Strong Thesis Statements Read the student thesis responses to the writing prompt. Determine which responses are strong, relevant, and well-developed thesis statements and which contain irrelevant digressions. Drag and drop the statements into the correct category. Order is not important. Writing Prompt: Should student athletes have to be on the honor roll to participate in sports?

Strong, Relevant Thesis and Contains Irrelevant Digressions

ITEM BANK: It is reasonable to require student athletes to be on honor roll because education should be their sole purpose for attending school.

Student athletes should be allowed to play sports no matter what their grades because I made one C last year, but got A's and B's in the rest of my classes.

If student athletes cannot keep their grades up, they should not be allowed to play sports unless they have special circumstances or some previous arrangement with the coach, such as an after school tutoring plan, study hall, or other plans to spend extra time working on their studies.

While some athletes have no problem maintaining good grades, it can not be expected for all students to perform well academically and, therefore, should not be a requirement to play sports.

To demand that all student athletes be on honor roll is an unfair stipulation because athletes should not be punished if they are not as academic as their peers.