1. How to read, understand and write to a prompt.
It really can be easy!! 

2. Steps to Reading/Understanding Prompts.
Step 1: Read the whole prompt through
Step 2:Circle the verbs…verbs tell us what to do
Step 3: Underline the important words/phrases…the specifics
Step 4: Number the main parts of the prompt (if you can) – these will become your main points (body paragraphs)
Step 5: Answer the question – in your OWN words – “What am I being asked to do?”
Step 6: Write guiding questions – these are questions that MUST be answered in order to fully address ALL aspects of the prompt…Then you need to think about what you believe/how you will answer them (your research)
Step 1: Read the whole prompt through
Step 2: Circle the verbs…verbs tell us what to do
Step 3: Underline the important words/phrases…the specifics
Step 4: Number the main parts of the prompt (if you can) – these will become your body paragraphs
Step 5: Answer the question – in your own words – “what am I being asked to do?”
Step 6: Write guiding questions – questions that MUST be answered in order to fully address ALL aspects of the prompt and think about what you believe/how you will answer (research).

3. Look for Verbs and Plan!
Verbs (explain, describe, answer etc.) tell you what you are actually required to do.
What is the difference between:
Explain
Describe
Analyze
Develop
Next, you want to plan!
Take 5-10 minutes to organize your thoughts, get your examples and write an outline.
Types of brainstorms:
Bubble map
Linear outline
Flow chart
Evidence boxes

4. Example Prompt Try it for yourself now
Identify and explain a lesson we learn from Ender’s Hero’s Journey and how that lesson can be applied to today’s society and to yourself (your own journey perhaps).

5. Example Prompt – Step 1-4
P 1
Identify and explain a lesson we learn from Ender’s Hero’s Journey and how that lesson can be applied to today’s society and to yourself (your own journey perhaps).
P 2
P 3

6. Example Prompt – Steps 5-6
What am I being asked to do? (Step 5):
I have to decide if Ender is successful on his hero’s journey and what lesson we can learn from the book. I then have to explain how this lesson can be seen in our society and my own life.
Guiding Questions (Step 6):
1) How does Ender’s hero’s journey teach the reader a lesson?
2) Why is this lesson still important today (my own life/society)?

7. Example Prompt – Step 6 Continued
What do I think/how will I answer my guiding questions?
I think Ender becomes a hero but in a negative way
Ender is often tricked or manipulated by the adults in his life
This teaches us the lesson that if we don’t have all the facts then we will act in ways that we will regret later (Ender killing all the Buggers)…explain Ender as a “hero” because he didn’t have all the facts, but that he is ashamed of what he has done
Relate this to the presidential election; people who don’t research the facts might vote for a candidate they will regret later
Relate to war in Iraq; we rushed into war without determining if there were really “weapons of mass destruction” which led us to regret the war that we wasted money and lives on for so long
Relate to me: I have judged people and their lives before without understanding their motives or their economic positions. This made me regret what I had thought/said earlier.
Relate to me: When I applied for high schools, I didn’t research or know all the facts about the school that I chose to go to. Because of this I learned that I had to “do my homework” and did so when I researched which colleges I wanted to go to.

8. Last Year’s Essay Prompt
Throughout Ender’s Game and In the Time of the Butterflies various characters and events challenge the black and white concepts of good and evil. Peter who can be seen as a symbol of evil adopts the pseudonym of Locke, a peaceful man, and at the end of the narrative Ender is left on a quest to save the very race he helped to eliminate (who he says he loves even as he kills them). The Mirabal sisters make homemade bombs and in a way are terrorists in the Dominican Republic, but are also considered martyrs.
Using Ender’s Game, and In the Time of the Butterflies, write an essay in which you explore how the two texts complicate the idea of good and evil and whether hatred or evil is inevitable. Remember to include why these two books portray good and evil in this way, and to cite specific evidence from the texts.

9. Our Attempts!
What am I being asked to do?
Guiding Questions:
Thesis:

10. Practice Prompt #1
In many works of literature, past events can affect, positively or negatively, the present actions, attitudes, or values of a character. Using the book you chose to read over the summer, identify a character that must contend with some aspect of the past, either personal or societal. Then write an essay in which you show how the character’s relationship to the past contributes to the meaning (the author’s point in writing the book) of the work as a whole.
Avoid merely summarizing the plot; instead, use details and specific evidence from the text to help support your own understanding/analysis of the book.
You may wish to consider the following questions in helping you to analyze your book: How does the character’s relationship with the past affect his/her present relationships with the people around him/her? How does the way different people deal with the past illuminate a deeper understanding of the human condition?

11. Our Attempts! What am I being asked to do? Guiding Questions: Thesis:
You may wish to consider the following questions in helping you to analyze your book: How does the character’s relationship with the past affect his/her present relationships with the people around him/her? How does the way different people deal with the past illuminate a deeper understanding of the human condition?

12. Practice Prompt #2 SAT Prompt:
“We do not take the time to determine right from wrong. Reflecting on the difference between right and wrong is hard work. It is so much easier to follow the crowd, going along with what is popular rather than risking the disapproval of others by voicing an objection of any kind.”
Stephen J. Carter, Integrity
Assignment: Is it always best to determine one's own views of right and wrong, or can we benefit from following the crowd? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.

13. Our Attempts!
What am I being asked to do?
Guiding Questions:
Thesis:

14. Practice Prompt #3
2010 AP® ENGLISH LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION FREE-RESPONSE QUESTIONS - Question 3 (Suggested time—40 minutes. This question counts as one-third of the total essay section score.)
Palestinian American literary theorist and cultural critic Edward Said has written that “Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted.” Yet Said has also said that exile can become “a potent, even enriching” experience.
Select a novel, play, or epic in which a character experiences such a rift and becomes cut off from “home,” whether that home is the character’s birthplace, family, homeland, or other special place. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the character’s experience with exile is both alienating and enriching, and how this experience illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole. You may choose a work from the list below or one of comparable literary merit. Do not merely summarize the plot.

15. Our Attempts!
What am I being asked to do?
Guiding Questions:
Thesis:

16. MLA Formatting Title Page
Times New Roman Font
12pt Size
Double-Spaced
Title centered at top of paper – no special fonts, no bolding, only hit ENTER once between title and intro and between paragraphs
Heading (on left):
Your Name
Instructor's Name
Course
Date (European style)
1” Margins (.5” for heading)
Last name and page number in top right corner
IMPORTANT FIXES:
WORD 2003: When using Word 2003 you MUST change the margins to 1” (they are set at 1.25”)…Go to FILE/PAGE SETUP and then adjust the margins
WORD 2007/2010/2013: You MUST change the spacing after each line to zero (it is set at 10pt)…Right click, click on Paragraph, adjust SPACING AFTER to zero and LINE SPACING to double. Then hit DEFAULT…you will now never have to do this again
Google Docs: You must hit ENTER twice (2X) to move your header (Last name Page #) into the correct position

17. MLA Formatting
MLA (the Modern Language Association) is the accepted formatting used to reference books and authors for English papers. Other similar formats are used for psychological and medical papers.
When WRITING a title, underline it… when TYPING a title, italicize it!
If it is the first time you have used a quote from this author, write his last name and the page number at the END of the sentence in parenthesis
After citing the author’s name the first time, you only need to cite the pg # from then on…If you have already mentioned the author’s name in your sentence then only the pg # is needed.
The period ALWAYS goes AFTER the parenthetical reference. NEVER before the quotation mark.
Always cite AFTER the sentence:
Ex. When Huck says “‘all right then, I’ll go to hell’” (Twain 235) he is giving up Southern society in order to live by his own rules.
Ex. In Mark Twain’s novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck is a “poor lost lamb” (1) who doesn’t understand the complexities of society.
Twain pokes fun at the South’s idealistic and romantic notions about justice when he has Colonel Sherburn say “and then a man goes in the night with a hundred masked cowards and lynches the rascal” (161).

18. Works Cited
Your works cited page is a SEPARATE page at the back of your essay that lists all the sources you use in alphabetical order by author’s last name (or the title if there is no author).
Do NOT use bolded lettering.
DO double space your entries
DO indent lines other than the first in each entry by one tab or 5 space bars
For help, go to Purdue’s Cite (linked on my website)
For a book with one author:
Last name, first name. Title. City of Publication: Publisher, Year.
Foster, Thomas C. How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines New York: HarperCollins, 2003.

19. Our Essay Prompt
Thinking back to how Ender is raised, and considering the above passage, what does Card argue about the dynamics of family in his futuristic world? To what extent do you agree with Kessel’s assertion of morality and family in Ender’s Game? Use examples and details from: your own observations, the text, and other readings/concepts you have studied before.