Body Paragraph 1-Drop Outs

After checking introductory paragraph--only a 3-sentence requirement from yesterday, we discussed body paragraphs.

What is one reason that we should require students to graduate:

Cost

Crime

Unemployment

Jobs

I shared the paragraph below and asked that students think about what each sentence is doing.

The first sentence is our topic: it tells what the paragraph will be about.

The second sentence provide an example from our resources (Performance Assessment)

The third and fourth sentences explain why this information is important to our topic and point.

The fourth sentence brings up another point.

The fifth sentence discusses a result that proves the point.

The sixth sentence wraps up and begins moving on to the next reason.

Students who do not have a high school diploma decrease their earning potential. A data analysis conducted in 2009 indicates that the average high school dropout made $19,540 yearly, while a student who graduated made $27,380 yearly (Source #3). That’s a difference of $7,840. Over the course of a lifetime, the high school graduate will have made over $200,000 more. Additionally, the person making less than $20,000 a year will have a difficult time paying every day expenses, such as rent, food, utilities, and insurance. As a result, many of these students may find themselves in need of public assistance (Source #4). If this happens, the choice to drop out moves away from being an individual consequence to a national problem.