Consider stories you have read or heard about people who face challenges, such as starting a new business, or conquering fears to climb a mountain. While the goals may differ, the qualities that help people overcome challenges and obstacles are often the same. Write an essay explaining the qualities most important to overcoming obstacles and achieving a goal. Use information from nonfiction readings or from personal experience to come up with your thesis, and then to develop it. For an example of a well-written Informational text you can use as a Mentor Text, review “Women in Aviation.”

A successful Informational Essay:

provides an introduction that grabs the reader’s attention and clearly states the topic.
includes a clear controlling idea or thesis statement.
develops the topic using facts, definitions, examples, and quotations.
organizes information in a logical way and uses transitions to connect ideas.
ends by summarizing ideas or drawing an overall conclusion.
uses appropriate word choice and sentence variety.

Read this passage: i think of you daily, my darling, especially when it’s dark and the other men in the foxhole become silent. i like to pretend that the gunfire is a fireworks display and that you are here with me to enjoy it. who is the intended audience for this passage? a. the writers girlfriend at home b. the writers fellow soldiers c. the writers mother and father d. the writers commanding officer

Read the passage. then, identify the theme that is supported by the passage. most ships cannot survive a terrible thunderstorm. the ocean is an angry beast that will tame any who try to control it. the gods have the power to control human destiny. men are willing to die to eat the delicious cattle of the gods.

Read the passage, then answer the question that follows. no one could have seen it at the time, but the invention of beet sugar was not just a challenge to cane. it was a hint—just a glimpse, like a twist that comes about two thirds of the way through a movie—that the end of the age of sugar was in sight. for beet sugar showed that in order to create that perfect sweetness you did not need slaves, you did not need plantations, in fact you did not even need cane. beet sugar was a foreshadowing of what we have today: the age of science, in which sweetness is a product of chemistry, not whips. in 1854 only 11 percent of world sugar production came from beets. by 1899 the percentage had risen to about 65 percent. and beet sugar was just the first challenge to cane. by 1879 chemists discovered saccharine—a laboratory-created substance that is several hundred times sweeter than natural sugar. today the sweeteners used in the foods you eat may come from corn (high-fructose corn syrup), from fruit (fructose), or directly from the lab (for example, aspartame, invented in 1965, or sucralose—splenda—created in 1976). brazil is the land that imported more africans than any other to work on sugar plantations, and in brazil the soil is still perfect for sugar. cane grows in brazil today, but not always for sugar. instead, cane is often used to create ethanol, much as corn farmers in america now convert their harvest into fuel. –sugar changed the world, marc aronson and marina budhos how does this passage support the claim that sugar was tied to the struggle for freedom? it shows that the invention of beet sugar created competition for cane sugar. it shows that technology had a role in changing how we sweeten our foods. it shows that the beet sugar trade provided jobs for formerly enslaved workers. it shows that sweeteners did not need to be the product of sugar plantations and slavery.