Embedded Files
Aim: Students will use a composition notebook throughout the year to complete four types of short writing exercises (see below). These entries help students build skills in observation, reflection, and critical thinking through literature and philosophy. All writing will be done on paper* during class time and stored in the classroom.
*Accommodations for computer use will be provided as needed.
Please Note: Students are asked to share their thoughts and opinions about what they read and the big ideas we discuss in class. However, they do not have to write about anything private or personal, and they are not graded on what they believe. Grades are based on how clearly they explain their thinking. This is not a survey or emotional check-in.
This project follows ELAR TEKS 8.4, 8.6(A), and 8.6(E), which ask students to read widely, make personal connections to what they read, and to show their thinking through writing, notes, or drawings.
Observation Writings
These entries will be zuihitsu-style musings on prompts related to art, culture, and social life. Students may respond with personal experiences, aesthetic preferences, or choose instead to write through observation, analysis, or fictional examples.
Meditation Writings
In the ancient world, meditation wasn’t about relaxing—it was about focusing the mind on what matters. We write to figure out who we are.
These entries invite students to wrestle with big ideas—justice, beauty, the good life—and respond to specific philosophical prompts. They’ll share their thoughts with clear reasoning.
Dialogues
We read books in order to have conversations with people we can't actually meet in real life. If the book is worthwhile, the characters will be interesting enough to teach us something useful. We probably won’t fully agree with them, though, which makes dialogue valuable: it pushes us to think.
In these entries, students will record quotations from their independent reading and respond by analyzing the idea, questioning it, or building on it. They may agree, disagree, or explore a middle ground. What matters most is how clearly they explain their thinking.
Patterns in Writing
Each week, students will study a short passage from an author and pay attention to the grammatical and style aspects: how the sentence is built, how the punctuation moves, and what effect those choices create. Then, they’ll try the pattern out in their own writing.
We don’t do this to memorize rules in order to write "correctly." We do it to think sharply about how our language choices carry our thoughts and create the exact meanings we want.
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