With me absent from the classroom today, you will be working on your own developing your thesis statement into a Introductory paragraph (most have already developed this).
After this step, you will then be ready to develop an outline for each of your THREE body paragraphs. From this, you are then to formulate a topic sentence. Make certain that this topic sentence relates back to your thesis.
Finally, you will formulate a concluding paragraph.
I gave you a handout a week or so ago, so please take a look at that.
Hint: In preparation for any writing assignment, the key is in the "pre-writing" stage. This includes reading the question five times, brainstorming (writing down everything you know about the question), and making certain to answer the question.
Those that skip this stage will fail to produce the best essay you might be capable.
If you finish during the period, then please hand in to Ms. Gregory.
Homework: 20 minutes of reading and note-taking.
Tuesday
Please take the time to read the two primary source documents below and answer the question, below, by comparing and contrasting the two sources.
An expedition under Captain Christopher Newport began the Jamestown settlement in May 1607. In June, Captain Newport sailed for England, leaving behind 104 settlers. In September, only forty-six of them were still living. One of the survivors, George Percy, wrote an account of the terrible time at Jamestown.
Below, A letter from George Percy, one of the original settlers from Jamestown.
There were never Englishmen left in a foreign country in such misery as we were in this new discovered Virginia. We watched every three nights, lying on the bare cold ground, what weather soever came; and warded all the next day; which brought our men to be most feeble wretches. Our food was but a small can of barley, sodden in water, to five men a day. Our drink, cold water taken out of the river; which was at flood very salt; at low tide full of slime and filth, which was the destruction of many of our men. Thus we lived for the space of five months [from August 1607 to January 1608] in this miserable distress, not having five able men to man our bulwarks upon any occasion. If it had not pleased God to put a terror in the savages' hearts we had all perished by those wild and cruel pagans, being in that weak estate as we were; our men night and day groaning in every corner of the fort most pitiful to hear. . . . It pleased God after a while to send those people which were our mortal enemies; to relieve us with victuals, as bread, corn, fish, and flesh in great plenty, which was the setting up of our feeble men; otherwise we had all perished.
Lyon Gardiner Tyler, ed., Narratives of Early Virginia, 1606-1625 (New York: Scribner, 1907), pp. 284-285.
Having read Document 1, above, examine the excerpt from a letter from one John Pory, written from Virginia in 1619 and printed below. What obvious changes had taken place between the times the two accounts were written? What caused these changes? In answering this question, reread the section in the text on Jamestown and Virginia, paying special attention to the incentives offered at various times by the company. How does the comparison and contrast of these two documents help to explain what was needed to succeed in Virginia? Do you feel that Pory's letter is an accurate description of what really existed in Virginia? Explain your answer.
All our riches for the present doe consiste in Tobacco, wherein one man by his owne labour hath in one yeare raised to himselfe to the value of 2000 pounds sterling; and another by the meanes of sixe servants hath cleared at one crop a thousand pound English. These be true, yet indeed rare examples, yet possible to be done by others. Our principall wealth (I should have said) consisteth in servants: But they are chardgeable to be furnished with armes, apparell and bedding and for their transportation and casual, both at sea, and for their first yeare commonly at lande also: But if they escape, they prove very hardy, and sound able men.
Nowe that your lordship may knowe, that we are not the veriest beggers in the worlde, our cowekeeper here of James citty on Sundays goes accowtered all in freshe flaming silke; and a wife of one that in England had professed the black arte, not of a scholler, but of a collier of Croydon, weares her rough bever hatt with a faire perle hatband, and a silken suite thereto correspondent. But to leave the Populace, and to come higher; the Governour here, who at his first coming besides a great deale of worth in his person, brought onely his sword with him was at his late being in London, together with his lady, out of his meer gettings here, able to disburse very near three thousand pounds to furnishe himselfe for his voiage. And once within seven yeares, I am persuaded (absit invidia verbo) that the Governors place here may be as profitable as the lord Deputies of Irland.
Lyon Gardiner Tyler, ed., Narratives of Early Virginia, 1606-1625 (New York: Scribner, 1907), pp. 284-285.
