Grade 4 The Personal and Persuasive Essay, Unit 3 Adapted from A Curricular Plan for the Writing Workshop for Grade 4, Unit 3 by Calkins

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1 Time (approximate) Grade 4 The Personal and Persuasive Essay, Unit 3 Adapted from A Curricular Plan for the Writing Workshop for Grade 4, Unit 3 by Calkins Section of the Unit of Study Minilesson Focus Points 3 days Essayists Grow Compelling Ideas in Writer s Notebooks 2 days Writers Choose an Idea, Write It as a Thesis, and Build the Structure for the Essay 3 days Gathering Material for an Essay, Then Selecting the Most Compelling and Appropriate Materials and Constructing a Draft 2 days Building Expository-Writing Muscles: Revising for Structure and Elaboration Writers think of an idea or topic that we have strong feelings about. We write our opinion and give reasons that tell why we feel this way. Writers discover our terrain by thinking of the topics that pull at our hearts and our minds. We can find some ideas by looking over our writer s notebook and discovering what ideas lie between the lines of our stories. Writers grow their ideas about our topics by jotting all the big thought around the topic in our notebooks. Writes settle in on one idea that is most important. Then we write it again and again in different ways, until it truly expresses what we are trying to say. Essay writers do not use a timeline or a story mountain. Instead we plan the sections of our essay by deciding how we will support our main idea. One way is to write our claim over and over, following each time with the word because and a reason why that claim is true. Essay writers collect microstories that are angled to highlight and support our ideas Writers can add a sentence or two at the end of a microstory that we have added that clearly explains how the story illustrates the main ide. Some prompts to do so might be: This shows... or This made me realize... or This made me think... and link it back to your thesis. Writers sort through all the materials in each folder, thinking, Is all of my information her? How will this part look in the end? We consider if our evidence fits with each point and whether we have enough variety of evidence to support each point. Then we can develop, add, or take away points as needed. Writers put everything together for their essay from all the materials they have collected and put them into an essay form. Essay writers often use the beginning of an essay as a place to convey to readers that the ideas in the essay are important. The lead briefly places the essay into context. Writers look through their work through many different lenses as they edit. Read and reread your work, each time focusing on one particular convention spelling, fragments and run-on sentences, punctuation, clarity, and so on. 10 days Persuasive (or Opinion) Essay Persuasive essay writers collect ideas in our notebooks by asking yourself, How could the world change for the better? or Is there anything that people do that I think is wrong or unfair? or Some people think... but I think... Writers prepare to argue their point to make sure they have thought carefully about both the reasons they think they are right as well as the reasons other people may disagree with them. Writers often enter debates with their writing partner, who will take

2 the opposite stance, to practice standing up for their own beliefs. Writers can make our written arguments very difficult to speak against when we use truths about our world to support them. Writers ensure that they have written great arguments by checking for gaps in our argument by turning to our writing partners, to search for places they can disagree. Writers can revise our writing by pretending to be our own readers. We notice the sections that are convincing and those that make us flick the paper away. We notice where the draft loses energy, and where it makes the reader feel skeptical. Then we rewrite or take away parts that aren t powerful and add pieces we feel are missing. Often this may be the first experience that your students have had writing an essay. They may have written short persuasive pieces before but not in the format of an essay with a thesis and evidence to back their claim. So this unit has been written to allow them to write some personal essays first with a main-claim and supportive examples or reasons and then follow with a more formal persuasive essay which is structured similarly but with a counter-argument. The main focus of this unit is not researching or collecting information about unfamiliar topics. Rather it is about writing about topics that the students already have some personal understanding and/or knowledge. If there is a daily writing instruction time, the overall plan of the unit is: Write two flash-draft personal essays Spend 1 ½ weeks writing a single personal essay while learning specific essay crafting strategies Write and revise another flash-draft personal essay (this will be the 4 th personal essay) After 2 ½ weeks, write a persuasive essay (probably around the same topic as the personal essay but not necessarily) 4 th week write and revise a small collection of persuasive essays (a total of 7 or 8 personal and persuasive essays by the end of the unit) Some guidelines that may support teaching along the way: Preparation for the unit: You may want to do an on demand writing assessment at the beginning of the unit to see what skills and strategies your students already have and what is still needed. If you do this, then on day 2 you may want to do a quick review the day after reminding them to start with a claim, to indent, to use transitions and topic sentences, and to write an introduction and conclusion. On day 3 they would write another essay. Then allow them on day 4 to revise a copy (not the original) of their assessment. Then spend the day after allowing them to see how much they have improved. If your students have not written essays before this year, you would skip the Day 2 4 above. In the Units of Study for Writing, Grades 3 5 there is an abundance of resources for this unit. There is a teacher s guide, Breathing Life Into Essays which has detailed scripts of minilessons. There is also a CD that contains video clips as well as printable resources. There are a number of student pieces of work developed throughout the unit that can be printed to be used as mentor texts with your students. There are also rubrics and other assessment tips. One of the supports in this unit for helping students to develop their essay structure is to provide individual folders within one essay folder. This allows them to physically see and understand the structure of topic and subtopics. Each child will need a colored file folder and at 2 4 individual manila folders to tuck inside to hold the materials for each of their subtopics. Create some samples of this type of essay writing yourself to use in minilessons for drafting as well as for revising.

3 Starting Work Toward the Personal Essays That Students Will Draft and Revise Across Almost Two Weeks: Essayists Grow Compelling Ideas in Writer s Notebooks. (In the first part of the unit in the personal essay section, students who struggle with fluency and volume may need a timer set or some oral reminders throughout the workshop of about how far along they should be in their writing. You may need to coach small groups in building stamina and fluency or in understanding the difference between narrative and expository writing.) Begin the unit by sharing with the students that there are two overall kinds of writing narrative and expository writing. In this unit they will be writing opinion expository writing. Remind them that narrative writing was organized by time, telling what happened first, next, and next. Expository writing is organized by subtopics, telling all about a category. It is also used to get a big idea across to readers. Both types of writing are made from ideas and from stories. Both can be about the same topic but the amount of story is more in narrative. Share a few sample topics for personal essay not fitting in with peer group, the first day of school, the day the moving ruck came, tensions between you and a younger or older sibling, the joy and pressure of soccer, the lure of the video game. (There are many examples shared in Breathing New Life in Essays). Spend 3 days (and evening and a weekend) helping students grow compelling, provocative ideas. Allow them time to generate lots of entries. (Ideas for sparking their interests are shared in Breathing...) Encourage them to look for topics in their past notebook entries and published narratives from earlier in the year. They may find a bigger idea that they could now write in essay form. A quick mid workshop teaching point might be to share that writers find their ideas in so many places by just being awake in their lives. They could notice how each person in the family reads the newspaper differently, how stuff accumulates in desk drawers, how we overhear arguments, and even notice how our family pet acts throughout the day keeping track of the family members. When we notice these things we can write, This makes me think... or I m realizing that... Throughout these 3 days as you observe students and read some of their writing you will notice that different students need different supports. The following could be used as teaching points for small groups, conferring, midworkshop teaching points, or teaching shares. Writers develop thoughts by collecting small moments that demonstrate big ideas then elaborating on those ideas. As we jot an idea, we can jot a small moment that connects. Writers don t just stop after stating an idea. We push ourselves further to fully flesh out that idea. One way to do this is by using thought prompts that grow our ideas. Some or those prompts are: The thought I have about this is... or In other words... or That is... or This makes me realize... Writers can help one another by allowing our partners to write-in-the-air as we provide them with thought prompts to push their thinking. At the end of the week or on day 4, model how to stop and really think about something deeply as it won t be at the surface level. Teach them about writing to learn or free-writing. Model how to just pick up your pen with nothing in particular in mind to write about and say to yourself, The thought I have about this is... and then keep writing. Show them how the thoughts surface as you keep writing. You may even jot notes in the margins as they pop up in your mind. This is fast note-taking writing not good writing. The purpose is to help you uncover the big idea/topic for your personal essay. By the end of this day, students should decide on their topic and essentially this will become the thesis of their essay even though it isn t fully formed yet. As you think about a minilesson for students about generating entries about their topic you might think of which one to do for the entire class, which to do for small groups, which to do in individual conferences, which might be more appropriate in a mid-workshop teaching point or in a quick teaching share at the end of the writing time. Just as you jot about a person for narrative writing and then jot small moments with that person you can use a similar strategy for essay write down the topic and then jot big ideas about that topic

4 You can take any of the ideas about the topic and jot a list of small moment stories for that idea Jot a person s name that fits the topic and then list big ideas about that person and even make a list of small moment stories about that person that relate to the topic. Bring in an object that relates to the topic and jot ideas about that object using prompts like: The thought I have about this is... or This makes me realize... Teach them to craft metaphors for some of the thoughts. This is about writing about ideas NOT facts (see the teaching share in Session III Breathing... Teach strategies to help students who struggle to write at length about an idea by using prompts such as: the though I have about this is... or In other words... or That is... or the surprising thing about this is... or This makes me realize... or To add on... (see Session IV in Breathing...) Remind the students that the purpose of the prompts is to help them think new thing not just to get them to write more. As you model using these prompts with a student in front of the class you are doing the thinking aloud after each of the prompts. Then have students practice in their partnerships with a thinker and a prompter. You may only need to do this in small groups. Teach Writers to Choose an Idea, To Write It as a Thesis, and to Build the Structure for the Essay Model how to select a seed idea (Session VI in Breathing...) Teach how to revise their thesis statement (Session VII Breathing...). They can box out a claim and rewrite it 6 or 8 times trying to consolidate it, clarify it. They also need to envision a plan for the essay much like they did with timelines and story mountains with narratives. To do this they need to state their claim and then list reasons for that claim with each as a bullet or a topic sentence for another portion of the essay. For each reason it is helpful to restate the claim and then add the word because followed by the reason. Getting a bike helped me grow up because it allowed me to leave home. Getting a bike helped me grow up because it allowed me to see myself as one of the gang. Getting a bike helped me grow up because it gave me independence. These subtopics will be revised later so they aren t so redundant but will help the student keep focused on his/her thesis right now. Decide whether you will teach the structure of the essay to the whole class at once or to a group of students. On this day students will craft a main idea (a claim or a thesis) and several parallel supporting ideas. The structure is called boxes and bullets. What you are teaching is organizing an essay as a journey of thought. Some templates to use as models might be used with small groups as appropriate are: 1. I used to think... but now I think... e.g. I used to think that going to bed was boring, but not it is heavenly. Or I used to think that a bike was just a toy, but now I realize it s part of growing up. 2. If you have never... you probably think it is... but after you... you realize it is When I started to write about... I wanted to say... but after thinking more deeply about it, I realize what I really want to say is Or another way is to deal with multiple angles on one idea. My thoughts about are complicated. On the one hand, I think... and On the other hand, I think.. e.g. My thoughts about video games are complicated. On the one hand, they distract me from other work. On the other hand, they help me make friends. One way for students to manage this is to write their thesis on the outside of a colored file folder and then make smaller internal manila folders for each of their bullets (topic sentences) and proceed to collect a small pile of papers within each folder. After a few days of collecting and revising the small pile, a student will spread the contents of each small folder out, select the best material for that body paragraph, and rewrite the selected material into the paragraph. (Session IX in Breathing...) If students don t want to use the folders they can use a separate sheet of paper for each bullet.

5 The problem then becomes that when it is time to revise they often don t want to because they have to do so with larger swatches of text. Gathering Material for an Essay, Then Selecting the Most Compelling and Appropriate Materials and Constructing a Draft (In the third and fourth parts of the unit, students will not be working in their notebooks and may need small group support in keeping track of where specific evidence goes within their overall essay. Keep in mind the categories of structure, elaboration, and craft to decide which areas students need the most support.) Teach students to collect microstories that illustrate their ideas. Angle the stories so they highlight and support the idea that the writer wants to advance and to unpack it as a debrief. (Sessions IX and X in Breathing...). Then they will repeat this process for each of their topic sentences (bullets). During one day, a student will need to collect (and ideally revise) at least 3 angled stories in one day s work. These are small, tight anecdotes. As a midworkshop teaching point you may want to point out that revision is a process that doesn t just come at the end of writing but is something you do constantly. So as you collect these stories, take time to consider, How can I say this more clearly? and How can I angle this to better support my ideas. Another strategy to teach is how to unpack or debrief or share a significant meaning at the end of each microstory by adding a sentence or two that discusses how the story illustrates the main idea. (e.g. but even though I got hurt, I m still thinking about how glad I was my father had taught me to do the 360 degree turns. ) A midworkshop teaching point might be that essay writers don t just collect their own stories but stories of others to illustrate our main idea. Another strategy is to collect lists to support the topic sentences or quotes, or statistics, or other students stories. A model to share is martin Luther King s I have a dream speech. (Session XI in Breathing...) This might not be a minilesson as much as a small group lesson or a mid-workshop teaching point. Help them select compelling evidence and to ensure that the evidence closely supports their claim. A midworkshop teaching point might be to provide support in using transitional words like: for instance, in order to, consequently, and specifically. Teach them to sort through the materials in each folder, thinking about whether they have enough evidence to support each point. Teach them to ask, Is all of my information here? How will this part look in the end? Also have them reflect on whether they have some variety in the evidence. After a few sessions of gathering evidence, teach them to compile all the diverse material to compose a draft. They will need scissors and tape. Show them how to arrange material in an order that would make the most sense and use transitional words and key words from their thesis in the material. Once they have enough material they can staple or tape or recopy the information into a paragraph or two that supports each topic sentence to construct the rough draft of their essay. Small groups or individuals may need some support in looking over their materials to figure out the best way to use their evidence to support the main point of the essay. Optionally, if the students need more challenge, you can teach a minilesson or small group that writers look over their material to decide what they have and figure out the best way to use evidence to support the main point of the essay. For instance it might revolve around one central story. This allows them to see how they can make many different decisions about their writing based on their personal information

6 Building Expository Writing Muscles: Revising for Structure and Elaboration (This should be a brief section of the unit as you have spent so much time organizing through the structure.) ( (In the editing portion of this section and the next, extra support may be needed in the area of the purpose of paragraphing and the conventions of paragraphing. Notice their punctuation errors and teach to those. ) This type of writing is one in which students can work on paragraphing to signal new ideas. They can work on using connective words like: and, thus, furthermore, rather for comparison and contrasting, however, on the other hand as interjections and with or, yet to advance ideas. The modeling/teaching for this concept might occur in the read aloud time as you point out the signal agreement, viewpoint, or interjection words and begin a chart of this vocabulary. Teach students to use the word wall. They should look at the whole word and try to remember the whole word as best they can instead of looking at the word one letter at a time. This is a good time of year to look through their work and take a quick informal assessment of their spelling of high-frequency words. Students should be working on sentence combining to increase their sentence complexity. Teach about revising the structure. First you might teach about crafting introductions and conclusions (Session XVI in Breathing...) A mid workshop teaching point might be that you being and end with a strong sense of argument and the feeling that what they are reading is something really important. Teach them to read each section and make sure that all the information goes together in that section and supports the essay. Use your partner to help you to study one another s drafts. You may need to gather small groups (or teach quickly as a midworkshop point) to teach elaboration based on the students needs if they are indicating that they need more evidence to back each of their topic statements. Share that writers include not just the facts and details but also how those facts and details connect to the thesis or supporting statement (e.g. this goes to show... or this supports the idea that... because... ) Support your students in polishing their essays, editing for mechanics and spelling. You might have one day with a longer share session for them to celebrate their first essays. The Final Part: Persuasive (or Opinion) Essay Personal essays can rarely be challenged because the idea and the evidence behind it is very personal. Working on this helps students to not have to also work on the challenges of presenting the argument. Now students will be asked to write persuasive essays in which they still might be speaking about personal topics but writing in a way to persuade the reader with strong arguments that this issue is indeed one that can make a difference in our lives. Build the enthusiasm and understanding for this work by telling them they are ready to learn what all citizens must learn the power of argument. Now we will be moving beyond simply telling the world what we thought or how we felt. Now we will learn how to find stories that back up our ideas. The things we find will be ones that not only do we believe in but that we think other people should believe too some might even disagree with. You will need to be brave to do this. One way to begin is to model how to begin to collect more persuasive ideas by asking questions, How could the world change for the better or Is there anything that people do that I think is wrong or unfair or some people think... but I think... By answering these questions their ideas will change from personal statements into persuasive mottos like, People should stop putting only children down or Parents of only children should make sure that their kids are involved in lots of groups or Some people think that being an only child is bad for you, but I

7 think it is the best way to grow up, even if it is hard sometimes. These questions will help them to branch off from their original idea and help them generate a long list of things they wish they could change in the world. Soon as students hear one another s ideas, they will begin to argue with one another and that is the time to teach argument. You may want to teach them that one way writers prepare to argue their point is to make sure they thought carefully about both the reasons they think they are right as well as the reason other people may disagree with them (how to debate). So for the first part of the session, teach them that a good writing partner is a fierce critic. Writing partners can take the stance of their opponent in a debate. Model this and as a verbal student to play the role of opponent. That partner might say and ask questions like: Why do you say that?... Well sometimes they are, which will cause the writer to begin to argue and come up with bullets for their essay. That may be true but it isn t not like calling... So I guess what I am saying is you shouldn t... because... Now have all the students engage in an oral debate with their writing partner and share that the purpose of the disagreement is to come up with new and better ideas and that we need to be brave in putting forth our thoughts, defending them, as well as changing our thinking if we need to For the 2 nd half of this session, send the students off to flash-draft essays. Most students will be comfortable with using the boxes-and-bullets structure. Some may want to directly argue with those who may disagree and write four-ish paragraph essays that follow this structure: I think... You may think... but... Remind them as they begin that they will probably want to use the boxes-and-bullets form, stating an argument, then backing it up with elaborated supports. As you work with students help them realize it is not so much what they say but how they say it. They need to choose words to mean exactly what they are trying to say and not exaggerate or underwhelm their ideas. They can use their writing partners to reflect on this. They can even act it out which may help them to find their voice. Also remind them midworkshop that all the strategies they learned in writing personal essays can now be used in a persuasive essay. Small group work may focus them on teaching them that often the thesis and support are followed by counterargument and the reasons why we feel it isn t true. Continue to have your students write flash-drafts each day that include brief, vivid anecdotes. They can use some of the same stories they used in their personal essays. Mentor texts of persuasive writing are useful both publicly published as well as some student samples (like the ones found on the DVD that comes with the Units of Study for Writing, Grades 3 5). It would be helpful to find at least one that uses an image that is a central metaphor to the piece. Also point out how facts are used to really back up your opinions. Students can use the Internet to search for statistics or quotations. Some of these lessons can be saved for revision strategies and some may be used whole class or in small group instruction or in conferences. After a few days of drafting many essays, you will teach them how to revise one or two for publication. You may want to focus on the argument piece of persuasion helping them to understand that their arguments need to be great without holes in them. Relate this to personal arguments they have had with their families in their homes. Students can reflect on this with their writing partners by reading their essay to their partner and having the partners help find counterarguments that need to be addressed. The writing partner takes the stance of the opponent and looks for places to disagree. For example they might say things like: Yeah, but... The writer then needs to address that with a counter like While some people argue... in fact... or some people think... but I think...

8 You will also want to teach students to revise by pretending to be our own readers. We will notice sections that are convincing and those that are less so. We notice where the draft loses energy and where it makes the reader feel skeptical. They will want to study some mentor texts and try out some of the crafting strategies they notice such as using purposeful repetition (e.g. I have a dream speech), and the use of zingers that drive home the point. They will also learn to paraphrase information from the research they did as well as how to cite the source inside the text or as a separate works cited page. Celebrating Persuasive Writing: Finding a Place for Our Opinions in The World Some teachers may make the celebration a bit larger than other units by holding debates, filming essays as speeches, or having students create podcasts. We should try and make their work get into the hands of people who could be changed by it to make a difference in the world. We do need to celebrate the stamina and rigor that they have developed.

9 Writing Personal and Persuasive Essays Reflection Questionnaire Name Date We have learned so much about writing personal and persuasive essays. Now is the time for you to reflect on how you have grown as a writer and what you are able to do as you write historical fiction. Please answer the questions below. What do I notice about myself as a writer as I read through my work? How have I changed as a writer so far? What are three things that I ve learned about writing personal and persuasive essays that I see that I was able to do in my own writing? What are some things I want to get stronger at as a writer? What is the best part of this piece of writing and why?

10 Grade 4 Writing Personal and Persuasive Essays, Unit 3 Adapted from Calkins Curriculum for Writing, Grade 4, Unit 5 and Writing Fiction from Units of Study for Writing in Grades 3-5 Benchmarks for Unit Rarely Sometimes Most of the Time More Than I Expect Habits and Processes The child tackles this new, challenging form of writing. After learning a strategy he uses it independently with his own writing. He works on a variety of small projects within the unit with overall self-reliance. The child produces at least a page of writing, often more, each day, producing several smaller texts which may be combined. He needs to initiate, start and complete several bits of writing in a single day. The writer categorizes his materials, filing them in appropriate categories. The child proceeds through the writing process, producing an essay at the end and is able to explain the process that he went through to do so. The child plans for writing by selecting a big idea to advance, crystallizing it into a thesis, then drafting and revising a rough outline. Then he conducts any necessary research to gather stories, quotations, lists, observations, and other kinds of evidence to support his thesis. The child seeks feedback on his writing. Writing Purposes and Genre Opinion Narrative The child can generate entries without teacher support. The writer has strategies not only for generating and developing ideas but also for elaborating upon them. The child decides upon a single clear idea that he will claim and then defends or advances that idea. The child supports a few big ideas with many small details. He learns to write with an angle so that the specifics support his big ideas. He begins to use repetition, parallelism, and transition words to make his argument more cohesive and compelling. The child can differentiate between narrative and expository writing and name characteristics for each. He writes his thoughts about a subject. The child crafts his essay with a strong lead and effective conclusion. Language Use. The child uses language of exposition, using terms and structures of the genre such as, it is important to notice and it is clear that... He is comfortable using this language, both orally and in writing. Writing Conventions The child incorporates accurate sentence-ending punctuation and spelling of highfrequency words into rough draft writing. During editing, he tackles challenges specific to this genre, using logical transition words, clarifying pronoun references, and repeating key words and phrase to create cohesion. The child paragraphs to organize sentences that focus on one idea. adapted from Lucy Calkins, Breathing Life into Essays, Units of Writing, Grades 3-5 Unit adaptation by Carrie Ekey, December, 2011