Reading for Writing: Modeling the Modern Essay

Classroom Activities

Writing and writer’s workshop should be a daily practice in all classrooms, therefore no time frames have been applied to this unit.  The beauty of essays as mentor texts is that they are available in a wide variety of genres, modes and themes.³⁵ This is the perfect way to integrate cross-curricular content. 

Just a Few Suggestions:

Science – memoirs, profiles of a person or place, op-eds, arguments, natural histories

Social Studies – cultural analysis, op-eds, arguments, speeches, historical narratives

Mathematics – argument, proposals, reports, visual analysis, profiles

For Language Arts I offer a few specific activities to get things started.  These are generalized activities that will touch on the standards below throughout their completion.

1) Meet Me Here – Group Introductory Activity

Mentor Text – Lion: A Long Way Home a Young Readers’ Edition, Saroo Brierly³⁶

Personal Narrative (Memoir.) Chosen as an example of telling important “bits” about yourself to help others understand you better.  The author recounts his experiences as a very young boy lost in India, his subsequent adoption, and his adult quest to discover his original home and family.  His story was eventually made into the movie Lion in 2016.  Text is also useful for profile of a place and profile of a person.  For this activity read the first chapter.

Part of establishing community in the classroom is sharing about ourselves and what experiences we are bringing to our new family.  This particular text was chosen because it uses a combination of specific details and general impressions of a child.  The experiences shared are both difficult and uplifting so students can understand that both are fairly normal parts of life.  It also illustrates the use of another form of writing (the map) that can help represent life experiences, and its ongoing revision/additions.  Our experiences surrounding our location, where we are coming from, give us some common ground to set up our new community. 

After workshopping these details about the text, as a group we will begin drafting our own essays regarding ourselves and where we live.  Because our school is largely populated by a geographical feeder pattern, many students will have overlapping areas, while others who may be choiced to our school may be separate.  In the initial stages I will share my writing using think alouds to show what is challenging and how I am making my choices.  Students will eventually be asked to share their work, too. 

We will create a map based on our experiences.  This map will be revised and expanded throughout the school year.  The map becomes a touch point for seeing commonalities and differences in our classroom and school community.  It also allows us to differentiate what lies outside the school and what lies within, create an enveloping effect to support often stressed students.  The map can also become a springboard for future essays.

2) What’s on the Inside Counts – Identity and Diversity Activity

Mentor Text – Final Paragraph in Zora Hurston’s What it Means to be Colored Me

Nonfiction Narrative – Metaphor.  Chosen as an example of voice and style illustrated through word choice and sentence structure.  Author explores her identity and diversity through a metaphor of items contained in different colored bags.

In a reimagining of a traditional classroom “get to know you” activity – “All About Me Bags”, students will be given a gallon sized Ziploc bag to collect 5-10 items that they feel are representative of their life so far.  They will be instructed to create a list of their bag’s contents and why each item was chosen, or how it represents them.  They may do this independently or with the help of family/guardian if needed.  Students should know that they will be sharing this information with the class eventually but should initially turn the bags into the teacher privately and not share their written list with other students.

Teacher should privately layout and photo-document each bag’s contents.

Randomly place Ziploc bags inside opaque stereotypic bags either gender biased or color biased but do not identify contents.  It is best to not number or letter label the bags because there are biases associated with those labels, as well.  Students should then complete one or more of the following activities.

• Have students try to guess which bag contains their own items and why.
• Students try to match bags to other students and support their choices.
• Using 10 separate teacher selected items, have students write which bag should hold each item and why.

Have a group discussion regarding the results of the activities and their thoughts surrounding them.  (Be sure that clear guidelines are established for safe community conversations prior to taking on this type of activity.)

Read Zora Hurston’s paragraph.  Discuss how she uses word choice and sentence structure to present her idea.  Have students identify the metaphor and discuss their thoughts about its meaning.  Ask students to relate the metaphor to the bag activity done in class.  What do they notice about their choices, are they rethinking anything and why.  Have students use their list to write their own paragraph following the mentor format and metaphor.  Empty all bags into a central location.  Ask students to consider what things are in-common or interchangeable and what things are unique. 

Workshop the paragraphs, model teacher writing using the items you selected.

Use photo-documentation to return all items to original owners.

3) And Now Presenting… – Profile Essay

Mentor Text – It's Trevor Noah: Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (Adapted for Young Readers) Chapter 5³⁷

Profile of a Person/Place.  Chosen because it showcases both the author’s mother and the place where they lived.  Discuss the way the author uses situations to help the reader learn about the character of his mother and the conditions of apartheid under which he lived.  Lead students to identify how the writing shows rather than tells us deeper information.  Highlight the author’s personal interactions and feelings that bring both his mother and their living environment to life.  Question what sensory images are used to connect the reader to his story.

Following the lessons on the mentor text, have students employ similar techniques to write their own profile essay.  They may do either a person or place profile or may choose to combine them.  Model teacher writing and workshop group’s essays.

4) Noticing Notebooks – Writers’ Notebook

Mentor Text – Teacher’s Notebook

Keep one yourself that you share with them.  Provide opportunities in class for them to use them.  This is also a place for them to note inspiration and quotes from mentor texts.  This notebook doesn’t necessarily need to be restricted to writing but can include graphics and even taped/glued in content, like my fortune cookie slip from lunch today that said, “Education is not filling a bucket but lighting a fire.” (attributed to Plutarch, “On Listening to Lectures”)³⁸