The goal of the diagnostic is for students to tentatively create a thesis statement. We have defined the thesis statement as a 2-3 sentence argument. For now, we're saying that the first sentence goes something like this:
I believe that the relationship between food companies and food workers is __________.
The reason I believe this is because___________________________________________.
In that second sentence ("The reason I believe..."), students could provisionally list two or three reasons based on just the short video clip we watched in class yesterday (Eric Schlosser on PBS, linked below) and the passage from Fast Food Nation that we read today in class (linked below). We then began to imagining the ways that those reasons could help shape the paragraphs to follow (one reason for one paragraph).
One student used the word "unfair" to describe the relationship between corporate food workers, and another used the word "injustice." In the latter example, the student cited reasons such as poor wages and overtime hours as well as poor working conditions.
Another way to think about the introduction might be as follows:
Each of the reasons you give for your argument is a "sign" of things to come in the essay, like a sign on the road. When you give people directions, you tell them what to look for. The introduction can be like that.
Each sign is linked to one or more "places" you'd like to take your reader. For example, one "place" you could them is the strawberry pickers in California. Another "place" you could take them is the sexual harrassment lawsuits of slaughterhouse workers.
You don't want to explain all the details of all the signs you post in your introduction. You'll want to save those details for when the reader "actually gets there," which is in the paragraphs that support your thesis.
The reader will know he or she is there when they see that "sign" again in a topic sentence.
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