Studying a Mentor text to construct literary essays Session 6

Hello, writing students! Today is Wednesday, november 8. It is a Day 5A. Homework Reminder: Study spelling words. Show you are ready for today’s mini-lesson: Take out your writer’s notebook and folder. Turn and Talk Share your entries in your notebook that you’ve written in the last two days. How well do you weave your own words with the quoted words from the text? Take a few moments to explain the spelling homework and pass out the spelling lists to students.

I can… …study a published literary essay to learn techniques and structures that I can use in my own essay writing.

connection This past week, we have: practiced rereading the text through the lens of the claim in order to collect evidence that support the claim. completed a Boxes-and-Bullets plan. practiced a technique called storytelling, to bring that evidence into our essays.

Teaching Point Today, instead of a regular mini lesson, we will be reading a published literary essay, written by a sixth- grade student, Yuko. We will be researching these questions: What makes for a good literary essay? What techniques did this student use that I can try using in my own literary essay?

Teaching and active engagement As I read the first 3 paragraphs of the essay aloud, notice the different parts of the essay, and label – annotate – what you notice. Distribute a copy of Yuko’s essay to each student and displayed an enlarged copy on the document camera). Read first 3 paragraphs together. Then, have them read the rest on their own.

Use this checklist to look for specific techniques and structures in Yuko’s essay. Students should check them off on the checklist and annotate in the margins of the essay.

Distribute a copy of Yuko’s essay to each student and displayed an enlarged copy on the document camera).

link Before Yuko began writing her essay, she wrote a quick outline, like the Boxes and Bullets outline that you are working on for homework. By making this outline, she sketched out how her essay would go, so when it came time to write her essay, she had a clear plan. Let’s take another look at the Boxes-and-Bullets Essay Structure to review.

link Next step: students will plan and rehearse their entire essay.

link Now, using the outline you are completing, practice telling your essay to your partner. Begin with the Introduction (Claim + 3 reasons). Transition to the First Body Paragraph, Second Body Paragraph, Third Body Paragraph. Finish with a strong Conclusion. After you’ve “spoken” your essay to your partner, ask yourself, Is my outline truly ready for me to use to write an essay?

connection Yesterday, we… read and studied a published literary essay, written by a sixth-grade student, in order to learn new techniques that we can try when we write our own essays. Let’s review some of those techniques and make a chart.

Now that we’ve reviewed the techniques and organization used by Yuko, that we’d like to try in our own essays, let’s give it a go!! LEARNING TARGET: Using the bullets-and-boxes outline and tips learned from the mentor text, I can draft an entire literary essay about the character in my short story.

mid-workshop teaching transitions Many of you noticed Yuko’s transitional phrases at the start of each major part of her essay, which is something most of you learned during fifth grade, to include in your writing. But you are right to remind yourself of the importance of transitional phrases because they help essays flow more smoothly and they set readers up to know what kind of thing will come next in the essay. Right now, will you and your partner do a quick study of one of your drafts (it can even be of your essay plan) and notice your transitions, comparing them to Yuko’s? Her transitions are not very fancy, so I am pretty sure some of you will have much more sophisticated ones. Turn and talk!” This is great to use for conferring with your writers.

Using a Checklist for Self-analysis and Goal-setting Anyone who is looking to improve at something—running, playing the violin, boxing, singing—needs not just to work hard, but also to take pause, reflecting on what they have accomplished so far and making a plan for how to push themselves further. As you know, writers also need to pause and think, ”How am I doing?” When you wrote personal narratives, you analyzed your writing against a narrative checklist; there are also checklists you can use for other kinds of writing. You will need to copy the argument writing checklist

The interesting thing about writing about reading is that, in a way, it falls into two categories. It can be information writing because the writer is teaching people about a text. Also, literary essays can be thought of as argument writing, because the writer is defending his interpretation. We are going to think about literary essays as argument writing. You will assess the draft that you have written so far by comparing it to the checklist that writers use at the very end of fifth grade. Once you have aced that checklist and I’ve taught you a few more strategies, you can compare your writing to the sixth-grade argument checklist. You’ll also see the grade 6 checklist here. Once you make sure you’re doing the work you learned last year, then you can move on to using the grade 6 checklist.

Let’s start with the first part of the checklist—structure Let’s start with the first part of the checklist—structure. Before you look at your own writing, talk to the writers at your table about those points. What do you notice? What will you look for in your own writing? Now that you have a sense of some of the things that are expected of essayists, take a look at the structure of your writing. How does it stack up? If you met the criteria, how did you do it? What are the replicable moves for future essays? And if you didn’t yet meet the criteria, what specifically could you do to improve? Don’t be afraid to mark up your drafts as well as your copy of the checklist, circling the goals you have for yourself, or making a T-chart in your notebook to keep track of your progress.

homework EVALUATING YOUR WRITING USING THE ARGUMENT WRITING CHECKLIST Writers, continue this self-analysis at home. Look through the remaining points on the checklist, and determine the work you are already doing well, as well as the work you’re going to push yourself to do next. Remember, when you hold your writing up against a checklist, it’s not just so you can say, ‘Oh yeah, I did that,’ and move on. Tomorrow you will have time to revise your essays and work toward the goals you’ll set for yourself tonight. We will also have an opportunity to celebrate your hard work tomorrow!