Chapter 4

     Chapter 4 is about building effective paragraphs. The first thing to building an effective paragraph is to focus on and develop your main points. Then choose a suitable pattern of organization, make your paragraphs coherent, and adjust the length of your paragraph if necessary. The exceptions to this are paragraphs such as introductions and conclusions. Paragraphs are clusters of information. These paragraphs should support your main ideas.
     In order to focus on the main points. You need to make sure that you state your main points in the topic sentence. You also need to make sure you stick to the point. There are a lot of ways to choose a suitable pattern of organization. Such as examples and illustrations, narration, description, process, comparison and contrast, analogy, cause and effect, classification and division, and definition. Any of these can occur frequently, alone or in combination. You always need to make sure you make your paragraphs coherent. To do this you need to link ideas clearly, repeat key words, maintain consistency and provide transitions between what you have wrote to the next thing you are about to write.
     This has been very helpful to learn these skills. I am also learning them in my speech class. I am really glad I took both these classes at the same time. Transition is something that I also learned in speech. Another part in this chapter that I will use in my writing is focusing on the main point. There are many times that I change the subject. I need to learn to stick to the point.

Shooting Dad

     The significance of the title doesn't come out until the end of the story. I believe that the significance is that Sarah wants to be the one to shoot her fathers ashes out of the cannon. Even though she decided at the age of six that she would never shoot another gun in her life. She decided to shoot the cannon because she didn't compare it to a gun. Shooting the cannon was an opportunity for Sarah and her dad to bond.
     Sarah made a big step in her life to want to relate with her father and his gunsmithing. If she never made the decision to tell her father she wanted to go out with him to shoot the cannon, then she would have never experienced that moment in her life that they where alot alike. To shoot her fathers ashes out of the cannon when he passes away is the significance of the story "Shooting Dad"

Chapter 3

    Chapter 3 is about revising your essay. The first way to revise is global, then you will revise your sentences. The reason you do global revising first is because you may end up taking out whole sentences. You don't want to revise a sentence that you may end up taking out later. You always want to walk away from you rough draft for a little while before attempting any revisions. When you return to your essay, you should read it out loud as if you were reading to an audience.
    Revising your sentences will be the last step before you attempt your final draft. While revising your sentences you want to look for a couple different things such as clarity, effectiveness, grammar, punctuation, and mechanics. When using the grammar and spell checker on the computer you need to be very careful. Sometimes theses tools don't pick up everything for example: memorize or memories, they are both spelled correctly but they are miss used. A good strategy for proof reading would be to read your essay in reverse. This takes your mind away from the story as a whole and directs your attention to each sentence individually.  
    This is something that I need to start applying to my essays. I proof read my work but I never revise it. After reading the essays in the book, I can see how much of a difference it makes. After the global revision, the essay sounded so much better and more put together. I also like the tip it gave about reading in reverse. I will definitely do this next time. I find myself paying to much attention to the story behind the sentences and not proof reading. I believe this was the biggest mistake I made on our first essay. I should have spent more time revising it before submitting my final draft.

Coming Home again

    I chose to write about why food is so important in the story. I think there are a couple reasons why the food is so important. First I think it is important because it made memories for a young boy and his mother. All the boy wanted to do as a child was spend his free time in the kitchen with his mother and watch her cook. The food was part of their culture, it represented them as a Koren family. Not only did it make memories, it was also the ice breaker when they came back together after he went off to boarding school. When the the boy came home for vacation or his mother came to visit him, there was always an awkward silence, so the mother made sure to make his favorite meal. 
    After 10 years of not being at home his mother got sick with Cancer. This is when he decided to go back  home to spend time with her. All those times when he was younger watching his mother in the kitchen, really paid off. When he came home he did all the cooking. He made meals that he hoped his mother would enjoy and love. Although she was not able to eat, she would always try the food and let him know what he did or didn't add enough of. After his mothers passing, he decided to stay home and cook for the family. When she passed away all of her recipes went with her. He only knew how to make the food from watching his mother as a young boy.
   

Chapter 2

  Chapter two is about how you would draft an essay. First it talks about writing out your rough draft. You need to write an introduction. This is where you will put your thesis. Next you need the body of your essay. Lastly you will write your conclusion.
   When writing your thesis you want to make sure that it's not too factual, too broad, or too vague. Drafting your body is usually the easiest part of your essay and you may want to start with that first. When writing your body you need to make sure your main point support your thesis. The conclusion should remind your readers of your main points, you should never introduce new points into your conclusion. Your conclusion is used to close your essay with meaning.
   I have already used this information in my writing. When we started our rough drafts for our essay. I was lost on how to write my thesis. My first thesis that I wrote was factual. After reading this I was able to come up with a thesis. It also helped me build me introduction. I read that the sentence before your thesis should be interesting so it hooks your readers. This chapter helped me alot with writing my rough draft.

Rough Draft for Image Essay

I sit here and look at this picture in front of me, of a tiny little baby. He is in a metal crib that looks like a cage, with tubes and wires everywhere. All parents should be concerned for their newborn babies between the months of November and March, so they don’t catch the Respitory Syncytial Virus (RSV). Approximately 4,500 children under 5 years old die each year from RSV. I am going to tell you a story about how I almost lost my little boy to RSV.


Jerimiah Joseph Bartow, now 5 ½ years old, was born on February 21, 2005. He was 6.2 lbs, small but very healthy. After about three days in the hospital we went home. I was only 18 years old and a first time mother. We had all kinds of visitors once we got home. Which I later found out that my sister in law brought her son over who had just gotten over the virus. After about two weeks of being home Jerimiah started to get sick, he had just normal cold symptoms. I took him to the doctor, and the doctor told me that he was fine, to just go home and wait it out. After about three days of no sleep, my mom came over to give me a break and take Jerimiah so I could get some rest. My mom brought him back to me and told me that she thought he needed to be looked at again. At this point he wasn’t eating much, he was throwing up everything that he did eat, and he was very irritable. I told Jerimiah’s dad that I was going to take him to the hospital and he said I was over reacting. At that point I didn’t care what he thought, I had a mother’s instinct, and I was on my way to the hospital.

Once we got to the hospital the triage nurse took his vitals. His oxygen levels where at 87%, for a normal baby it should be at about 99-100%. They rushed him back to get him on oxygen. After being there for a couple hours they had him on full oxygen and had an IV in him for fluids because he was very dehydrated. The doctor came in and said that he wanted to test him for RSV. At this time I was not too sure what RSV was. To test for this they had to stick a very long wire in to Jerimiah’s nostril. That was horrible, he screamed and his nose bled. Before the results ever came back, the doctor decided to admit him to the hospital. The Doctor looked at us and said, “If you wouldn’t have brought him in tonight, he may not have made it through the night.” I looked over at Jerimiah’s dad and was completely disgusted with him. For him to think that I was overreacting and my baby could have died.

We had spent 3 days in the pediatrics when things took a turn for the worse. I woke up around 2:00 a.m. to about five nurses in a panic standing over my baby. Before I could even ask what was wrong they rushed him out of the room. One nurse stayed behind to tell me, “Jerimiahs’ left lung has collapsed and they are taking him up to the ICU so he can be monitored a little closer.” I really didn’t know what to make of this. All I knew was that the ICU was for very sick people. After about two days and a bunch of breathing treatments they later sent him back to the pediatrics. We had to stay there for about 3 more days until his oxygen levels were at 99% without oxygen. We were finally cleared to go home after a week and a half in the hospital.

We have come to realize that this was just the first of many illnesses and stays at the hospital. Like I said in the beginning Jerimiah is now 5 ½ and suffers from Asthma, been to the hospital numerous times and had also spent his second birthday in there. This experience has made me not take my mommy sense for granted. Anyone who is a mother knows what I am talking about. Whether your child is 3 weeks old or 25 years old, you know when there is something wrong.