Writing Samples Sent Home...plus Remembrance Day & Writing as Personal Experience

As mentioned in a previous post, a copy of student writing has been sent home for review and signature. This was their 'base line' assessment from September. They have since received specific feedback from me on how to improve those writing pieces so that they are better organized, more specific, easier for the reader to visualize and better convey a sense of drama, etc.

A copy of this revised piece will be sent home this week and I know you will see improvement in their writing! Students should be proud of their achievement.

There will be a third and final writing assignment (Personal Narrative) where students can further improve their current piece OR can apply skills learned to a new topic.

On a related note, as a tie in to Remembrance Day we took a break from our usual literacy program to take a look at two poems/lyrics: Flanders Fields by John Mcrae and A Pittance of Time by Terry Kelly.

Interestingly, both of these pieces were written by people responding to a personal experience. They were just 'ordinary people' who were moved by a moment and wanted to convey the moment to others. Thus, they started scribbling away on a piece of paper...from that evolved one of the most famous poems of all time, and a song.

This is how most writing starts: with a need to share an idea or an experience.

You'll notice both pieces are strong in mood/emotion. Both have strong images which are easy for the reader to visualize.  With the above pieces, we read the poems/lyrics and then answered the following questions:

• What is the main idea/theme?
• Choose 5 images you would use to convey the main idea of Flanders Fields in video form.
• How effective was this video images in representing the song's lyrics?