Post date: Feb 25, 2013 9:18:27 PM
We're studying the craft of literary essays in Writing Workshop. One of the phrases you'll hear a lot is "This makes me think..." We use this because essays are primarily ideas - we think about what we read, and we write about what we're thinking. You'll see more homework in writing during this unit because I want the students to be thinking about, and writing about a lot of ideas whether they're from books, movies, magazines, newspapers or comic books. Here's an example of how we might start writing in our notebooks. We read the book Crash by Jerry Spinelli in which the lead character transforms from being a self-centered jerk into a nice guy who actually gains some good friends. This makes me think that it's important to be willing to change because good things can happen to you. To be willing to change means you have to aware of when changes can happen... These would be some ideas we could explore in essays. At first most of the writing we'll be doing will be short ideas, musings and wonderings about what we're reading and these will be expanded into a more traditional essay format.