UNIT 2: Informative Essay

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UNIT 2: Informative Essay

Great Adaptations

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UNIT 2

Informative Essay

ANALYZE THE MODELS

Evaluate two informative essays. The first is about the albatross and the cormorant, and the second is about winged lizards.

PRACTICE THE TASK

Write an informative essay about deep-sea creatures.

An informative essay, also called an expository essay, is a short work of nonfiction that informs and explains. Unlike fiction, nonfiction is mainly written to convey factual information, although writers of nonfiction shape information in a way that matches their own purposes. Nonfiction writing can be found in newspaper, magazine, and online articles, as well as in biographies, speeches, movie and book reviews, and truelife adventure stories.

The nonfiction topics that you will read about in this unit describe animals in very different environments. The information in the sources is factual.

IN THIS UNIT, you will analyze information from two articles on native and invasive new animals in Australia. You will select and organize relevant facts and ideas to convey information about a topic, and you will end your essay by summarizing ideas or providing a concluding statement.

PERFORM THE TASK

Write an informative essay on adaptations made by wildlife in Australia.

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34

ANALYZE THE MODEL

How have birds and lizards adapted to their environments?

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You will read:

AN Informational

ARTICLE

Don't Start Without a Plan

You will analyze:

TWO STUDENT MODELS

Two Water Birds: The Albatross and the Cormorant

Winged Lizards

Unit 2: Informative Essay 35

Source Materials for Step 1

Mr. Sullivan's students read the following text to help them plan and write an informative essay. As you read, underline information that you find useful.

NOTES

Don't Start Without a Plan

You probably have already had challenging writing assignments that required you to research, then plan and write an informative essay. Whether the subject is a science, history, or another nonfiction topic, you need to decide in advance how you will organize your information and present it effectively. Don't just start somewhere and keep on writing until you have met the page requirement.

When you write an informative essay, the parts should relate to each other in a clear way to support your topic. A framework for writing can help you focus and manage information and ideas.

Framework for an Informative Essay Introduction

Hook your reader's interest and clearly identify your subject. Make your topic and main point clear.

Body Discuss each main idea in one or more paragraphs and support each main idea with facts, examples, and quotations.

Conclusion Bring your essay to a close by tying your ideas together. Summarize or restate your main idea(s) or draw conclusions.

Developing Your Topic

When you develop ideas in the body of your essay, you may want to use a text structure such as comparison and contrast to organize information. If you use comparison and contrast, you can follow two different types of organization:

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36 1. Analyze

2. Practice

3. Perform

1. Point-by-Point If you follow this structure, the body of your essay will have a paragraph comparing or contrasting the student body of small colleges and large universities, followed by paragraphs comparing and contrasting the other two topics.

Topic 1. Student Body 2. Class Size 3. Organizations

Small College

Large University

Discuss the first point of comparison or contrast for both small colleges and large universities, then move on to the second point.

2. Subject-by-Subject If you use this organizational structure, your essay will have one or two paragraphs discussing the student body, class size, and organizations within small colleges, followed by one or two paragraphs discussing those same three topics as they relate to large universities. Discuss all the points about small colleges before moving on to large universities.

Topic 1. Small College

Student Body

Class Size

Organizations

2. Large University

You may also want to use narrative description to develop aspects of your topic. Narrative description is about real people, events, or procedures. You can use narrative description to provide an account of historical events or to add detail to a scientific procedure. General descriptions won't help your reader see your subject. Use concrete sensory details expressed with precise and vivid nouns, verbs, and modifiers. Use the following structures to organize your descriptions.

Organizing Description

Chronological Order

Order of Importance

Describe details in the order in which Start with the most important detail

they occur, especially in descriptions and work toward the least important,

of events.

or vice versa.

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Discuss and Decide What descriptive details would likely be included in the essay on colleges and universities?

Unit 2: Informative Essay 37

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