"Persuade Your Colonial Cousin" Essay

as of 3/10/06

 

Essential Questions:

1. Lesson on Intellectual Property (and the big idea of giving credit) with one of your teacher/librarians.

2. Read and understand the persuasive essay letter prompt.

You have been living in the colonies for the past two years and have experienced many opportunities and hardships.  Your cousin is considering coming over to the colonies.  Based on your experiences, convince your cousin to stay in their homeland or join you.

3. "What were the conditions in Europe in the 17th century?"
Students re-read the following pages in their textbooks to understand the conditions in Europe.

p. 19    Class system & Feudalism
p. 32    Europe and the Black Death
p. 78    Protestant Reformation & Religious Persecution
p. 79    Wars
p. 98    Tension (in general)
p. 103  Specific colonies

Students should start taking Cornell notes and place their notes about Europe in the following categories:  Historical, Social, Political, Geographic, Economic, and Religious.

Another source of information about Europe in the 17th century can be found at this link
(Hint:  Click on the hand at the bottom of each page)

Sommerville, Johann. P.  “History 351: Seventeenth Century Europe.” Johann P. Sommerville - Course
    Information. 2006. Department of History: University of Wisconsin – Madison.  6 March 2006.
    http://history.wisc.edu/sommerville/351/351OUTLINE.htm or http://history.wisc.edu/sommerville/351/351-01.htm

4. "What were the conditions in my colony?"
Students should be assigned or choose a British North American colony to research.  Students should take Cornell notes in the following categories: Historical, Social. Political, Geographic, Economic, and Religious. Students should use the books in the library as their sources.  They should collect bibliographic information on each source that they use.

If students are encouraged to use Internet resources as well, students should follow the guidelines in the following handout for Researching the Colonies on the Internet.  Here is the last page of the handout that includes procedures on how to cite WWW sources found through Google or another search tool. 

5. "Don't forget to give credit to your sources." Complete a lesson on writing a proper Works Cited/Bibliography with a teacher/librarian.  Here are the handouts to assist in this process.

6. "I think I have enough notes." 
When students think they have enough information, they can evaluate their progress by completing the following organizer.  If students cannot fill in a summary for each of the boxes on the front page of the handout then students need to go back and do more research. 

7. "I think I am ready to start my rough draft."
When students have successfully completed the organizer in step 6, students should outline their essay with this organizer.  Note: students can have more than 3 reasons why their cousin should/or shouldn't relocate to the colonies or stay in Europe.

8. TYPE!
Students should type their essays as letters and also type their bibliography in appropriate MLA format. Students are discouraged from using WordArt and adding color as during Colonial times folks wrote with a feather pen and ink! Students should choose fonts that are easy to read and include both capital and lowercase letters.

9. "How will I be graded?"
The essay letter will be graded according to the Interdisciplinary Writing rubric for the CAPT. There is another rubric coming for the bibliography and process organizers.