Adding a Conclusion Assignment
Give your opinion essay a good ending!
Goal:
Goal:
Find the opinion essay you wrote at the beginning of this lesson using the Make a Claim worksheet. Copy and paste your essay into a word-processing document and add a conclusion statement that meets all of the requirements in the slideshow below.
A good conclusion . . .
restates the main idea, or claim, of the essay
A good conclusion . . .
sums up the reasons used to back up the claim
A good conclusion . . .
begins with a phrase like "in conclusion" or "finally"
When you have a good conclusion, send this file to your teacher. (If you wrote your essay on notebook paper, you can write your conclusion sentence there too--then scan your paper to send your teacher.) Your essay will be graded using the following rubric:
| Narrative Element | Exceptional 5 points |
Good 3 points |
Needs Work 1 point |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claim Statement | Your essay makes your opinion clear and suggests why you think that way. | Your essay starts with a statement that makes your opinion clear to readers. | Your essay does not make your opinion clear to readers. |
| Supporting Reasons | Your essay provides convincing, well-written reasons for your claim statement. | The reasons in your essay support your claim statement. | Your essay does not provide enough support for your claim. |
| Use of Examples | The examples in your essay are convincing and easy to visualize. | You include examples to explain all of your reasons. | Your essay does not include enough examples. |
| Organization | Your essay makes really good use of the guidelines for organizing. | You followed all of the guidelines for organizing the essay. | You followed some, but not all, of the guidelines for organizing the essay. |
| Conclusion | Your essay has a conclusion that restates the essay's claim, sums up the reasons, and uses a transitional tag. | Your essay includes a conclusion that restates the essay's claim and restates some of the reasons given in the essay. | Your essay does not have a conclusion that restates the claim or reasons. |
| Sentences | All of your essay's sentences work well. You use transitional tags to move readers between ideas. | Most of the sentences in your essay are clear. Some use transitional tags between ideas. | Some sentences in your essay are too long or too short. You do not include transitional tags. |