Response to Christensen

I really enjoyed this week's readings and found them very helpful for learning about how to teach essay writing, and they also helped me to learn more about how to improve my own writing. One of the things that I see a lot of students struggle with is finding reliable information to use in their essay writing. When I taught in a 7th grade English class last semester, I saw first hand how the students used a quote journal while they were reading in order to keep track of important lines of text, character descriptions, and pivotal moments during the story. After each quote, the students wrote a few sentences about what it meant. By the time they had to write their essays, they already had access to a wide variety of quotations to use, and it helped make the

process much easier and quicker. I loved reading about Christensen's idea of the "Character Silhouettes", and this is something that I think that elementary students would find particularly fun as well. I can imagine having giant posterboards of characters hanging up around the classroom, and students attaching sticky notes filled with descriptions, quotations, and comparisons that they find between the character and themselves. These ideas are helpful for organizing and gathering information before they begin writing. 

Another idea that I loved from Christensen's chapter was the "Wall of Thesis Statements", and this is something I will definitely use in future lessons. Not only does it allow students to see other examples, but it allows for the development of language and precision when creating thesis statements. Unfortunately, I have seen many students think that a thesis statement can only be the "ABC format", but that is not the case. As long as the thesis statement "clues the reader in on the point of the essay" there is not a strict format that needs to be followed. When reading this, I decided to look at the CCSS for writing to see if there is a standard on thesis writing. Standard 9-10.2A, states that students should:
"Introduce a topic; organize complex ideas, concepts, and information to make important connections and distinctions; include formatting (e.g., headings), graphics (e.g., figures, tables), and multimedia when useful to aiding comprehension.". This reinforces the idea that a thesis statement does not have to be a strict format. I also think that Christensen's Essay Criteria, found on page 145 is general enough to allow for diversity and creativity amongst student writing, but also allows for the writing to align to the standards. By allowing for student choice in how they choose to write their introduction, thesis, evidence, and conclusion, it makes students more eager to think about what they are writing, rather than following a simple outline. In addition, other categories for her essay criteria are "tight writing" and "grammar", which follows the CCSS 9-10.4: "Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience". Because this standard doesn't define what "clear and coherent" writing is, the teacher and students can determine ways that the students can have clear writing through using active verbs, sentence variety, and proper grammar and punctuation. 

I believe that Christensen had a lot of useful information in this chapter, and I was able to bring some of what we read about the Standards last week into her criteria and ideas for instruction this week. In addition, reading the "They Say, I Say" template provided yet another opportunity to help students develop claims. While I believe that the format is very helpful, I'm not sure if I would assign this to students as I think that it pulls away from their own creativity. At the same time, however, for writers struggling to understand how to make claims and supply supporting information, these templates can be useful. 

Overall, this week's readings were useful for me in learning about ways to teach essay writing, and I was able to see a lot of connections to what I have seen in the classrooms, and what I hope to do in the future.