Personal Narrative Essay: Forgiveness
Preparation
Throughout Words by Heart we have seen various different perspectives of forgiveness. We have looked at what forgiveness looks like from the view of a person who needs someone else to forgive them and we have considered what forgiveness looks like from the view of a person who is asked to forgive another. We have come to realize how difficult it can be at times to forgive a person and how grateful a person can be that they have been forgiven.
At the same time as we have been learning about forgiveness in the book Words by Heart, we have also discussed certain elements of writing a personal narrative essay. We learned about point of view. We learned about what needs to be included in the introduction and conclusion, and about how much detail needs to be included. We also learned how to appropriately use commas, especially when making a list, what a subject-verb agreement is and how this should look in a sentence, and we were reminded of the rules of capitalization and punctuation in sentences.
The Task
For your assignment related to the book Words by Heart you will be asked to combine the things that we have learned in this Unit. To do this, you will be required to write 2 pages (computer processed, double-spaced) about a situation of forgiveness from your life. This situation of forgiveness does not necessarily have to be an experience of your own, but you must have been present to observe it.
The Essay written on GoMyAccess will be expected to:
• be written in 1st person perspective,
• have an introduction with a good hook,
• have a conclusion with a moral,
• contain plenty of detail and dialogue,
• contain appropriate use of capitalization and punctuation,
• and have purposeful placement of commas.
After you have gotten a score of 4 or higher on GoMyAccess, you will then be expected to:
• print off your essay
• underline your moral
• underline a situation in your paper where you have made a list, separated by commas.
• and show me that you understand the subject-verb agreement by underlining and linking at least three subjects and their verbs throughout the paper.
Whether forgiveness was actually achieved in the experience you are describing is unimportant. What is more important to consider in the paper is what happened, or could have happened, to make forgiveness take place.
Audience
For this paper, I (Mr. Christensen or Ms. Dorsey) will be your audience. It is important that you consider this when you are writing. Since I will not have met some of the people you are talking about you will need to give me some background information before talking about what actually happened. You will also need to pay attention to what it is I will be looking for. Using the included rubric and the prompt should help guide your writing.
Prompt
Throughout our lives, each of us encounters numerous instances of forgiveness. Sometimes we are innocent bystanders, but often we are the ones having to ask for forgiveness or being asked to forgive. For this personal narrative essay assignment, I am asking you to think back to an instance in your life when you have encountered forgiveness and asking you to write about it.
Prior to writing this assignment, you will need to be able to answer some of the following questions:
o Who was being asked to forgive?
o Who was asking to be forgiven?
o Why was forgiveness being asked for?
o What was required of the person forgiving?
o What was required of the person being forgiven?
o What background information might the reader need to know before the essay can be truly understood?
o Were there any conditions put in place by either party before forgiveness was achieved?
o Was forgiveness achieved? Why or why not?
Make sure, in writing this assignment, that you remember the characteristics of a good personal narrative essay: a good hook, lots of background information, has a story feel, is written in 1st person perspective, ends with a moral or lesson learned, and includes some dialogue and a lot of detail.
Grading (for printed off paper)
For this paper, you will be graded on six basic things: 1) Is your paper complete with all parts we did in class? 2) Are your experiences related and tied to the book? 3) Is your paper written in 1st person Point of View? 4) Does your paper have appropriate use of commas (especially when making a list)? 5) Did you capitalize and punctuate correctly? 6) Can you show me that you understand the subject verb agreement? You will be graded in these areas as follows:
Final Paper Grading Rubric
Points Received Points Possible Areas of Grading: Description and rationale for Grading Criteria
40 Completion
(Process/ Presentation) 0 pts = No Draft, peer review, or Completed final draft was submitted.
15-25 pts = 1 part or partial parts were submitted: Draft, Peer review, and final
25-35 pts = 2 parts were completed, but missing one part: Draft, Peer Review, and final.
40 pts = All parts are complete and turned in
10 Connection to book
(ideas and content) 0-5 pts = paper does not talk about an experience of forgiveness at all (or contains very little about forgiveness) and does not connect to Words by Heart at all.
5-9 pts = paper talks personally about an experience of forgiveness, but writer did not connect personal experience to Words by Heart, or connected it fleetingly.
10 pts = paper talks personally about forgiveness and connects that experience to their life.
10 1st person Perspective / inclusion of dialogue/detail
(voice/
word choice) 0-5 pts = paper does not resemble 1st person perspective at all. No dialogue is included. There is very little detail in the paper
5-9 pts = paper uses 1st person, but includes little or no dialogue or detail.
10 pts = paper uses 1st person perspective correctly. There are adequate amounts of dialogue and plenty of detail that gives insight into the thoughts and feelings of the individuals in the story.
10 Appropriate use of commas
(conventions) 0-5 = No commas were used or commas were placed in inappropriate places. Comma splices cause sentence fragments all throughout the paper or there are incomplete sentences that should be combined with other sentences by comma to make more sense in the paper.
5-9 pts = Commas are used correctly throughout the paper, but there are one or two situations that the comma could be used more correctly to eliminate sentence fragments or run-ons. There is no sentence with commas in a series.
10 pts = Commas are used correctly throughout the entire paper. There is at least 1 sentence that includes commas in a series and in the final draft they are underlined.
10 Capitalization and Punctuation
(conventions/ organization) 0-5 pts = Sentences are not capitalized and are missing appropriate punctuation (periods, quotation marks, question marks, etc).
5-9 pts = Most of the paper has appropriate capitalization and punctuation, but there are a few mistakes.
10 pts = There are no capitalization or punctuation errors in the paper.
10 Subject-Verb Agreement
(Sentence Fluency) 0-5 pts = There are no subjects or verbs underlined in the final draft and there are numerous problems with the subject-verb agreements throughout the paper.
5-9 pts = The final draft has underlined subjects and verbs, but they are either incorrect or there are less than three of them and other mistakes in the paper.
10 pts = The final draft has three underlined subjects and verbs and they are all correct. There may be minimal mistakes throughout the rest of the paper.
Search this blog for a post of quotes on forgiveness. This provides extra credit opportunities, and quotes you could use in your essay.
