Summary Response Outline

Summary:

• Topic sentence: title, author, strong verb, main idea
• Bully, by Lee Hirsch, demonstrates the harsh reality of what occurs in a bullied child’s life, like the constant and endless harassment, a loss of feelings, and even a choice to take one's life.

Supporting ideas and explanations to prove main ideas

• Bullying can be change lives for the worst, or end them.
• In the Documentary, 7 different victims of bullying, 2 of them had taken their own lives and several others had tried and failed at taking theirs
• Bullies constantly physically, mentally and emotionally abuse their victims for any reason they choose.
• Some people are bullied so much that they assume that they never have been bullied and accepted it as their life

Response:

• Topic sentence: title, author, strong verb, agree/disagree (correctly portrays/ incorrectly portrays) because ___________ .
• In Bully, by Lee Hirsch, acknowledges the awful physical, mental, and emotional aggression and correctly portrays how horrible and deadly is/can be.
• Claim 1:
• Set-up In smaller and schools, the bullying epidemic is fatal. Kids are bullied so badly that they have killed themselves because of how severe the abuse became.
• Evidence: Lead-in  “ quotation” (  I, iii, 233-236  ) Ty Field, age 11, made the decision to take his own life. The superintendent said, “There is no indication that bullying was a factor”, while Ty’s friends stated that it was the entire reason.
• Explanation of quotation to prove claim ↑
• Counterclaim 1: However, in the documentary, it was stated that bullying is everywhere all over the world and at one point, everyone has been bullied.
• Set-up This statement is somewhat of an exaggeration. Bullying is not as common as it seems in many places. Although some places suffer from extremely severe bullying epidemics, other places have either very minor bullying or none at all.
• Evidence: Lead-in  “ quotation” (“Bible Belt Oklahoma,” has to endure locker signs saying “Faggots aren’t welcome here.”)
• Explanation of quotation to prove counterclaim
• What are the strengths/ flaws of this argument?
• Concluding sentence: restate main idea

Although there are some overstatements, Bully very accurately shows the harsh nature of bullying and abuse that modern children have to go through every day.