Supporting Details and Quotations How to give your paragraph meaning.

Winning an Argument If you want your parents to give you money to go shopping, do you just say, “Mom can I have money to buy stuff?” and then she says, “Sure how much do you want?” Most likely, this does not happen in this way. You need to provide reasons for your parents as to WHY you need money! It’s the same with paragraphs. You need reasons to support your topic sentence.

Demonstrating Your Point After stating your topic sentence, you need to provide information to prove, illustrate, clarify, and/or exemplify your point. Ask yourself: • What examples can I use to support my point? • What information can I provide to help clarify my thoughts? • How can I support my point with specific data, experiences, or other factual material? • What information does the reader need to know in order to see my point?

Here is a list of the kinds of information you can add to your paragraph: • Facts, details, reasons, examples • Information from the readings or class discussions • Paraphrases or short quotations • Statistics, polls, percentages, data from research studies • Personal experience, stories, anecdotes, examples from your life Vocabulary/Grammar Look For: Adding transitional or introductory phrases like: for example, for instance, first, second, or last can help guide the reader. Also, make sure you are citing your sources appropriately

Money! Money from Mom: Try writing three sentences that would support reasons your mom should give you money! Be Creative! Use the language. Complex Sentences: You should be trying to write more complex sentences and less short simple sentences and use academic vocabulary. Example: The Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman stood up in a corner and kept quiet all night, although of course they could not sleep. - After share your sentences with your groupmates. Each person take turns reading out their paragraphs to this point. - Give each other 1 bit of feedback (something they did well or something they can improve)

Using Quotations Once you found information (if its not examples or ideas of your own) you need to include it in your paragraph to give support to your opinion. There are 4 easy steps to using a quotation. Step 1: Choose a unique and significant quotation. (choice is important because I want you to mostly paraphrase sources and then reference them, but if you choose a quotation it MUST be special!) Step 2: Introduce the quotation. Who said it? Where did it come from? Example: Leading author on education Ken Robinson said in his book Creative Schools,

Step 3 Step 3: State your quotation - Leading author on education Ken Robinson said in his book Creative Schools, “Creativity is putting your imagination to work, and it's produced the most extraordinary results in human culture”. (Robinson, 25) The quotation goes inside quotation marks and punctuation goes outside quotation marks. MLA Citation

Step 4 (the most important) Explain your quotation! Do not ever end a paragraph with a quotation. Do not assume your reader knows why you put the quotation there. Explain it and its meaning! Leading author on education Ken Robinson said in his book Creative Schools, “Creativity is putting your imagination to work, and it's produced the most extraordinary results in human culture”. (Robinson, 25) Here Robinson illustrates an essential part of learning, creativity. He argues that teachers should foster this behavior in students, which in turn will cause increased educational success.