Blog Elements

Are American kids stripped of their independence, denied the chance to take risks, and unable to make discoveries on their own? The Atlantic’s Hanna Rosin argues that’s the case–and we’re not even making kids safer in the process:

It’s hard to absorb how much childhood norms have shifted in just one generation. Actions that would have been considered paranoid in the ’70s—walking third-graders to school, forbidding your kid to play ball in the street, going down the slide with your child in your lap—are now routine. In fact, they are the markers of good, responsible parenting. One very thorough study of “children’s independent mobility,” conducted in urban, suburban, and rural neighborhoods in the U.K., shows that in 1971, 80 percent of third-graders walked to school alone. By 1990, that measure had dropped to 9 percent, and now it’s even lower. When you ask parents why they are more protective than their parents were, they might answer that the world is more dangerous than it was when they were growing up. But this isn’t true, or at least not in the way that we think.the

Deadlines and Prompts

The Welty revision (prompt, page 2) will be due Monday in class. I will give you your first draft with comments on Wednesday or Thursday.
The Barry essay (prompt, page 3) has a more complicated process. You need to find a peer editor and turn in a final draft attached to your peer-edited draft on Friday in class.

Suggestions for the Welty Revision (and really all analysis essays)

Please make sure to fix end punctuation and quotation marks. The comma and the period go inside the quotes.
Your thesis statement needs to answer the central question of the prompt. In the case of the Welty essay, that means answering how her feelings about reading changed.
Topic sentences need to extend to answer the purpose of the paragraph, not just the subject.
Combine sentences!
Make sure that your topic sentences make your structure clear.
Use the author’s name correctly. The first time you can use her first and last name; following that always use her last name. Unless you are Facebook friends with her, using her first name is inappropriate in a formal essay.

Half Sized Blog Element (Single Author Style)

Half Sized Blog Element (Multi Author Style)

Daily Wisdom: The Overprotected Kid

AP Language: Welty and Barry Revisions

Daily Wisdom: The Overprotected Kid

AP Language: Welty and Barry Revisions

Full Sized Blog Element (Big Preview Pic)

Daily Wisdom: The Overprotected Kid

AP Language: Welty and Barry Revisions

Deadlines and Prompts

Suggestions for the Welty Revision (and really all analysis essays)