Josie and I revisited the essay that she was assigned on Monday, carefully reading on how essay's are structured and reviewing our notes from the first lesson. Josie has some trouble interpreting what is being asked from her on specific writing tasks, so we tackled first the essay topic and went over what exactly needed to be done before writing. Josie and I then discussed her stance on the topic: do white names mean more interviews and job opportunities? While Josie had some good ideas, she had trouble articulating her thoughts into a stance on the issue. To help, I re-stated the author's thesis and told Josie to provide a direct response to its ideas in a phrase. This she did with little struggle. Then, Josie was asked to explain why she disagreed with the author's position. The end result was her thesis statement. Using our brainstorming session, Josie wrote an introduction to her essay. After a brief break, we then read a short printout on paragraph organization, completing the corresponding practice exercises. After the lesson, Josie was asked to write her own topic sentence and body paragraph.