Prompt Directions 1. In a paragraph, summarize the reading. 2. In an essay, give your opinion on this topic, and support it with reasons and examples from the text and your own experience.

Introductory paragraph hook

• There is a hook to captivate readers’ attention that relates to and prepares readers for the essay. 

Introductory paragraph background

• Following the hook, you identify or provide readers with necessary background information on the issue or topic under discussion to help them recognize what the issue is or means, why it may be relevant for discussion, and how it relates to or prepares readers for the problem or issue of the essay.

Introductory paragraph debate

• Following the background information, you present readers with a problem, debate, or issue that is controversial. Readers will need to see how the problem, debate, or issue is not an easy one to solve; it’s a tricky situation and there are multiple sides to the argument because people with different opinions raise good points about it. 

Introductory paragraph thesis statement

• The introduction concludes with a one-sentence thesis statement that presents your solution to the problem, debate, or issue introduced in the background and debate. The thesis statement is what your essay is trying to prove to readers. It will make at least one concession (“although” or “even though” or “though” or “while”) and will align with your essay’s topic sentences and body paragraph evidence.

Topic sentence

• Each body paragraph begins with a topic sentence that introduces the reason or topic or focus of that paragraph as it relates to and supports your essay’s thesis statement.
• (Optional: often, it may be helpful to provide a clarifying sentence by repeating the topic sentence in a different and clearer or simpler way if necessary.)

Say with context

• Following the topic sentence or topic sentences, you incorporate others’ words and ideas into your writing (evidence, sources, quotes, etc), and you ensure that your evidence, source, or quote includes context, which has two key elements: 

  1. You introduce where the quote is coming from by providing the author or source’s name and/or background information about the author or source.
  2. You introduce the point of the quote–what’s generally going on in the quote. 

  Finally, you ensure that the evidence, source, or quote is distinguishable from the rest of the paragraph (use quotations and citations per MLA formatting conventions).

Mean

• Following each and every Say with Context, you interpret and analyze your Say’s meaning to explain clearly how it relates to and supports your topic sentence reason as well as your thesis statement.

Matter

• Once you’ve addressed potential counterarguments and returned to support your argument, it’s important readers see why your point or argument matters. Express what consequences and wider implications derive from the point of your body paragraph: if you’re right, then what do those consequences reveal about us and our world? What new pathways now stand before us? How does the point you just proved change you or change others? Who else is impacted by this knowledge or reality? In other words, once you’ve evaluated what those consequences reveal about us and our world, predict what your newfound knowledge means for our collective future; that is, how are we all implicated and impacted by that knowledge and, most importantly, so what?

Conclusion paragraph thesis restatement

• The first sentence of your conclusion paragraph restates your thesis statement, not as something that needs to be proved but as something that has been proven.

Conclusion paragraph summary

• Following your restated thesis statement (which needs to be one-sentence long), summarize your argument and the main points that support it to help readers recognize the validity of your proven thesis statement. 

Conclusion paragraph significance

• Once you’ve summarized your argument’s main points to justify your thesis statement, express how your argument matters even more by connecting it to other relevant arguments; in short, show what consequences and wider implications derive from your essay’s main argument: if you’re right, what do those consequences reveal about us and our world? What new pathways now stand before us? How does the thesis you just proved change you or change others, perhaps in a profound way? Who else is impacted by this knowledge or reality? Predict what may happen in the future because of this knowledge and how that prediction may represent a much bigger argument or thesis we need to consider now going forward.

Sentence strength

• This standard assesses how well you use sentence-combining techniques to express your ideas, avoiding run-on sentences and redundant writing in the process. Readers should be able to read your ideas without getting distracted by grammar mistakes and redundancy. Ideally, you accurately incorporate a mix of various sentence-combining techniques throughout your writing (FANBOYS, semicolons, and subordination).

MLA formatting

• For non-research paper submissions, MLA formatting still applies: you’ll want to double-space your submission, left-align it, and use appropriate headers (your name, our course name, submission date), Times New Roman font, and page numbers. There’s more to MLA formatting than this, but you don’t have to worry about that on these timed essays.

Summary

• This standard assesses how well you understand the assigned text by being able to summarize it before writing your essay response to it. Essentially, the summary standard assesses how accurately you express the author’s main point and how well you understand the relationship between their main argument and the evidence and subpoints they use to prove that main point. On an even deeper level, the summary assesses how well you show an understanding of the author’s tone or writing style as it relates to and appeals to a particular kind of audience and/or their motivations.

• Prompt

              Directions

  1. In a paragraph, summarize the reading.

  2. In an essay, give your opinion on this topic, and support it with reasons and examples from the text and your own experience. 

  
  

  white security camera on postperson taking a photo using a cell phone during a protest “The All-Seeing Public Eye” (adapted from the 2016 article published in The BCC VoiceLinks to an external site.) by Derek Wallace ( College student/alumni)

  
  

   Perhaps you may have heard it said that “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” You may not have heard the flip-side of that coin: “The price of justice is eternal publicity.” Technology increases at an ever faster rate, and now most of us have the equivalent of mobile television production studios in our pockets. Smartphones with cameras and video capability have solved the ancient riddle of the Roman poet Juvenal, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” (often translated as “Who watches the watchmen?”). The answer? A resounding “We do!” “Surveillance” (French for “watching over”) monitors activities/behavior from up above, but “sousveillance” (“from below”) is recording of an activity by a participant involved in an event – as shown by Black Lives Matter, the Occupy movement, and the Egyptian Revolution. Only when the current alienating eye-in-the-sky methods of surveillance are transposed with the community-building of our now prevalent “captured personal experiences” may “equiveillance” (“equilibrium”) be achieved – which is vital to empower citizens to build their own news stories and legal cases from evidence they gather themselves and collaborate on together. Going deeper than short Youtube clips of criminal activity/abuse by authorities or Livestream feeds of protest marches/political rallies, this turns all of us into the world’s next ABC and CBS and CNN. It has been said that there are four types of justice: distributive, procedural, restorative, and retributive. I believe there should be a fifth type: transpersonal. Now we all have the ability to be journalists and with that great power also comes greater responsibility to use it for good. Everyone can connect with fellow truth-seekers through their schools, jobs, neighborhoods, and churches to make a lasting communal difference. We must all realize our potential as forces for positive change in this often negative world. We should be the “all-seeing public eye” which tells the stories that mainstream media either distort or ignore altogether. If we are really going to rethink justice, we must realize hero worship abdicates us of personal responsibility – so we must avoid expecting our personal political champions to do the hard work for us. Without our votes at polls, they don’t get into office. Once elected, without pressure from us, their constituents, candidates invariably forget they serve our interests, not corporate ones. Without our video clips, mainstream media have nothing to work with but what they produce for a much higher cost (when staff, vehicles, gas, equipment, etc. are factored in). Since we are a global leader, the world is depending on us to step up to the plate – so we’d all better start taking film classes/workshops to learn how to get the best footage and sound possible for the stories we will need to tell to change the narrative that established power structures have been in control of and fear losing. We shouldn’t watch the skies for Superman to save us with outdated “help from above.” Rather, we should transform into Clark Kent citizen journalists who supply the “help from below” to save ourselves. That is how true justice is realized. We’re in turbulent times, so stay safe out there – but fear not – because the power is literally in our hands.