Board notes

These notes show our discussion about why we use notes for the CATW exam...

Things to consider based on last exam...from (10/9)

The board notes (above) show last week's tips on growing CATW paragraphs.

CATW Assignment One

Students will turn in a REVISION of a previous CATW exam on Tuesday, October 16th.

The goal is revise a practice exam into a passing CATW exam. Use the comments from the instructor, as well as your own sense of what's best, to make the revisions.

You may choose from either of exams that the professor gave feedback on.

CATW Practice Exam

The Woman Who Died in the Waiting Room

Esmin Green fell out of her chair in the waiting room of Brooklyn's largest psychiatric hospital nearly an hour before anyone realized she was in trouble. For 20 minutes, she writhed and twisted between two chairs under the watchful eye of a security camera whose footage would later be broadcast across the country, spurring a public outcry. Two security guards and two other staff members passed through the room and glanced at the 49-year-old woman, without bothering to check her vital signs or help her up. Nearly 40 minutes after she stopped moving, a nurse walked over and lightly kicked her. By then, she was already dead. The city's medical examiner cited blood clots in her legs as the official cause.

As disturbing as the circumstances of Esmin Green's death were, they should not have come as a surprise. Public hospitals across the country have struggled to provide acute psychiatric care to the poor and uninsured since the early 1960s, when large mental hospitals began closing their doors en masse. Rather than lock them away in cold, uncaring institutions, the thinking went, the mentally ill should be offered a place in society. But with insufficient outpatient services and a dearth of community-based support, the least fortunate of them have ended up in already overtaxed emergency rooms. They are the poor, the uninsured and the undocumented. Many of them suffer from chronic conditions that could potentially be treated with medication and regular counseling, luxuries most of them cannot afford.

 With just 50,000 inpatient psychiatric beds for tens of millions of people across the country, the mentally ill typically wait twice as long for treatment as other patient populations do. "It's like landing airplanes at JFK airport," says Ken Duckworth, medical director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. "There is just no place for them to go."

(306 words) adapted from July 12, 2008 Newsweek article, “The Woman Who Died in the Waiting Room” by Jeneen Interlandi

Writing Directions
Read the passage above and write an essay responding to the ideas it presents. In
your essay, be sure to summarize the passage in your own words, stating the author’s most important ideas. Develop your essay by identifying one idea in the passage that you feel is especially significant, and explain its significance. Support your claims with evidence or examples drawn from what you have read, learned in school, and/or personally experienced.

Remember to review your essay and make any changes or corrections that are needed to help your reader follow your thinking. You will have 90 minutes to complete your essay.

CATW PRACTICE

Are Illegal Immigrants Good for the U.S. Economy? (1)

Are Illegal Immigrants Good for the U.S. Economy?

There are currently 12 million people living in the United States illegally

Undocumented immigrants contribute to our economy as workers, taxpayers, and consumers.
They account for 5 percent of the total U.S. labor force, and at least a quarter of the workers in industries like construction, agriculture, groundskeeping, meat processing, and textile production.

All undocumented immigrants pay sales and property taxes, and—contrary to popular belief—most pay federal and state income taxes as well, even though they're not eligible for Social Security, Medicare, or the many other programs their tax dollars help fund. Undocumented immigrants also spend billions of dollars each year, which supports our economy and helps create new jobs.

A 2006 study by the Texas State Comptroller estimated that the 1.4 million undocumented immigrants in Texas alone added almost $18 billion to the state's economic output, and more than paid for the $1.2 billion in state services they used by generating $1.6 billion in new state revenues.

The contributions of undocumented immigrants would be even greater if they were able to earn legal status. Workers who are not part of an underground economy and don't live in fear of deportation are better able to acquire new job skills and move up the career ladder. That translates into higher wages, more money paid in taxes, and more money to spend.

Undocumented immigration is a symptom of an immigration system that is broken. Lawmakers should revamp our immigration system so that it works with our economy, not against it.

—Walter Ewing
Immigration Policy Center (immigrationpolicy.org)

Writing Directions
Read the passage above and write an essay responding to the ideas it presents. In
your essay, be sure to summarize the passage in your own words, stating the
author’s most important ideas. Develop your essay by identifying one idea in the
passage that you feel is especially significant, and explain its significance. Support
your claims with evidence or examples drawn from what you have read, learned in
school, and/or personally experienced.

Remember to review your essay and make any changes or corrections that are
needed to help your reader follow your thinking. You will have 90 minutes to
complete your essay.

introduction sentence template

Anna:

A chapter of the The Global Warming Reader book, "The Anthropocene" by Paul J. Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer, tells the evidence about how human activities affect climate change.

Elane - paraphrase of first paragraph from Zeitoun 

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers is set in Syria, where fishermen use lanterns to trick the fish in the black sea.

In Zeitoun, Dave Eggers writes about the fishermen in Syria who use lanterns to trick fish in the black sea.

Class Agenda

1. Reflection on getting organized: did suggestions from last week work?

2. The Peer Review: what questions do you have about assignment one?

3. Skill practice: paraphrase and introducing texts

4. New: topic sentences.