The power of language

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We worked again today with student-written sentences patterned on the mentor sentence from a couple weeks ago. I chose 4 from all 3 of my classes and talked to kids about what made the sentences so powerful--the task I gave students was to look at their This I Believe essay sentence-by-sentence and revise their work considering imagery, diction, and punctuation. Writing is an intensely personal--and powerful--means to communicate. At this level, students should be working on becoming effective writers, not simply putting words down on paper.

I read Jeannette Walls  Glass Castle for part of the hour (talk about a powerful story and writing!) and students were to write about the novel using the 'opener , + sentence' pattern we've been working with.