Sunday, March 11, 2018

A Hidden Gem

A few weeks back my students finished writing their first literary essay using the book Bird Lake Moon. I posed the question: Do you think there is such a thing as the perfect family? Using evidence from the book and having to connect this to their own lives, my students had to answer the question.

Our first struggle came with the introduction. They all wrote a very strong hook and a solid thesis statement, but they struggled with bridging the two. Clearly, I did not scaffold this well. The same day that I was reading over their introductions, I saw a post on twowritingteachers.org about student written mentor texts. I often use examples of student work to model various writing techniques, but this one in particular began with using literary essays in the elementary classroom. After reading the post, I reached out to the author and asked if she had some examples she could share with me because I wanted to share them with my students. She graciously sent me a few. And they were just what I needed to help my students understand how to bridge between the hook and the thesis statement.

The next day, I shared a few of the literary essays with my students, and we focused on the introductions. It didn't matter that my students were looking at third grade examples, and if anything, it was almost better. They were written in such a simple way that my students got it. They understood how to write that bridge that we struggled with a few days before. They rewrote their introductions and did a remarkable job on them.

Flash forward to this afternoon. As my own kids were swimming, I was on the sidelines correcting literary essays. I was impressed with how strong their introductions were, the organization, and how they connected it to their own lives. Each body paragraph focused on a different aspect of their thesis statements and the students used evidence from the book to support their thinking. The one thing that I noticed, however, was the weakness in how they explained their evidence. Most tried hard and made an attempt, but they just weren't what I expected to see.

But I kept reading and correcting, and then, I found it! A hidden gem of a paper mixed in with all the rest. This student got it. Not only did she focus each body paragraph on one aspect of her thesis, she explained herself, connected her thinking to evidence, and justified why the evidence supported her claim. It was written beautifully.

As much as I could spend time rewriting a lesson plan on how to explain your evidence, I am going to ask her if I can use her essay and expertise to help her classmates. Because no matter how many different ways I can come up with how to teach this, sometimes having a student explain their thinking and the process they went through is more valuable than anything I can do.

A Hidden Gem in the Mix

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