Jim Lawrence
Instructional Writing Sequence Draft 3
11.07.07
Part 1 – Drawing on Previous Assessments
A major curricular focus for student learning during the seventh grade year at my placement is to develop student writing skills in various genres. Students have completed two major writing assignments up to the last week of October; a descriptive paper about them spending time in one of their favorite places, and another essay about a person they admire. To this point, the focus of student writing has been placed on the self. The next major writing assignment requires students to begin to branch out from the self through a five paragraph persuasive essay. They will be required to state a claim concerning a topic of their choice and support it with evidence. The transition from personal to more a more argumentative, expository writing style should be eased by students being able to select a high-interest topic of their choosing. That is, students should still be invested in their writing, as they seemed to have been in the first two writing assignments about a favorite place and admired person. The persuasive paper will serve as a medium through which students can state their convictions while attempting to sway the reader into agreement with their various claims.
Middle school seems a logical place for maturing students to learn the value of their opinions and how to state their opinions and beliefs in ways that can affect others, while learning that there can be two potentially valid sides to an argument. In discussions, my students have revealed that they have little experience in writing longer, five paragraph essays like the one in this assignment. As these seventh graders quickly approach the transition into high school, it will be important for them to have a grasp on the concept of essay writing and to begin to develop their persuasive / defensive writing; the five paragraph essay is a staple throughout high school and into college, thus it is an important writing task regarding future success in school. In working through the persuasive paper, students will hopefully learn to consider multiple sides to the issues that they find important, analyzing and evaluating their own thoughts in the process. It would be a disservice to my students to let them believe that there is only one way to view the world or the conflicts within it; developing critical literacy will be an ongoing process throughout the school year.
Another goal is that students will realize the value and utility in developing effective argumentation skills; the ability to state one’s opinion on a matter and support a claim with valid evidence is a fundamental life skill and is necessary to become an active member of any community, as well as a responsible citizen. For example, some of the students may write to topics that are relevant within the community or on a national scale; it is possible that I would send a student’s persuasive essay to a figure, like a member of the state legislature, if I thought that it could make a difference. In this way, students could be shown that their writing has the potential to influence those around them in order to make a difference in life.
My plan is to explore both the procedural and declarative knowledge necessary for this writing task. Thus, it is necessary to reflect upon the literacy inquiry and first student work analysis to better inform my choices in planning and instruction. Based on the literacy inquiry, it is important for me to provide plenty of models to students during instruction on the persuasive essay. The activities in the literacy inquiry were diagnostic in nature, so I was not as specific in instruction on the goals for their writing samples; in that case, their ability to write descriptively. Unlike the PMI and descriptive Norman Rockwell warm-ups discussed in the inquiry, I need to be more explicit in my instruction. This involves being extremely detailed in describing the writing task at hand, modeling and practicing how to achieve a quality writing sample, and explaining what traits a quality persuasive essay might possess. The lesson must necessarily become both diagnostic and instructive; I must first gauge how students approach the assignment and what they believe about persuasive essays, and then try to inform their approaches and teach the students strategies for effectively drafting their arguments. I plan to hold a discussion on persuasion and what it means (and doesn’t mean) to be persuasive with the students in order to increase their declarative knowledge concerning the task at hand. Student models will be introduced soon after, and these models will be broken down into more manageable parts so that students may not feel as overwhelmed at the prospect of turning out five paragraphs of text (while teaching them how a persuasive essay can be broken down and examined, i.e. intro, body, conclusion, etc.).
Based on the assessment of the first two writing assignments and examining the first student work analysis, I have learned that some students may have little experience with making claims and supporting them with evidence. Fundamentally, this seems to stem from a lack of detail in some student writing. For example, in the first assignment, some students would bring up some aspect of their favorite place while offering little information to support that aspect (i.e. it always smelled so great, and that made me happy. My question to this writer would be, “How or why did it smell great, and why did that make you happy?). Problems with lack of detail resurfaced in the “admired person” paper, which I examined in the student work analysis. My friend is caring, funny, and athletic, a student might claim, without showing us how or why through detail, whether that detail be the actions of that person, memories shared with that person, or their physical traits. Based on what I have learned about many of my students’ writing, a major goal for this assignment is to have students focus on the importance of detail in strengthening their writing, having them ask themselves, “Do I have enough evidence written here to support my claim and persuade my reader that my position is the best?” Students will engage in activities that allow for practice in making claims and supporting them with solid evidence in order to increase their procedural knowledge in the task of writing a persuasive essay.
After I feel that students have shown progress through the sequence vis-à-vis the primary objective (being able to write an effective persuasive paper, complete with a claim or opinion and clearly defined evidence to support it), I will continue to re-teach the notion that “writing is a process” as they prewrite, draft and edit, working toward a more polished paper in which they can take pride. The task of teaching fundamentals of the writing process is ongoing, and began at the start of the school year. With the start of the new marking period and two major writing assignments under their belts, it is understood and has been observed that the majority of students now have a grasp on The Writing Process, regarding both declarative and procedural knowledge thereof. Students have been shown and have said in class that following the writing process, as it was taught, has helped many of them write the best papers of their lives; they cited such tips as proofreading aloud while editing and composing multiple drafts as steps that have helped improve their writing. They now seem to understand that “good writing” doesn’t just happen; quality writing is the result of the specific process combined with steady effort. For the persuasive essay assignment, students will be asked to follow the familiar steps of the writing process which they engaged in for their previous writing assignments, thus reinforcing such concepts as prewriting, drafting, editing, and publication. Through past activities and modeling, my mentor and I have ensured that students have had experience with all of these steps and understand the process of writing essays.
Concerning the final step of the writing process that we have discussed prior to the persuasive essay assignment, students responded well to the idea that their work will be published by my mentor in a book of seventh grade writing for the year, and enjoyed the “Writer’s Café” activity where they volunteered to share one of the first two writing assignments in front of the class in a fun, low-key setting. Publication, sharing, and celebrating student writing has been shown to be one of the best ways to strengthen writing development and motivate students to produce strong pieces of writing (per each individual student’s ability) (Dornan, Rosen, Wilson, Within and Beyond the Writing Process, 2003). Thus, I will continue to remind my students of both the publication of their work and the opportunity that they will have to share it with their peers.
Part 2 – Task Analysis
Various aspects of the persuasive essay assignment have been examined and analyzed in Part One. However, the assignment can be broken down further by analyzing smaller tasks contained within the larger framework of the essay. Students will need to know and be able to perform certain aspects of the task in order to arrive at a quality “whole;” that is, a persuasive essay comprised of five paragraphs. I now draw out what the goals and / or tasks are in writing the persuasive essay, and how students will achieve or complete each one.
What: Students will understand the function of and recognize the fundamental elements comprising an essay.
How: Models will be provided illustrating the three main components; introduction, body, and conclusion; along with a bulleted handout that outlines the elements of each structural component. Students will be instructed to read student models (from previous seventh-graders) that have been annotated to show these structural elements, as well as the thesis, support reasons / facts, and explanation. Students will be shown through modeling and practice what a thesis is (a statement of their opinion), how they form them on a regular basis (whether aware of it or not) and can apply them in life (letters to legislators, winning arguments with parents, etc.), and a model of how to write one (state opinion, followed by your three summarized supports). After reading the annotated models, students will label two models on their own, with a follow-up activity where I run students through each of these models and check for understanding by asking for their feedback. Students will also be given practice with writing a conclusion and an introduction (a possibility for this being shown how we need intros and conclusions in our writing and in everyday speech; for example, one would not begin a conversation about the benefits of wearing a suit of chain mail while diving amongst sharks with “Another reason chain mail should be worn while diving with sharks is that the links comprising the armor deflect and distribute the high-PSI bite of a hungry shark, decreasing the chance of serious injury to the diver.” The topic must be properly introduced to the listener or reader for the writer / speaker to make sense. A similar activity could be used to show the function of a conclusion in writing).
What: Developing an argument and supporting it with tangible evidence.
How: Various gateway activities will give students practice with developing and supporting an argument (thesis) and give them time to start internalizing this process. Discussion-based activities, like those outlined by McCann, will prepare students to write about issues that interest them and write an essay that not only supports their opinion, but persuades their reader to accept or embrace that opinion (123). Previous assignments in which students have had to make a statement and support it using evidence (for example, a recent essay assignment in analyzing the first portion of the novella Flowers for Algernon) will be directly tied into their experience and practice with argumentative writing. Examples of passages in which the students make claims that require more support (from previous papers) will also be appraised and “corrected” as a class. Distinctions will be made between quality and unsubstantial evidence regarding a claim. For example, I may ask, “Does your evidence directly tie with and support your opinion or claim?”
What: Building confidence in one’s writing ability and improving writing skills.
How: My mentor and I will provide students with constructive feedback throughout the drafting process. Such feedback would consist of suggestions for further exploration into the topic or giving an opportunity to expand / provide more detail. Students will use the common, established correction key during editing so that there is a common language during the revision process; students know what the symbols mean, and how to fix or improve the issue that each symbols denotes. I will provide students with peer and self-editing opportunities, and allocate several days worth of class time for students to write and revise, as well as type their final copies. Students will once again be given the opportunity to write to a high-interest prompt (any topic that they can form an opinion on and support with evidence, given that the topic is deemed appropriate), as in the other major writing assignments. By once again practicing the established norms for writing in my classroom, students will have the opportunity to hone their associated skills, such as in revision, and crafting an argument or response using support and detail, which could lead to improved writing in future assignments across disciplines.
Part 3 – Gateway Activity and Sequence
Day One: 11.07.07, Gateway Activity and the Art of the Essay
Students are led through a discussion on general essay writing with the intent that they will realize the fundamentals thereof. They were given homework last night; three essay questions from Part I of “Flowers for Algernon” which required them to analyze and evaluate aspects of the text. They were told to respond while providing necessary detail to support or “back up” their answer from the text. The activity for today involves not only a discussion what essays are and how one might more effectively answer one, but also a self-evaluation of their performance on the homework essays based on “ideal” model answers to the questions they had for homework. In the discussion, students were asked how the essay assignment (task) from the previous night was similar to both the Descriptive Place paper and the Admired Person paper. Answers varied, but the most common responses were, “you had to support your answer with lots of details,” and “you had to use examples from real life or from the story to make your answer / writing stronger.” Students discussed which type of essay writing they most preferred; the personal style that they performed for the Place and Admire essays, or the logic / reason-based answers from their homework on “Flowers for Algernon-” most preferred the personal style of writing. When prompted which they thought they would be doing more in life, most assumed (correctly, with some groaning) that they figured on the style of essays they wrote for the homework assignment. Practical applications of effective essay-writing were discussed with the class; I used the examples of applying for jobs using a resume, and also talked students through a debate on which month they preferred, November or July, asking them to state their opinion and then prompting them to supply some possible examples as to why they preferred that certain month over the other. A final example, which transitioned into a discussion of the story “Flowers for Algernon,” was asking the students for possible examples to support an opinion on whether Charlie should have had the operation or not. Students were also reminded that in English class, if one supports a claim within an answer with sufficient examples and support, there can be more than one answer to a prompt. Students were then shown “quality” responses to the “Algernon” essays, which were annotated with the sentences that restated the question (another important facet of responding to such prompts), the claims that were made, and the explanation and support /examples used in each.