Katie McGuckin-Blog Post-10/5/16

Katie McGuckin                                                          10/5/16

Blog Post

Objectives:

(no new ones today, so probably the same ones from yesterday)

• IWBAT evaluate how a text accomplishes its purpose
• IWBAT interrogate my text to add specificity in my writing

Today’s class started out with a continuation of our lesson yesterday, which was learning about how to identify the use of rhetorical devices (ethos, logos, pathos). Yesterday we looked in the speech, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, by John Edwards and tried to find examples of ethos, logos and pathos in and how they worked in the text. For instance, Edwards states, “The bow of God’s wrath is bent...justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow,” which uses pathos to encourage a sense of fear into the audience at how they will eventually be judged and sentenced by their Lord, persuading people to try to become more pure and avoid impending damnation. At the end of the previous class and today’s, we learned that the purpose of a thesis sentence is to describe what the text does and how it accomplishes it. In order to create a strong thesis statement, the sentence(s) need to include strong verbs and explain the body paragraphs in a “nutshell” (summary). Another activity that was started yesterday and carried over to today’s class, was the writing of a thesis statement for Edwards’ speech and then interrogating it to find the purpose and improve. For example, my group’s thesis was: John Edwards successfully instills fear into his audience by the use of his powerful and disturbing illustrations of hell, strong verbs, and a distressful message of God's wrath. Once everyone’s group made a thesis statement, we had to interrogate by asking ourselves: who, what, when, where, why, and how, which would add more details.This speech’s who was the author and who/what they were, the what was the writing’s intention, the when was during the 18th century, where was Massachusetts, why was to get people to become perfect puritans, and the how was through powerful visual descriptions, strong verbs, and a distressful message. My group’s interrogated thesis was: John Edwards, an 18th century minister of Massachusetts, successfully installed fear into his audience in attempt to maintain perfect puritanism, through use of powerful and disturbing illustrations of hell, strong verbs, and a distressful message of God's wrath. After both sentences were made, everyone had to write a quick/simple topic sentence and interrogate it to create an even better thesis statement, which was then submitted to google classroom, along with the thesis statement and it’s interrogated version.