Personal Response to The Laramie Project
REVISED DUE DATE: All three pieces (news article, personal response to Laramie, and storyboard/ad campaign are due at the end of class on Wed June 11.Students are strongly encouraged to hand in their pieces as they finish, rather than waiting to hand in all three at the end.
Qualities of a personal response:
- Written from a first person perspective – “I liked the film because…”
- Use proper paragraph structure – Argument (point), Proof (evidence) and Explanation (discussion of how proof supports your argument).
- You MAY work toward your conclusion, or you may use topic sentences which summarize your opinion.
Sample:
In the movie The Laramie Project which we watched in English class, the aspect I found most interesting was the issue of Aaron McKinney’s sentencing after he pled guilty to the murder of Matthew Shepard.
In the movie The Laramie Project which we watched in English class, the aspect I found most interesting was that there were so many people who showed up to support the Shepards and Matthew.
At the start of the film, we are introduced to the crime that has been committed against Matthew, and we hear some people who are saying nasty things about homosexuals as a group. There are two ranchers who talk about the “gay lifestyle”. I thought this was weird, because no one talks about heterosexuals living a “lifestyle”. They just live their lives, and their romances are part of their lives. By talking about homosexuals in this way, people seem to be implying that people who love people of the same gender are somehow not “human” – that they choose to live in this way, like someone might choose to live on the street. I felt like this description of gay people showed that the ranchers really hated gay people, even though they said they didn’t because they talk about gay people like they aren’t human.
>Do one or two more body paragraphs
>Your paragraphs may be CONNECTIONS. Be sure to discuss what kind of connection you are making, and to thoroughly discuss and support your connection.
>Finish your piece with a one-sentence conclusion that links your ideas back to your topic sentence at the beginning of the piece.