Unit I: Personal Experience
Theme: Personal Experience
Organizational Focus: Using description to explain personal experience
Sentence Level: Basic sentence structure, fragments / run-ons, descriptive vocabulary, introduction to verb tense
Essay Assignment
Choose one of the following essay assignments.
- Describe a turning point (or significant event) in your life. Explain what happened using descriptive vocabulary and details.
- Describe a person who has influenced you using descriptive vocabulary and details. Also explain how the person has influenced you.
First present the event or person then clearly explain how and why it affected you. Please complete the Essay Self-Check questions and submit them with your essay.
Essay Rubric
The Essay Rubric provides a framework for evaluating students’ success with the assignment.
Activating Schema
- As a class brainstorm events that are often portrayed as life-changing or significant in the movies, like car accident, natural disasters, death, betrayal, moving, hurting oneself or someone else, travel, etc.
- Students write a journal describing an event that significantly impacted their lives.
Readings
“How I’m Different from the Rest of the Kids”
Pre-Reading
- Have students write a journal in response to the quote, “Writing has helped me become my own person.” Juana Sainez, by thinking of an event or person who has influenced their feelings about themselves in a positive way.
- Ask students to share their journal with a partner. Each partner should identify the positive person or event in their partner’s journal and the ways the person’s perspective about themselves changed.
During-Reading
- Look at the title. Ask students what they think the text will be about based on the title. Write ideas on the board.
- Look at the picture. Ask students what information they can gather from the picture. Add to ideas on the board.
- As a class read the introduction and conclusion. Discuss what we have learned about the article from those two paragraphs. Could we confirm or contradict any of our predictions based on the title or the picture?
- Have students read the topic sentences to the body paragraphs and predict the content of the body paragraphs. They only need to write a sentence or two not the entire paragraph. Teacher guides first body paragraph and the rest is homework.
- Read full version of the article. Discuss which predictions were confirmed thus showing which topic sentences more clearly serve as an umbrella for the paragraph.
- Ask students to highlight places where she gives us important descriptive details about the individuals in her family and how they interact with reading and writing.
- Ask students to highlight places where the author gives specific examples of how and why she is different. After student complete tasks 2 and 3 look at the use of detail and examples. Discuss how we as readers can understand where she is coming from because she sets the scene and gives us a lot of background information. Look at how specific she is in showing how she is different.
- Ask students and discuss: How does the author open the essay? Is it interesting? What is effective and what could be improved?
- Ask students to identify where the author states the point or guiding idea of the essay and to answer the following questions.
- What is that point and does it answer any question you may have had about the title? How?
- How many paragraphs does it take the author to reach the point or climax of her essay? Why do you think it takes that long? What is she doing first?
- How does she separate her ideas into paragraphs on the first page? How does she separate her ideas on the second page? How does she have different goals and intentions on each page?
- In pairs students use the answers to the questions to construct a concept map or outline of her essay with the following items:
- Background information
- Description of the problem or situation
- Main point or guiding idea
- Details of how she changed
- Details of why she changed
- Overall importance
Post-Reading
- Ask students to write a journal about the following quotes in which they discuss how Sainez is the architect of her own life and how her experiences in school changed her. Sample questions follow each quote.
“Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.” – Malcolm X
- How does the author compare and contrast her family members’ preparation for the future?
- What events does she identify in the article as important in shaping her future?
“Can’t nothin’ make your life work if you ain’t the architect.” – Terry McMillan
- How is the author the architect of her future?
- What choices does she make that give her self-control and empower her?
Sentence Work
- Use this activity to review basic sentence structure and parts. In groups of 3 students mark places where the author provides details or description about her family members. (1st page)
- Students choose 2–3 effective verbs and nouns that they feel provide important information about the family member or create an image. Then students write the phrases where those verbs and nouns appear on the board or butcher paper.
- Teacher elicits how the author uses all kinds of words to add descriptive detail and elicits differentiation between subject, verb, direct object and adjective. Discuss that each element in the sentence if well chosen describes or reinforces a description (not just the adjectives).
- Teacher can identify adjective clusters, appositives, and adjective clauses to familiarize students with sentence variety and other ways of including description.
- Students write sentences describing members of their family.
- Next meeting teacher reviews sentence parts using the student-generated sentences.
Paragraph Work
- Students write a paragraph about how they are different from the rest of the kids. The rest of the kids can either be their brothers and sisters or their friends or peers at school.
- Each writer shares their topic sentence with two other people in a group of three. The other two predict the contents of the paragraph based on the topic sentence. Students then read their paragraphs to the group and the group sees if their predictions were confirmed.
- As a group they decide which details explain or describe the aspect identified in the topic sentence. Then the groups share the details and the topic sentence with the class.
- Class discusses use of main idea and supporting details in paragraphs.
“Becoming a Writer”
Pre-Reading
- Set background for story — explain “datedness” of some vocabulary, etc. Predict based on title.
- Ask students to reflect on a teacher who influenced them or who made them excited about a certain topic: what happened, how did the teacher foster interest? Have them share in partner groupings.
During-Reading
- Read piece aloud, stopping to explain vocabulary and ideas and to ask students surface level and deeper questions.
- Students re-read for homework marking passages with descriptive vocabulary. To prepare them for this, choose part of a paragraph to do together in class.
Post-Reading
- Journal assignment (in class or at home): Write about an English class you’ve experienced. Give descriptive details. OR How does the author’s attitude change towards writing? How does it change towards Mr. Fleagle? What is the catalyst of or cause of these changes?
- Lead class in verbal summary asking specific and pointed questions about what happened.
- Have students re-read story independently marking any places they had questions about.
- Students share questions in-groups and write unanswered questions on the board for group discussion.
- Students work in pairs identifying and sharing the descriptive passages and writing them on the board (noting page and paragraph numbers).
- Go over phrases. Point out how other words can be plugged in. Examples:
- As deadly as chloroform (paragraph 1)
- Irrepressible snickering.
What else can be described as deadly? What else can be irrepressible?
Paragraph Work
- Analyze paragraphs for main ideas and details (paragraph 2 is a good example).
- Have students draw a picture of Mr. Fleagle after re-reading paragraph 2. Was it easy or difficult to draw the picture? Why is it easy? Discuss that the author’s use of details helps the reader visualize the person he is describing.
- Ask students to write a paragraph describing someone who has impacted them in such a way that the reader can visualize the person. OR ask students to write about an event or situation that has impacted them — also with details to help the reader visualize exactly what occurred.
Sentence Work
- Ask students to identify sentences in the reading with active, interesting verbs and write them on the board with the verb underlined. Discuss and analyze.
- Have students go back to their own paragraphs and identify vivid verbs they used OR add vivid verbs in places where their partners have identified more description would be helpful.
- Focus on past tenses. Explain the following:
The simple past is used to write about a past time or event when the general time period has been identified.
Example: When Russell was a junior in high school, he experienced a significant event in his English class.
Explain how the time period is identified, where the past tense verbs are and how they are formed. Point out that the time period doesn’t have to be written in the sentence but can be inferred from a previously referenced time frame in the essay as a whole. Explain how Baker sets the time frame in the first paragraph of the essay.
- Using almost any paragraph in the essay, have students identify and list the past tense verbs. As a class, discuss where and how Baker identifies the time period.
- Brief explanation of the past perfect. Using the first sentence of the essay, ask students what time period the sentence is referring to. Explain that past perfect is used only when the authors want to emphasize something that happened before the past event, and therefore it is not used a lot. Briefly go over the form of the past perfect.
- Have students write a paragraph about a past event starting with a sentence that refers to a previous time period and uses the past perfect (as Russell does). The rest of the paragraph should be in the simple past.
Vocabulary Work
- Divide students into pairs and small groups. Have them find words in the text and guess their meaning. Then write these on the board. Suggested list:
- Chloroform (par. 1 — best to give this one)
- Notorious (par. 2)
- Prim to a fault (par. 2)
- Severe (par. 2)
- Starched (par. 2)
- Anticipated (par. 3)
- Ferocity (par. 3)
- Burst into gasps of irrepressible snickering (par. 3)
- Sprinkled (par. 5)
- Sprawled on the sofa (par. 6)
Help groups as needed so that definitions/meanings are good.
- Discuss and debrief.
Writing
Pre-Writing
- Go over the writing assignment and unpack what is required for each choice.
- Go back to the opening of the articles read. Compare the openings and discuss which ones are effective and why.
- Pass out sample openings handout. Ask students to rank the openings. Discuss which ones students ranked high and which one they ranked low. Look at different ways of opening, with dialogue, describing an event in the present putting the reader ”there,“ etc.
Drafting
- Students write opening paragraphs.
- In pairs, students read the opening paragraphs and answer the following questions on the same page as the paragraph.
- How does the paragraph set the scene or provide background information?
- How does it spark the interest of the reader?
- What do you like about the paragraph? Be specific!
- What questions do you have about the subject of the paragraph? Write them down for the author.
- Teacher hands out the reading “The Day I Was Fat” by Lois Diaz-Talty and asks students to read it. As students read they should highlight main ideas in one color (pink) and important details in another color (yellow). Ask volunteers to put up main ideas on the board. Discuss.
- Ask students to respond to the following questions. They can be discussed as a class.
- What kind of background information does the author provide?
- How does the author introduce the problem?
- What examples of how family members are afraid to tell her does the author provide?
- What event creates the turning point in her life?
- What examples of how she changes her lifestyle does she give?
- Teacher hands out sentence that contained dialogue to groups of 3–4 around the class. Students need to add the quotations and punctuation to make it clear that there is dialogue. Students put corrected sentences on the board and the class discusses. Teacher should also ask, “What new information is contained in the dialogue? How does the dialogue relate to the controlling idea of the essay?”
- Teacher asks the students to write body paragraphs that support the controlling idea of their essays, describing an event (or person) that was memorable and/or influenced them. They should include at least three lines of dialogue that help the reader understand the importance of the event or that communicate the guiding idea of the paragraph.
Editing
- Students bring in drafts and exchange with a partner who comments on main ideas and supporting details. Partners mark places they like and makes suggestions for places that are unclear (main ideas) or need more information (supporting details). Partners also comment on overall organization including background details, explanation of the “turning point” and explanation of how the writer was affected by the event or person.
- Collect drafts and comment on main ideas, supporting details, and overall organization.
- Choose sample student essay for analysis. Pass out and have student’s comment on what is good and make suggestions. Ask them to actually write their comments on the draft so they will be prepared for discussion.
- Discuss and debrief.
- Pass back drafts you have commented on. Students analyze your comments and write a list of changes they will make. Check these lists before excusing students.
- Students revise drafts.
Supplementary Materials and Activities
“Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self” – Alice Walker
Enrichment Reading: Schema Activating
This article is too long to use as a model for the students’ writing however it is a poignant example of moving personal experience and may help get the students’ creative ideas flowing. For these reasons this piece would make a nice schema building activity or
Introduction to the unit. The teacher could read the piece aloud and ask students to reflect on the meaning or importance of this event in the author’s life.
Supplementary Sentence Work: Descriptive Detail
- Pass out the paragraph below that is devoid of descriptive detail. Ask students to label all the places they want more information with “show me how,” “show me what,” “show me why,” etc. Afterwards read the paragraph slowly back to the class asking students to interrupt saying the phrase they had recorded at the moment teacher reads it. Debrief by discussing the reader’s need for more information and a clearer picture! Discuss ways of creating a more vivid picture.
As a child, the things that I experienced were really meaningful. I wondered at the horses walking down a dusty road. I liked seeing the crops in the fields and walking through the grass in the morning. A chicken that just got killed once freaked me out.
- Discuss the use of sensory detail and emotions to create a picture of self-development. Ask students what the five basic senses are. Brainstorm words often used to evoke those senses, for example, sight—watch, stare, etc. Ask students to then go through the next paragraph marking places where their questions are answered and labeling the senses used to provide detail.
Each event spoke with a cryptic tongue. And the moments of living slowly revealed their coded meanings. There was the wonder I felt when I first saw a brace of mountain like, spotted, black-and-white horses clopping down a dusty road through clouds of powdered clay. There was the delight I caught in seeing long straight rows of red and green vegetables stretching away in the sun to the bright horizon. There was the faint cool kill of sensuality when dew came on to my cheeks and shins as I ran down the wet green garden paths in the early morning. There was the experience of feeling death without dying that came from watching a chicken leap about blindly after its neck had been snapped by a quick twist of my father’s wrist.
– Excerpted from Black Boy, by Richard Wright
- After students have completed the activity ask them which reading was more effective and why. Then ask students to compose a descriptive paragraph about a moment or series of events in their lives in which they use a great deal of sensory detail.
"Notes of a Native Son"
Review of Tense and Narration
- Focusing on only the first two paragraphs, set the background of the story and read aloud to students, stopping to explain, paraphrase, etc. Explain that this is a narrative piece and is organized, for the most part, in chronological order.
- Ask students to re-read on their own, marking all the verbs and identifying their tenses. Explain that they will identify the main verbs, not the verbal phrases. Show examples.
- Go over the verb tenses found, identifying where the author makes tense shifts (past perfect in par. 1, simple present paragraph 2, past perfect paragraph 2; all the rest of the verbs are in the past tense. Discuss why these tense shifts occur.
- Have students write a summary of these two paragraphs. To facilitate this writing, ask a series of comprehension questions, which elicit the past. For example, When did Bawdiness father die? What happened on the same day? What had happened previously? Students can answer these questions in pairs, and write their sentences on the board. Choose questions that elicit the tenses you want to focus on and which derive an overall summary. Use the sentences on the board for analysis of form and function of the verbs.
- Ask students to circle or mark all the verbs they used. Have them identify the tenses and analyze whether there are any tense shifts. If so, is there a corresponding time reference change? If not, they may have made an incorrect tense error.
Note: Use this piece in conjunction with the Baker piece with regards to past tense and chronological order of events. Also, this piece may be used again in conjunction with work on verbal phrases in the Advertising unit.
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