It’s week 9 of the writing class. Time to get back to thinking and writing and thinking.
Hour 1
Semester Review (5)
- Week 9 Regular classes (Wed holiday)
- Week 10 Regular classes (Mon holiday)
- Week 11 Assignment #3
- Week 12
- Week 13 Assignment #4
- Week 14 Review final exam questions
- Week 15 Make up week – one make up class (Mon)
- Week 16 Final exams
What’s the conclusion? We have 4 more full lessons left before review week and the final exam.
What have we done so far? (5)
- learn basic writing tools (e.g. prepositional phrase, phrasal verb, etc)
- definition of good writing (6+1 writing traits)
- write a summary (needs improvement)
- importance of a good first sentence
- different ways to organize a paragraph (time, location, hamburger, etc)
- complex and compound sentences
- show me, don’t tell me (add details)
- how to use bullets and numbers to create a list
- personal development (free writing and error correction)
- rules about articles
- use better verbs to describe movement more precisely (Tiny Story)
The rest of the semester (5)
The first half of the semester was about building basic writing skills: accurate words, proper sentences, useful paragraph organisation.
We can build on this work by adding one more skill: a clear idea.
For example, we will learn to:
- DESCRIBE: tell us the facts
- EXPLAIN: tell us why the facts are important or useful, teach us the meaning, help us understand what comes next, give a reason for something, tell us the cause and the effect
- TRANSFORM NUMBERS: how to read basic data charts (numbers) and write sentences to make sense of it
- THINK CRITICALLY: use writing to understand the why and how not just the what
Finding the main idea and evidence (10)
One problem which many students have is writing a list of things. Lists are not bad, but they need to have some context or some purpose. They need to be connected to a bigger idea.
Having an idea is important. Proving or explaining your idea is more important, too.
Read the blue boxes on pages 87, 88, 89.
In each box:
- what’s the idea
- what’s the evidence
Providing Examples (5)
Look at page 89.
We can use the phrases FOR EXAMPLE, FOR INSTANCE and SUCH AS to to provide support. Examples make your idea clearer.
Look at page 89. Read the 3 sentences. Write for example with the best sentence from the yellow box.
Thinking of Examples (5)
Work with a partner and read page B on page 91.
Read the 3 sentences and think of 3 examples for each sentence.
Practice Writing (20)
Choose one sentence from page 90 B.
Write a paragraph. Write your idea with evidence or examples.
Hour 2
Personal Experience (10)
Read page 96. It’s a story about an experience. Think about how the story is organized.
Answer the questions at the bottom of the page.
Learning story templates (10)
Read the notes on the slide.
Writing Task (30)
Tell a story using one of the templates described above. What kidn of story? That depends on yoru situation:
- Imagine you are teaching students.
- Maybe you want to write copy for an advertisement and want to use the story format.
Hour 3
Editing exercise (30)
Here is an editing exercise. It uses a spam email message to help students learn editing and story telling skills.
Storytelling activity (15)
Finish writing the first draft of your story. Or write the second draft.