Teaching Strategies
In developing this unit, my intention is to use it as an opening unit for all levels of my English classes each fall. I teach grades ten through twelve, and I feel that the same basic unit will work with each of the classes with changes to the readings. This unit will help frame writing expectations for the rest of the school year, and it will also provide a baseline of student writing ability that will help me determine my lessons moving forward.
In this unit, students will study the ways that published authors write intentionally for a purpose and an audience. To do this, students will read essays in which authors reflect on their own growth as readers and writers. They will consider whom the authors are addressing in their writing and how they build purpose throughout their essays. Then, students will write an essay of their own, reflecting on their own thoughts on reading and writing. In doing so, they will each consider the questions: What do I read and why do I read? What do I write and why do I write? In constructing this essay, students will think carefully about the audience for their writing.
Week one of the unit will begin with a look at what students already know about audience and purpose. The class will look at scenarios in which students adjust their own language use for various authentic audiences and purposes in their day-to-day lives—how they use language differently when addressing peers, parents, teachers, or employers; or how their language in a job interview might differ from the language they use with the same boss after they have had the job for a month or two. We will also begin looking at some definitions of audience as it pertains to writing and how various experts propose beginning writers and students should think about audience in their own work. Excerpts will be taken from Peter Elbow’s Writing with Power and Zinsser’s On Writing Well. Student writing during the first week will focus on exploring initial ideas for their essay through a variety of short writing exercises such as journaling, listing ideas, responding to prompts, writing a discovery-draft, and outlining. Students will also spend class time sharing their ideas and progress with peers.
During week two of the unit students will study two essays in which authors explore their own experiences with language, reading, or writing. Students will focus much of their attention on identifying the specific audiences and purposes these writers target. Students will also carefully analyze the choices these authors make and the devices they use to achieve their purpose for the chosen audience. Student writing during the second week will consist of composing a first draft of their own essay. It is here that students will consider more deeply the essential questions: What do I read and why do I read? What do I write and why do I write? In moving from planning to composing they will propose a specific audience and purpose and address these through the specific choices they make in their structure, diction, and tone. Along with their first draft, students will write a brief (one page typed) artist statement describing specific decisions they made in addressing their audience or purpose.
In the third and final week, students will work to revise their essays. The week will begin by peer workshopping with guiding questions to help students consider the ways in which their own and each other’s essays address a specific audience and purpose. Students will also think more specifically about the structure of their own essays by creating a structural outline similar to the one described by John McPhee in his collection of essays, Draft No. 4. McPhee’s teacher created an unusual assignment:
We could write about anything we wanted to, but each composition had to be accompanied by a structural outline, which she told us to do first. It could be anything from Roman numerals I, II, III to a looping doodle with guiding arrows and stick figures. The idea was to build some form of blueprint before working it out in sentences and paragraphs.8
Students will consider feedback from their peers, the teacher, and their own reflections in producing a second draft of their essay.
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