FIRING UP STUDENTS TO WRITE BRILLIANT ESSAY

I ask myself the same question in Christensen’s writing, “How do we get students to care enough about their writing so that they stay up all night? How do we make them so proud of their work that they don’t pitch their papers in the garbage can instead of treasuring them as masterpiece?”(pg. 121). When I give students an assignment to take home, it’s like you’re punishing them. This is why I agree with Christensen on the fact that connecting the topic to students’ lives and examining students’ models alongside other professional writers gives them the zeal to write more in order to improve their writing skill and “to write fire essays more often.

As a teacher, I think of it as something that will consume a lot of time for planning. Obviously, it’s a lot of work for the teacher, but I remember what Dr. Johnson said to me after co-teaching a lesson; she said that the priority of a teacher is always the students. You might plan your lesson within a set time, but it doesn’t matter if you get to finish the lesson, all that matters is the understanding of the students. Are your students following along? If after teaching my lesson, students still feel they don’t know what to write or how to go about putting down their ideas on paper, then, I know that I need to reteach!  No teacher would want to teach their students how to write an essay and still leave their students wondering, “How do I do this? What do I do?”

Christensen provides us with steps needed to develop, modify and improve our students’ writing skills. Choosing topics in the curriculum that links with the lives of students steers up their curiosity and eagerness to participate. According to her, teachers determine through their curriculum, who counts and who doesn’t, “whose stories are important and whose aren’t” (pg. 155). Christensen gave an instance of when “hurricane Katrina exploded across the South”, and left in its wake thousands of victims. She decided to include that in her curriculum to teach her students about society deals with these types of tragedies. She also allows her students to analyze the events and come up with a claim and counter-claim. This makes me to think about the incident that happened in one of the public schools at Providence. The shooting that took place in front of PCTA, which killed a student. I remember working with my students in class the next morning, and all they cared about was the tragedy that happened. They were all talking about it, and recognizing the victim as someone they know. Although, we held a moment of silence for the student that passed away, we could have discussed it more, allowing students to analyze the incident and talk about the aftermath of the tragedy. We could have asked them to write an essay discussing how the incident links to their lives, as well as their high school. Peers. This would have provided students with a greater opportunity for student voice and agency.

When I give a writing assignment my students often ask, “What comes first? What comes after? How do you end your essay?” When I work with them, I usually give them a graphic organizer with questions, as well as sentence starters for each of the paragraphs. Now, I realize that before giving students an essay to write, sharing different examples of introductions, evidence paragraphs, and conclusions from different brilliant essay writers, can help boost their confidence before starting the essay. Furthermore, introducing the “Think/Pair/Share”, allows students to share their draft with their peers as they write.  As Christensen said, “when students share their snappy openings, they feed off each other, and their playful shouts-outs of admiration and applause benefit both the nimble writers… as well as the struggling writers…” I tried this once with two of my students, and it worked. They both read their essay to each other, and you could see them correcting and adding what was missing in each of their essays.

I believe that all of my students can write, and always have something to say. All it takes is for me (the teacher), to bring out that skill in them. Obviously, it requires spending more time with the students, and “immersing them in curriculum that matters, getting them fired up about the content so they care about their writing, and then letting them go” (pg. 132).