 Brown=Bun (Introduction & Conclusion)  Red=Meat (Reasons 1, 2, & 3)  Green=Lettuce (Elaboration..fact or detail, for each of the 3 reasons)

I believe that more people should become vegetarians for many reasons. Most importantly, eating meat hurts defenseless animals. They are often raised and transported in uncomfortable conditions and they are killed. There are also healthy reasons not to eat meat. Studies show the vegetarians are less likely to have heart disease and cancer. A third reason is that it takes more natural resources to raise meat than other foods such as fruits and vegetables. Not only do you have to raise the cattle, you have to raise the food and feed the cattle. For these reasons I hope people who eat meat will rethink their eating habits and consider becoming a vegetarian.

 Cut out the sentences you were given, arrange them in the proper order, and then color them brown (bun/intro and conclusion), red (meat/reasons), and green (veggies/elaboration).

 I think that the use of calculators in middle school classrooms is a good thing.  First, the use of a calculator allows students to do more challenging problems that emphasize thinking rather than computation.  By middle school, students should have already learned the basics of computation and even if they didn’t, they should move on to more important problem solving skills and let the calculator do the number crunching for them.  Also, the calculator allows you to solve problems that don’t have easy numbers.  Big numbers, decimals, square roots, and long columns of numbers can be handled more easily.  Thirdly, using a calculator is a skill that is important in adult life and needs to be practiced.  Adults use calculators in their jobs and for household tasks such as balancing their checkbooks.  As you can see, there are many good reasons for using calculators in the middle school classroom.

 Underline the different parts of your paragraph in brown, red and green.  Does the topic sentence state a clear opinion?  Do you have at least three reasons with strong verbs and adjectives?  Do you have details for each reason?  Did you use persuasive phrases?  Are there any details that should be removed?  Read your paragraph aloud and listen for flow and clarity.