 |
Writing Assignments |
|
Home
Page
Daily Lesson Plans
Vocabulary
Weekly Questions
Weekly Quizzes
Grammar Assignments
Writing Assignments
Journals
Projects
Any number of writing assignments could be used for Esperanza Rising depending upon how adept your students are as writers and what your desired outcome is. This page contains links to many of the different kinds of essays, along with a possible essay topic for each. Following the links is a detailed method for introducing the writing process that could be utilized by new teachers looking for a way to get through to reluctant students.
Additionally, a wonderful website that can assist with providing rubrics for your writing assignments can be found here.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Often times when dealing with underachieving students, teachers find themselves faced with the same question that they have heard a million times before, "Why do we have to do this." Some teachers answer with a response that reeks of creativity such as "because I said so'" while others go with the time-honored classic "the standards dictate that we write." While these are both wonderful answers, neither one gets down to the core of why we write, and more importantly, neither one is satisfying to the student. In order to get the students to become a part of the writing process rather than be apart from the writing process, we must give them real incentive to write. Although grades can be the incentive for some students, the vast majority will need something else to push them into writing. While food can be a motivator for some teachers (I have seen one instructor doling out Hot Cheetoes to his students as an incentive to write), I prefer to go with another motivation; purpose.
Providing students with a purpose should be the first thing on the agenda for teachers of writing, because writing without purpose is like a dull pencil, it's got no point! (Thank you, tip your waitress.) Students need to know why they are writing and the answer must go beyond getting the grade. Instead of explaining how students can meet the writing standards, you could demonstrate that better writing can lead to a better paying job.
There will still be other students who have no interest in grades or potential income. At this point, you need to make the writing process an important part of their daily lives by playing up its uses as a social communication tool. There may be an occasion for a student to write a recommendation letter for one of their peers. Perhaps it is for a job, or for a scholarship, or maybe even to a judge that may put that friend behind bars. In any of those cases, the students' writing skills will be put on display and if they are poor writers, it will be placed out for the entire world to see. By working on the writing process, it will enable students to organize their thoughts better, as well as, assist them in putting their thoughts into words.
A common misconception that many students have is that for writing to be of any value, it has to be long. Somewhere along the academic way, the students picked up the idea that if one paper is three times longer than the other paper, the grade is going to be three times better. This cannot be further from the truth as "the goal of writing instruction is not to be able to write lengthy pieces, but to be able to write well." (Frank 37) A strategy that I use to help acclimate students to getting their pens on paper, organizing their thoughts, and writing in short, meaningful bursts is to base an activity on note-writing. Notice that I did not say note-taking, but instead, note-writing. Students have been writing notes to one another for generations, and usually, the creative part of the note-writing process takes place out of the view of the teacher. I bring that activity out in the open and make it an acceptable means of communication within the class. The process starts as a period-long lesson, but eventually evolves into a brief activity that can be used as a dispatch. The first step is to identify the note-writing process as a fun activity:
"Why do you write notes to your friends?" I ask one of the students that is obviously disengaged with the class.
"Cus I'm bored." claims the student with a degree of exasperation.
"So in order to alleviate your boredom, you resort to writing a note to your friend." I state with a sly grin.
"Yeah, I guess." replies the student.
"So, in a sense, its fun to write to your friends?" I question.
"Yeah, sort of."
"In that situation, writing is fun?"
"Well, I---uh-----yeah, but just kind of."
"So if I made writing a note to your friend an assignment, that would be one assignment that you would do?" I can sense victory.
"Yeah."
"Does everybody else feel the same way?" I ask while seeming exasperated with the whole thing.
"Yes!" an excited cheer from the class.
"All right then, we'll do it. We're going to do it a little differently though, but the end product will still be the same." At this point I will go on to explain to the students that their first step is going to be to think for five minutes about what they want to write about. There is no writing during this time, only thinking. After the five minutes is up, I tell the students to write out a list of what they want their friends to know from the note, all the while telling them that this note is not going to be read by me; only their friends. After the list, the students are given an additional twenty minutes in class to write the note. When the writing period is over, I add a little bit of fun to the period. I ask for students that are well-versed in the art of paper-folding to get up in front of the class and present a lesson on different ways to fold the note. Although the students think that they have just talked me into wasting an entire period on writing notes to their friends, in reality, we have just gone through the preliminary stages of the writing process. We did an intro activity (thinking) followed by a brainstorm (the list), we then moved into a draft, and skipped over to publishing (folding). Although we did no revision, we have accomplished our main goal of getting the students to actually write something.
As the semester progresses, the activity can be pared down and used as the afore mentioned dispatch. In that sense, the students may create a list of what they intend to write about and this list can be included in their writing journal for proof that they are working on the assignment. Then, the writing of the note can begin in class with the final product being completed outside of class. Once started, there will be few notes that remain unfinished and hopefully, that will spill over into other writing assignments as well.
Once you have an "into" for your writing activity, how should you get started? To begin with, there are two obvious necessities when writing: something to write with and something to write on. Although the tools that fill both qualifications have changed over time, everybody acknowledges the need for those two items. What is not commonly accepted is that before you begin to write there has to be one more item present; an idea. As teachers, we often go into the class thinking that our students cannot come up with ideas on which to write. We provide topic after topic, and when you combine that with the heavy revisions that most of us do on the students' papers (c'mon, admit it), we are essentially writing the papers for the students. Although this may be an effective means of improving their reading comprehension ability, it does little to improve their writing skills.
Ideas are like old boyfriends/girlfriends. We all have them and some of them are better than others. Some need to be developed to be any good and some are never going to get better no matter how much you try to make them work. The key to a good idea, much like a good boyfriend/girlfriend, is to stick with something that makes you happy. Nothing makes students happier than speaking about themselves which is why I always start out with the personal narrative when working with reluctant writers.
If you ask a student to tell you ten important things about George Washington, you are generally not going to get much more than "he was a president" and "he threw money in a lake" or something similar. If you ask that same student, however, to tell you ten important things about themselves, you could be there for hours. Whether they have negative or positive feelings about themselves, the point is that students have a frame of reference from which to draw when writing about their lives. Narrative writing opens the door to all other forms of writing.
A tactic that I employ to get students to begin writing about themselves is to first start with basic elements of Memory Writing as explained by James Moffett. This technique presents a method of brainstorming that takes students through the early stages of the writing process one step at a time. A simple journal topic can get the ball rolling such as "Find something in this classroom that reminds you of something that has happened in your life." I would tend to give an example like "the window reminds me of the time when I was 16 years old and I spent the summer working in a movie theater where I had to wash the windows of the box office every day." After giving students about five minutes to spot something and write about it, I then ask them to connect that memory to another memory like so, "that summer, I saw every movie on the planet for free." I then instruct the students to continue linking memories together over the next fifteen minutes without regard to structure, grammar, spelling, and punctuation. The goal here is to get them writing about a topic that they know about, themselves.
After the fifteen minutes is up, I pose the following question, "How many of you were able to create five different thoughts?" The vast majority of the students should raise their hands. "How many were able to create ten different thoughts?" A number of the students will lower their hands, but a good number may still have their hands raised. I then go further down the line until there is one hand left, and I give that student some special benefit ("Your team gets five points" or "You get first crack at the new book orders").
At this point, if the class is of an extremely low level, I may stop the assignment right there and pick up where we left off the next day. I do this because I am trying to show the students how easy writing can be, and I do not want to overwhelm them with all of the details at once. If the class seems to have a decent grasp of what we have done, I will move forward in the following manner: "OK, now that you have a list of memories, I want you to pick the three best memories that you listed and highlight them or underline them." I then circulate around the room to ensure that the students are accomplishing the task and after a couple of minutes I say "Please circle the idea that you think is the best out of those three.
Now, take out a piece of paper and I want you to write for fifteen minutes straight about that topic. Don't worry about creating perfect sentences or spelling everything perfectly, all that you need to be concerned about is writing down everything that you know about the subject. Be sure to include all sensory details, time and place, thoughts, dialogue and any feelings that you had or somebody else may have had over the course of the event."
After the students have spent a good deal of time writing about that event, I pass out highlighters and ask the students to highlight the five most important facts that they included in their paper. From there, the assignment becomes writing a one-page paper (first draft) about that event including all five of the most important details. At this point, the students have some time and effort invested in the process and I have found that very few of them abandon it.
Now that the students actually have something concrete to work with, they can begin to work their way through what we commonly refer to as "the writing process". The key here is NOT to inform the students that they are actually writing. The hope is that they will think that you have created a simple, not too boring, activity that is enabling them to pass the time. If they figure out that they are participating in an actual writing assignment, may whatever deity you believe in show mercy on your soul because the writing assignment, and perhaps even their trust in you, will end right there.
Much like the sculptor who has the wet clay on his or her hands, your writers' task is to now form their writing into something resembling a structure. This task is not unlike the one that you are now undertaking, molding the reluctant student (a sopping wet slab of clay) into a successful writer. For both of these tasks, we must first establish what it is we have in front of us and this is where the reader's circle comes in.
Most teachers know reader's circles as a reading comprehension exercise where students share information about different types of literature that they are reading. This version of the reader's circle is similar in that the students will be reading and sharing information about what they read. The difference is that what they are reading is work done by other students. I confess, this is more commonly know as peer evaluation, but any time you say evaluation to a reluctant student, you better make room for more students because they are splitting (I'll be here until Tuesday, thank you).
This version of the reader's circle has two stages; the mum stage and blab stage. Although the names mum and blab (must be lower-cased; it's less imposing) may seem a bit odd, the reasoning behind those titles will become apparent in a moment. To complete these activities, the students must be divided up into groups. If your classroom is already divided up into cooperative learning teams, kudos to you. If your classroom is not divided into teams and you have, say, 25 students, you can divide them up like this: "Everybody stand up and get into a line. I am going to give each one of you a number and please, oh please, don't forget it." Count off each of the students using one through five and when everybody has a number, "OK, I want the ones in the back right corner of the room, the twos in the front right corner, the threes in the back left corner, the fours in the front left corner, and the fives smack-dab in the middle of everybody."
You now have five groups of five and you are prepared for mum.
The rules of mum are quite simply, mum is the word. Nobody is allowed to speak during mum, and if they get caught speaking, their entire team has to stand up for the duration of mum. Although this sounds kind of archaic, the students actually make this into a game. Gestures, (some obscene) body movements and grunts are all common place, and you will often find some teams trying to trick other teams into speaking. While all of this is going on, each team circulates their papers, along with a blank piece of paper stapled to the back, among their teammates. Each person within the team reads every paper and points out the one thing that they like the most about the paper, and the one thing that they like the least. As you can imagine, the first time I did this every paper had one good thing and one bad thing written down five times. In other words, once one student made a comment, everybody else copied the same one. To alleviate this, all comments have to be different so that at the end of the process, every student will have at least three or four good things and three or four bad things as well. Mum usually takes an entire period so Blab is brought on the next day.
As you may have figured, blab is the opposite of mum. In this stage, the students…well…blab. If you do blab the day after mum, have the students get into the same groups that they were in previously, and give each student within each group one of five letters; I like to use A,B,C,D, and E for some strange reason, but you may choose something different. This is done so that everybody is placed in a new group with new people that have not read their paper before. Once everybody is in their groups, they blab. Blabbing occurs when one student reads their paper and the others listen, and then when the one reading the paper is done, the others blab about the paper. Everybody is required to identify one thing that sounded good within the paper and one thing that sounded bad within the paper. Often times we write things that are grammatically correct, but just lack that "flow" that good writing should have. By going through blab, students get an idea of what sounds good and what sounds bad within the context of their papers.
Now that mum and blab have been completed a second draft needs to be completed. It is imperative for the students to do this draft in class. Many instructors see the second draft as a homework assignment as they not only have a structured idea to work with, but they also have a number of suggestions as well. In theory, this should make it easier to complete a second draft, but the reality of it is that each progressive draft is more difficult because the writer puts more thought (theoretically) into each one. Additionally, if a student starts to see the writing process as something assigned rather than something worked through, I guarantee that the light bulb will go out.
Once the students have their second draft completed, we can then explode the paper. While this statement garners many a cheer from the students, the reality is that we are going to be blowing up a moment within the paper. I ask students to clear their desks of everything, close their eyes and leave their wallets on their desks (kidding!). They are then asked to go back to the time when their event was occurring and picture the most important five minutes of that event. They need to focus on the sights, sounds, smells and emotions surrounding that five minutes. Then, they are to take the most important two minute section from that five minutes and do the same thing. I give them another five minutes to just think (they may not write yet). When the time is up, they are to write every last detail that they can remember on the top half of a new sheet of paper. After five more minutes, I tell them to stop and write a paragraph or two at the bottom of that same paper that describes, in great detail, the most important two minutes of their event. It is imperative to have the students write about those two minutes the moment they are done listing all of the details, as everything will be fresh in their mind. Once this exercise is done, I collect the papers and file them for later use. If you let the students hold onto them, 98% of them will lose the papers or get "jacked by some gangsters looking for homework."
Immediately following the blow up, I move right into the thought shot. The thought shot is kind of an interior monologue that a narrator can include in their piece. Although seemingly a simple idea, students have a great deal of difficulty creating the thought shot as it is so abstract. That is where the out of body experience comes in. The OBiE as it is referred to, is when the writer takes him or herself out of the picture. They become a person sitting on a cloud, making observations of what everybody but themselves thinks and feels about the action that is going on down below. I emphasize that they are to focus on someone or something else other than themselves within the piece. They are given five minutes to think about it before I tell them to start writing down everything that comes to mind as they look at it from another perspective.
After they have finished their perspective writing, they are to look for somebody to partner up with that has not yet read their piece. This should not be too difficult as thus far in the process, only nine other people will have read it. When they partner up, they determine who is going first (for what, they don't know, but invariably somebody always wants to go first and this person shall be identified as student A). Once that has been determined, the students are given two minutes to give their partner (student B) a brief summary of the event that they have been writing about. After the two minutes (and I do time them), they are given an additional one minute to relay the thoughts and emotions that they wrote about earlier in the period. Then, the partner (student B) that they have been telling all of this to, takes on the role of the narrator and describes what he or she would be feeling and thinking when the event took place. It essentially becomes a bit of role reversal as student B becomes the writer in student A's piece. Student A takes notes and will later synthesize this, plus their own observations, into a thought shot paragraph. Once this section is completed, they are again asked to pass the papers in and I hold onto them.
The next exercise that the student will embark on is titled talk is cheap. It is an exercise that helps them to create dialogue within their piece. To begin, a brief improvisational video is shown to get their attention. I opt for any of the "Whose Line Is It Anyway" shows because they are in reruns on many cable channels at any given time. After viewing the video and discussing the art of improvisation, a volunteer is sought from the class, preferably one that is fairly outgoing, to share a brief summary of their piece. Then, two other volunteers get up from their seats and perform an improvisational conversation of what just occurred during the person's writing piece. Although the students generally try to just get a laugh when they do the improvisation, even this slight bit of dialogue can help the writer to visualize what was (or was not) said during the course of the event. The students are then divided up into groups and are encouraged to spend most of the period acting out each other's events. Surprisingly enough, the students really get into the acting process, and often times end up trying their hand at dramatic scenes. That being said, special precautions should be taken to allow those students whose pieces are a little more private to refrain from having their scene acted out.
After the students have been "acting" for awhile (generally about 20 minutes), they are stopped and instructed to return to their seats and take out a piece of paper. The students are then asked to create some dialogue that could easily be infused within their event. As with each of the other activities, a good deal of time in class is given to the students to try to create the dialogue, and a good deal of emphasis should be placed on the idea that the dialogue does not have to be perfect. It, like the writing piece itself, is in the drafting stages and will be cleaned up later. Finally, once again the students pass in those papers and I hold onto them.
At this stage in the writing process, we have brainstormed, created a first draft, done the reader's circle, created a second draft, and worked with three techniques (explosion, thought shot and talk is cheap) to dress up the student's writing. To begin the period, I pass back each of the three pages that the students used to explore the three techniques, and I pass around a stapler as well so they can staple them together with their other drafts. For their third draft, the students are to work at least two of the last three techniques into their papers. By doing this, the writer is going to create a much more vivid picture of what it is they are describing and it is also going to show the students that the writing process does not have to be accomplished in one sitting. It can be chopped up into different parts and combined to make a solid piece.
This task is begun in class, but it is not until the end of the period that I announce to the class that they are to finish the rest of it at home that evening. This is the first point within the process that I include homework as I believe that by this time, the students have so much work put into it, they take on an ownership role. The next day when the students bring in their third drafts, we repeat the reader's circles, but this time, they are done in the opposite order. We begin with the blab part as at this point in the writing process, we are beginning to show more concern about the flow of the piece. Again, students listen for things that sound good and sound bad and they inform the reader of these items.
An additional element of revision that can be worked into either the blab or the mum is the fine art of essay painting. In essay painting, the readers are armed with highlighters as they go through each others' essays, and whenever they come across a "boring" word (a commonplace word like run or ate) they are to "paint" that word with the highlighter. This signifies to the writer that an opportunity to paint a picture with words is staring them in the face, and they should do something about it. At this point, I attempt to create "artists" in the classroom by telling the students that just a few choice words can bring an image to life and avoid having "characters with no heart and soul that lie lifeless like cadavers in a morgue." (Noden 2) If a student gets a paper back with an array of fluorescent strokes across it, they know that they can dress it up a bit by just providing a few adjectives or colorful verbs. For example, students often run in their essays when it would be much more fun if they would jet or fly every once in awhile. Why look at a piece of pizza when you can gaze longingly at it? And it is much easier to pick something out of the closet when instead of a lot of shirts; you suddenly have a virtual cornucopia of them. After all, variety is the spice of exist…..uh…. life.
For the final element before grade time, we move into one last mum. This mum is a little different than the previous one, however, as each of the students is given a checklist of grammatical errors to look for in the pieces that they are reading. The list will, for the most part, be unfamiliar to most of your students which presents a perfect opportunity for a series of mini-lessons, or that lovely term that administrators across the globe hold dear to their hearts: "teachable moments". Never miss an opportunity to impart knowledge to your students and as Jim Burke put it, "It's time we began seeing errors as invitations and signposts, instead of as judgments and evidence of our failure." (Burke 157) If you chose not to go through with the teachable moments however, the list still has value. If nothing else, another set of eyes will focus on error number ten-misspelled words. It can never hurt to have another pair of eyes looking at a piece of writing. While going through each piece, the students are to look for the errors on the sheet, and when spotted, identify them with a symbol that acts as a code telling the writer what they have done wrong. When the writer gets his or her paper back, they are ready to complete yet another draft and finally, turn the paper in.
Much to the dismay of teachers and students alike, the paper is not done. But fortunately, most papers are never done. There is always a little something that all writers seek to change in their works no matter how perfect it may seem. Make sure to point out to your writers that "not every writing experience gets to the polished and published stages (and) even when a writer does go after a precise finished product; they may go back through the stages of the writing process any number of times." (Frank 94) At this point, however, teachers should be satisfied with making a few more suggestions and corrections, and requesting one more draft to be done so that the work may be prominently displayed on a "Wall of Fame" within the classroom.
The heavy lifting is over; it's now time for the sales pitch. "You did a fantastic job on this essay! I can't believe that this is your first attempt at the writing process! So many people never get this stuff, but you seem to have a pretty darned good grasp on it after one time through. I can only imagine what your second one is going to look like!" Yes, it does sound like the dialogue that you would have with a third grader, but keep in mind that many reluctant students are reluctant only because they have never seen academic success before. By pointing out what the student did well as opposed to what they did not do well, you are empowering that student and letting them know that it is all right to succeed. At the same time, begin to let them know that "writing is a craft and thus takes time to master." (Burke 26) If they have attempted this horrifying task (yes, writing is horrifying to some people) and seen a modicum of success, you will have laid the foundation for the road to academic success!
Thanks to the following publications:
Blau, Sheridan. The Literature Workshop. New Hampshire: Heinemann Publishing, 2003.
Burke, Jim. Writing Reminders: Tools, Tips, and Techniques. New Hampshire: Heinemann Publishing,
2003.
Noden, Harry. Image Grammar: Using Grammatical Structures to Teach Writing. New Hampshire:
Heinemann Publishing, 1999.
Sheridan, Daniel. Teaching Secondary English. New York: Longman Publishing, 2002.