by Robyn R. Jackson
It is the quality of our work which will please God and not the quantity.
Mahatma Gandhi
When I first started teaching, I believed that the best way to teach writing was to have students write. My students, who really struggled with writing, were so far behind that I thought they needed as much practice as possible. I designed a nine-week unit focused on writing essays and decided that we would write one essay each week. Here's the way it worked. I picked eight controversial topics—the death penalty, euthanasia, affirmative action, etc.—and I divided the students into pairs. I assigned two pairs to research each topic. One pair prepared a presentation arguing for the issue and the other pair argued against it. Each Monday, I introduced the issue to the class and then we completed vocabulary exercises the rest of the period. On Tuesday, one group argued for the issue. Wednesday, the other group argued against the issue. On Thursday, we had a class discussion about the issue to allow students to develop their own arguments regarding the issue. We ended the class on Thursday by writing an outline of a five-paragraph essay arguing for or against the issue. On Friday, students would come to class and spend the 45-minute period writing their essays.
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