How do authors use text to teach us more about ourselves? This was the driving question for our synthesis essay and many of the other assignments in this unit. One of these projects was the book trailer, where we were made to pick one book from the few that we had to choose from, and get into groups based on who chose the same book you picked. My group consisted of Adlih, Isabelle, Melika, Logan, and Luca. Me and the other members of my group were all reading a book called More Happy than not. Once we finished the book, our objective was to imagine that the book was made into a movie and create and film our interpretation of what the trailer for that movie would look like. To learn more about the filming process and final outcome of this project, click the link to be redirected to my blog post regarding the book trailer.
The next project after this was the Synthesis Essay. The criteria for this specific project was basically to create a five paragraph essay answering the driving question of How Do Authors Use Text To Teach Us More About Ourselves? Using examples from not only the book that we read for the previous assignment, but also from another book called Persepolis, as well as the widely known movie The Breakfast Club, the next step was to research and brainstorm these three examples. Now with this newfound knowledge, we can answer the driving question in our own words and derive around five paragraphs of text doing so. Before writing, we looked at how to create an essay outline using the Standard Five Paragraph Essay Outline Format as a guideline. Writing this outline helped us prepare ourselves to write the final essay when it came time to do so in class, and it would help the writing process go a lot smoother.
When preparing to write my own essay, I chose to answer the driving question using the perspectives of the characters as proof to validate my thinking. I also practiced going over how I would format the essay itself and what information I would put where. After all of this preparation, it was finally time to Write the in class essay, and we had the whole class to finish it, some even staying to write through the break in order to get it done.
The whole process of completing the essay taught me many valuable things such as time management, formatting skills, as well as how to become a master at critiquing your own work.
I really enjoyed taking feedback from my first draft that I completed in class and improving my essay for the final draft which I will insert down below. Before I end this post, I will say that there were definitely areas that could’ve used further improvement such as my title and the aesthetic aspects of the essay were a bit lacking. Keeping this in mind, there were also many things that I did very well in my opinion such as answering the driving question clearly, and creating a good outline beforehand.