Open the John Muir Essays document in your Google drive folder and create a new heading.
Coming to America
Purpose – Exposition & Narration
- To summarize John’s trip to the United States
- To tell the story of your trip to the United States
- To describe and explain your traveling experiences
Audience – Your classmates and myself who may not know much about your home country.
Format – 5 paragraph essay
| Paragraph 1 – Introduction |
Describe John Muir’s trip to America. Provide background on his family and childhood in Scotland. Explain John’s excitement about the trip and describe his expectations for America.
| Paragraph 2 – Trip background |
Make a statement connecting John’s trip to yours: Like John Muir, I also left my home country of _________________ to travel to America on _______(date)________. Provide background on your family and childhood in your home country. Describe and explain what preparations you made before leaving your country. Describe and explain how you felt and what expectations you had for America before leaving.
| Paragraph 3 – The trip |
Tell the story of your trip. Use sensory images (sight, smell, sound, taste, and touch) to make your story vivid to the reader. Include as many details as possible, including dialogue if you talked with anyone. Describe how you felt and what caused you to feel the way that you did during each part of the trip.
| Paragraph 4 – What you learned about yourself & America |
Describe what the trip taught you about yourself. Did traveling to a new place reveal any new or hidden qualities that you were unaware of before? Did it strengthen or weaken any qualities that you already knew you had? What lessons did you learn from the trip? Did anything surprise you? Were your expectations about America fulfilled? What did you learn once you arrived? Be as specific and detailed as possible, giving examples of what you learned and how you learned it.
| Paragraph 5 - Conclusion |
Connect your trip to America with John’s trip. Explain how they were similar and how they were different. Summarize what the trip taught you about yourself and how your expectations of America were either fulfilled or unfulfilled.
Evaluation –
- Organization – you followed directions and have at least 5 paragraphs that are well developed with a topic sentence and details.
- Original story – you shared a story from your own personal experience. You wrote sincerely.
- Support – you used appropriate quotes to illustrate Muir’s trip to America & descriptive details to describe your own trip. You included many examples.
- MLA style – internal citation, proper heading, double spaced, etc.
- You have at least 500 words in the final draft.
- Open the rubric to see the specific criteria used for evaluation