I hope you've had a healthy term break!
My family caught covid in the second week of term break, and unfortunately our infection periods had very little overlap, so between all of us we had 2 weeks' of isolation.
The good news is we've all recovered well and we didn't experience severe symptoms!
As Term 3 ramps up, our teens will be expected to write essays again, and I want you to feel confident about supporting your teen at home!
Here's a quick refresher on some essay-writing terms:
Introduction
- This is the first paragraph of the essay, and should be no longer than 6 sentences
- Students are expected to introduce the text and its context, as well as the contents of the essay
- The key is to set boundaries for the scope of the essay, so our teens don't get penalised for not discussing everything under the sun!
T-E-E-L
- This is the acronym for the structure of body paragraphs, they stand for: Topic sentence, Evidence, Explain, Link
- Depending on the year level, students will need to have multiple sets of Evidence+Explain before they can finish up with a Link sentence
- Years 7-8: 1 to 2 sets
- Years 9-10: 2-3 sets
- Years 11-12: at least 3 sets
- The question we teach our students to answer when 'explaining' is how does the evidence prove the topic sentence is true?
Summarising vs. Analysing
- As our teens go up in year level, they are expected to analyse more and more - often this boils down to the choice of verbs
- TSE encourages our students to use 'exciting' verbs wherever possible, for example:
- 'The main character feels angry about his best friend's betrayal' vs 'The main character's anger belies his best friend's betrayal' - instant improvement with minimal change to the content of the sentence!
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