Table Of Content

NEW YORK • TORONTO • LONDON • AUCKLAND • SYDNEY MEXICO CITY • NEW DELHI • HONG KONG • BUENOS AIRES Writing Extraordinary Essays: Every Middle Schooler Can! © David Lee Finkle, Scholastic Teaching Resources Dedication For Andrea, the real Mrs. Fitz: Outside validation is sweetest because it validates your faith in me! Scholastic Inc. grants teachers permission to photocopy material in this book for personal classroom use only. No other part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Permissions Department, Scholastic Inc., 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012. Cover design by Brian La Rossa Cover photo © Blend Images Photography/Veer Interior design by Solas Interior comics by David Lee Finkle ISBN-13: 978-0-545-05898-8 ISBN-10: 0-545-05898-8 Copyright © 2008 by David Lee Finkle All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 40 13 12 11 10 09 08 Writing Extraordinary Essays: Every Middle Schooler Can! © David Lee Finkle, Scholastic Teaching Resources Contents Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 Chapter 1 Read a Genre to Write a Genre. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 Chapter 2 Setting the Stage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 Chapter 3 Content Dictates Form: Ways to Organize an Essay. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30 Chapter 4 Prewriting: The Girders, the Skeleton, and the Frame. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 Chapter 5 Picture This!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52 Chapter 6 Avoiding Clunkers and Creating Sentence Effects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73 Chapter 7 Modeled Writing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .91 Chapter 8 Using Rubrics (or Not). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .99 Chapter 9 Revision. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .113 Chapter 10 Proofreading. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .126 Chapter 11 Tips for the Test. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .136 Chapter 12 Real Writers: Publishing and Printing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .147 Appendix (A, B, C). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .156 References and Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .160 Writing Extraordinary Essays: Every Middle Schooler Can! © David Lee Finkle, Scholastic Teaching Resources Acknowledgments This book has had many people helping it along the way. First, this book is really a tale of two newspapers. Thanks to Ronald Williamson and Nick Klasne at the Daytona Beach News-Journal for taking a chance on a local cartoonist in 2000 and making a lifelong dream come true. I’m on the comics page! And thanks to Mike Lafferty at the Orlando Sentinel for first agreeing to publish the essay that got the ball rolling. Thanks also to . . . My editor, Gloria Pipkin, for discovering me online and hunting me down. Writing this book has been the best professional development I’ve ever had. My family, Andrea, Christopher, and Alexandra, for their patience with my preoccupied demeanor as I juggled this book, a daily comic strip, and teaching. My wonderful principal, Mamie Oatis, who was supportive from the get-go, and the wonderful faculty and staff at Southwestern Middle School—but especially to Dr. Patty Arnold and Susan Tyree who helped me get my Wikispace online and running smoothly. And thanks to my students for teaching me how to teach—I’m still learning—and for always giving me fresh material! Special thanks to Katherine Beckwith. Writing Extraordinary Essays: Every Middle Schooler Can! © David Lee Finkle, Scholastic Teaching Resources Introduction T his book began as an essay I wrote for the Orlando Sentinel about standardized writing tests—in particular the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test (FCAT) writing assessment that my students take each February. But that essay began with a student. This student (I’ll call her Cathy) had been in my eighth-grade language arts class, a star writer in a class of excellent writers. I had really thrown myself into teaching essay writing to these students. I’d gotten them to go beyond the old five-paragraph formula, to start sounding like “real” writers. That had been my mantra: I want you to sound like published essay writers, not like students writing for a test. That class succeeded on the test beyond anything I might have hoped for. Most of the class got 5’s or 6’s, the highest scores possible. But what made it particularly sweet was that we had done it not by teaching (and learning) to the test but by learning how real essayists write. Cathy had moved on to a different school for ninth grade, but I would see her occasionally and ask her how things were going—in particular, how she liked high school English. Cathy shook her head, and said, “The teacher gave us a packet about how to write a good five- paragraph essay.” I asked some colleagues why this kind of writing instruction might be going on in freshman English. Their reply: passing the FCAT writing assessment was a graduation requirement. (This changed in 2008.) The schools were pushing for everyone to pass. Not to excel, mind you, to pass. I had worked hard to get that class of writers to think outside the five-paragraph essay box, and now Cathy was being told to climb back inside. I decided I should write about this dilemma for the “My Word” opinion section of our newspaper. I wrote it in front of the class for my then-current eighth graders, and e-mailed it to the paper. I heard nothing for almost two weeks. But then I received an e-mail: the column had been sent to Mike Lafferty, an editor and columnist who had spoken to my classes on occasion. He’d decided to print it. Rather than paraphrase it, I’ll simply print the essay here as it appeared in the newspaper. Introduction Writing Extraordinary Essays: Every Middle Schooler Can! © David Lee Finkle, Scholastic Teaching Resources Last May when my school’s FCAT writing scores arrived, my principal hand- delivered them to my room. I accepted them with a shaky hand. As the Language Arts Chair at my middle school, I wanted us to do well. We did. A huge percentage of our students passed the test. Even better, many received the highest scores of 5 and 6, which are very difficult to get. My excitement over our scores dipped, however, when I discovered that high scores don’t really matter to the state—or our school grade. All that matters is the percentage of students meeting the minimum standard. The minimum standard of 3.5 out of 6 is, quite frankly, not a stellar example of writing. Paragraphs often begin with gripping phrases such as, “my second reason is,” and the essay will sometimes end with a thought-provoking, Forrest Gump–esque, “that’s all I have to say about that.” The 3.5 minimum score is all that matters, though, and that fact directly impacts instruction. If high scores don’t matter, why shoot for them? Just get everyone to a 3.5 and you’re done. You can achieve this goal by teaching a formulaic, five- paragraph essay: a main idea and three supporting details (in no particular order). Tell ’em what you’re going to tell ’em, tell ’em, and then tell ’em what you told ’em. This Formula for writing an essay may be a fine survival tool for some students, but for many bright, enthusiastic student writers, it’s a cage. Taking students to a score of 5 or 6 is riskier. You chuck the Formula. You read published essays together to drink in the sound of good writing. You delve into organization patterns and logical arguments. Content dictates form, so essays may be any number of paragraphs, depending on what the writer has to say. You teach about the “showing” detail and the catchy turn of phrase. You teach them that writing is about having enthusiasm, about being engaged in the world and interested in what’s going on around you. In fact, you teach them about real writing, not about the FCAT. Such an approach isn’t “safe.” Some teachers still preach that you can’t even “pass” the FCAT writing unless you write precisely five paragraphs. My scores belie that idea. A vast majority of my own eighth-grade language arts students got 5.5’s or 6’s last year—without the formula. On Tuesday my students will face the FCAT writing. Although the state doesn’t seem to value excellence, I can still tell them their excellence has value where it really matters: the real world. I don’t want to see them someday writing five- paragraph “My Word” essays that conclude, “And that’s all I have to say about that.” Writing Extraordinary Essays: Every Middle Schooler Can! © David Lee Finkle, Scholastic Teaching Resources A few days after my essay went to press, I received an e-mail from Gloria Pipkin, editor of an online standardized-test-reform newsletter called F-TREND. She had included a link to my essay in F-TREND and wanted to talk to me about a book proposal. So here I am writing a book. I only had about 500 words for the essay, so having about 45,000 to use for the book is quite freeing. This book is about having it both ways. Your students can earn not just passing scores but high writing scores. More importantly, you can get them to transcend the test itself. You can teach them how to be great essay writers. This book is not about teaching to the test, but teaching beyond the test. Shoot for a minimum score, and you may get it, but your students haven’t really learned anything about how real writers work. Shoot for great writing, and test scores get pulled along for the ride without much extra effort. The strategies I’m offering here are usable in any kind of classroom: a full-blown writing workshop or a more traditional classroom. Take them and make them your own. One further note: in addition to teaching full-time, I draw a comic strip, “Mr. Fitz,” that appears on the “Coffee Break” page of the Daytona Beach News-Journal five days a week. “Mr. Fitz” is, amazingly enough, about a middle school language arts teacher. These comic strips appear throughout the pages of this book because the strips often illustrate points I’m trying to make about writing, about students, about teachers—and about standardized testing. I don’t refer to the FCAT directly in the strips, as I would someday like to go nationwide with it. My wife and I invented a fictitious standardized test to use in the strip: the Universal SKills, UNderstanding, and Knowledge test. The U-SKUNK. You will see references to that throughout the book as well. Mr. Fitz, the character, is my alter ego, of course—but he’s not me. Sometimes he’s a better teacher than I, but sometimes he makes mistakes I would never make, simply because mistakes often make a point and get a laugh better than doing things right the first time. Introduction Writing Extraordinary Essays: Every Middle Schooler Can! © David Lee Finkle, Scholastic Teaching Resources C 1 hapter Read a Genre to Write a Genre I ’m beginning this book about essay writing by talking about poetry . . . and comic strips. I’m beginning this way because certain things about writing hold true for any kind of writing, be it poetry, comic strips . . . or essays. Over the years I have had the dialogue shown in the comic strip above with any number of students in my class or at Young Authors Conferences I have attended as either a teacher or a guest speaker. These students were all showing me their overstuffed notebooks of poetry, but virtually none of them read poems with any regularity. They write poetry regularly, having almost no grasp of the traditions they are writing in, or the myriad tools and subgenres at their disposal. I politely advise them to start reading poetry. Not every poet uses the same tools and techniques, but there is a lot to be learned from actually reading in the genre you are asked to write in. Of course we often ask students to write poetry without ever asking them to read real poetry. How many of the ubiquitous “poetry project” packets are out there in classrooms, teaching students that poetry is as simple as filling in the blanks? Another story, another genre—this one about comic strips. As I mentioned in the introduction, I write a daily comic strip for the Daytona Beach News-Journal called “Mr. Fitz.” Since I like to draw comic strips myself, I also run an after-school Cartooning Club. What has interested me year after year is how many student cartoonists want to draw comic strips, but, like the poets, never actually read the funnies. They throw themselves into drawing comic strips, without ever having really studied the features of the form. This failure to read the genre you are trying to write baffles me not only with comic strips and poetry, but with other genres as well—especially with essays. Writing Extraordinary Essays: Every Middle Schooler Can! © David Lee Finkle, Scholastic Teaching Resources Fill-in-the-Blanks Essays Most middle school language arts teachers are being asked to focus on essay writing these days, mostly because of state writing tests. The irony of the current climate in middle schools is this: Many schools attempt to ensure that their students pass state standardized writing tests by teaching them formulaic writing styles that actually hamper them from excelling as writers—or as test takers. They teach students to “fill in the blanks,” just like the poetry packets. They don’t teach students to read real published essays and then emulate them; they teach them simple formulas that they think will make all students pass the test. And many of the formulas we give to students have nothing to do with real essay writing. Here is my short list of erroneous things we teachers often teach about essays: 1. An essay must have five paragraphs. 2. An introduction must state the main idea of the essay and the three supporting reasons. 3. The conclusion must do the same things as the introduction. 4. E very supporting or “body” paragraph must have a topic sentence and “x” number of supporting sentences. 5. Supporting sentences must use good descriptive adjectives. 6. Y ou must choose from a list of transition words (e.g., then, next, first, second, third) to go from one paragraph to another. There are more erroneous things we teach, of course, but these are the big ones. But if we look at what real essay writers do, we find that they don’t follow any of these rules. I have students come to me in middle school who have been drilled with the formula, told they will not pass the class without the formula, and, most importantly, told they cannot pass the standardized test without the formula. I have read books on how to get students to pass these tests, and many of them simply reiterate the five-paragraph essay Formula. Eventually, when they really start writing for the real world, or for a teacher who doesn’t promote the Formula, they will, as Yoda says, need to “unlearn what they have learned.” In the meantime, many students grow to hate essay writing. They find it dull, uncreative, and, well, formulaic. And they tend to write boring, standardized, monotonous essays. Chapter 1 Read a Genre to Write a Genre Writing Extraordinary Essays: Every Middle Schooler Can! © David Lee Finkle, Scholastic Teaching Resources