devices) should begin to become interesting and a subject for analysis. This is the kind of thing a student would be asked to do in a college literature class, and it's good preparation to begin thinking and writing in this vein at least in the last two years of high school.
A really good skill to develop is that of "close-reading," in which a student takes a passage from some text -- a soliloquy by a character in Shakespeare, a description of London in Dickens, whatever -- and analyzes the language minutely, noting not only *what* is said, but *how* each word of the passage contributes to that *what*. That's an essay in itself, and it's an excellent exercise in critical reading and thinking and observation.
Sorry to go on at length -- this is really my subject! It's been interesting to me, too, to see what my English-major daughter has been doing in the way of writing in college; I'm definitely ramping up my son's essay-writing preparation! I think my daughter was reasonably well prepared (and she's done pretty well so far), but I could have expected more of her as a high-school writer than I did . . . Look out, subsequent kids! Here it comes.
Sally
eta: I'm now looking at my Jensen's Format Writing, to see how you could use some of these essay formats to write about the literature your kids are reading.
1. A comparison essay.
*Compare Gandalf and Aragorn as Christ-figures in the Lord of the Rings.
*Compare Prospero and Oberon (Tempest and Midsummer Night's Dream) as supernatural agents, orchestrating events in their respective worlds.
2. A definition essay
*Define the heroic ideal as demonstrated in The Lord of the Rings.
*Define evil in Dickens' Oliver Twist. (or Tess of the D'Urbervilles)
3. An example essay
*Describe three examples of the Christ figure in The Lord of the Rings
* Describe three examples of supernatural intervention in human events in A Midsummer Night's Dream (or The Tempest).
And so on. I've used most of the paragraph and essay formats in this book (which by itself is kind of boring, but does have lots of potential) to formulate questions about things like The Iliad, which my students are usually reading at the same time that we're working through JFW. These are kind of off the top of my head, but you get the idea.
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Kristie 4
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| Posted: May 11 2012 at 7:26am | IP Logged
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Fantastic Sally. I am printing this out!!! This is not my ball of wax at all so I am so blessed to have you ladies to fill in all these huge gaps for me 
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Kristie in Canada
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SallyT
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I just added to my post above -- I didn't want to keep flooding the thread! But I pulled out my Jensen's Format Writing and started brainstorming some possible essay prompts, using some of those formats, for the literature you suggested.
Sally
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Willa
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Jensen's Format Writing is really good. I haven't just handed it to my son. But I use it as a teacher's manual for me to get a sense of the nitty-gritty of the different "types" of essays.
I like the way Sally's topic ideas give the student access to broader themes, like how evil looks in different types of books.
Great thread, I am bookmarking it!
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guitarnan
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For history essays, you can ask for causes and effects, e.g. Discuss the major causes and effects of the French Revolution.
You might also want to do an SAT-style essay prompt, with a quote (from the literature they're reading) and a statement (from a famous person, historian, etc.) and ask them to agree or disagree with the statement, using literature examples, life examples, etc. to defend their position. (You can see examples of this at the College Board website.)
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Kristie 4
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This is just wonderful- thanks so much to all of you.
Oh, and so nice to 'see' you again Willa. I have missed you!
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Kristie in Canada
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Topic: Essay Topics- HEEEEELP!
