History essay question...

[Nan in Mass]

Second question : )

 

In Histiore/Géographie 4e, there are "Faire de l'histoire" pages. They contain several documents (in this case a chart, a painting, and a text), questions to help the student to extract information from them, a "plan", and directions for writing an essay based on the documents. The "plan" is a grid that the student fills out organizing the information they have extracted from the documents. The directions for the essay give the student a topic in the form of a question and tell the student to write a brief introduction and three paragraphs based on their "plan".

 

Unlike last year, the teacher's guide does not give example essays. Without an example, it is hard for me to tell what sort of essay my son is supposed to be producing. If he were working in English, at his own level, I would expect his essay to be a page or two long, citing the documents in proper mla form. His French isn't up to that and this is 6e.

 

Would anyone care to take a guess as to how long these essays should be? The directions say "un court texte organisé en trois parts" (one for each line of the "plan"'s grid).

 

Is he supposed to refer directly to the documents in the text?

 

If so, how is he supposed to cite them? Doc. B? Le portrait de blank? Some other form?

 

If so, is he supposed to mention them in the sentence? In parenthesis afterwards the bit of information? So, should he say something like: "The ship to the left and the globe to the right of Samuel blank in his 17?? portrait by blank shows that his wealth came from trading with foreign colonies around the world." Or should he say something more like: "French merchants became weathly by trading with foreign colonies in the Americas and Asia. (Doc. B)"

 

If he is supposed to mention the source in the sentence, then could you give me some French examples?

 

Eventually, I'll have him do a few in English with mla citations, but I don't want to start off the year that way, since I want him to struggle along in French for the most part.

 

Gratefully,

Nan