04 · STUDY WRITING
Build an argument, one connected paragraph.
Keep your notebook open. Study a model’s moves, practice a sentence, then use your own evidence to answer your week’s aim.
Nouns & verbs
See how suffixes change a word’s job. Build sentences that name who acts and what changes.
THE TARGET · 10 POINTSThe Writing Rubric
Eight points for doing the things. Two for how much your argument builds.
NAME IT + EXPLAIN IT · 2 POINTSHow to earn your key idea points
Learn how to connect specific evidence to the three course ideas.
START WITH THE CLASS EXAMPLEThe syllabus model paragraph
See the color-coded paragraph and follow how its argument builds.
CHAPTERS 2 & 3 · EIGHT PRACTICE QUESTIONSAdditional model paragraphs
Study a new model for every week devoted to Chapters 2 and 3, with YPT evidence and all five rubric requirements.
Choose a chapter model
Each model answers a practice question that helps you think about the chapter. It is a worked example of writing, not your assigned aim response.
How can an ordinary question reveal a narrow idea of who counts as American?
Model paragraph & sentence tools →How did colonists use deception to acquire land and resources?
Model paragraph & sentence tools →How did the punishment of John Punch turn a shared escape into a racial division?
Model paragraph & sentence tools →How did calling a fraudulent treaty legal help settlers take Cherokee land?
Model paragraph & sentence tools →Why did learning to read threaten the control of Frederick Douglass’s enslavers?
Model paragraph & sentence tools →How did replacing Irish strikers with Chinese workers give a factory owner power over nearby workers too?
Model paragraph & sentence tools →How could court procedures take land from Mexican owners even when they won their cases?
Model paragraph & sentence tools →How did racial divisions weaken Chinese workers’ ability to bargain over wages?
Model paragraph & sentence tools →How did allotment turn a promise of Native independence into a loss of control over land?
Model paragraph & sentence tools →Why did plantation owners treat cooperation between Filipino and Japanese workers as a threat?
Model paragraph & sentence tools →How did young women turn knowledge of factory conditions into power during the garment strike?
Model paragraph & sentence tools →Why did some growers try to limit Mexican American students’ education?
Model paragraph & sentence tools →Why did moving north fail to guarantee affordable housing for Black migrants in Harlem?
Model paragraph & sentence tools →Why did the military value a Native language that schools had tried to silence?
Model paragraph & sentence tools →How could students turn a promise of equal rights into a change in daily life?
Model paragraph & sentence tools →How did a change in corn prices help push Mexican farmers toward work in the United States?
Model paragraph & sentence tools →What changes when Japanese American soldiers and their imprisoned families appear in the same account of World War II?
Model paragraph & sentence tools →Appositives and the Development Toolkit
Appositives · add useful information
The Aim Response, our weekly writing task, is scored out of 10.
The blue noun phrase renames The Aim Response. Put the phrase between commas. Remove it to check that the main sentence still works. Your response needs two.
Basics
Contrast, result, reason
But
Adds a contrast.
It rained, but we kept playing outside.
So
Shows a result.
It rained, so we ran inside.
Because
Gives a reason.
We ran inside because it rained.
Conditionals
Three versions of if
If
Names a condition.
If it rains, we run inside.
Unless
Means if not.
Unless it rains, we stay outside.
When
Means if with expectation.
When it rains, we run inside.
Fancy Buts
Three versions of but
Despite
Takes a noun phrase.
Despite the rain, we kept our plans.
Although
Takes a subject and a verb.
Although it rained, we stayed outside.
However
Starts a new sentence.
It rained. However, we kept playing outside.
Open any chapter model above for appositives and all nine connectors using that chapter’s history.
Make the paragraph build: use a connector because it expresses a real contrast, reason, result, or condition in your argument. Each sentence should add something to the answer.