4th grade writers are flexing their essay-writing skills in a week-long process to publish an essay on a topic of their choosing. In recent weeks, they used mentor text to consider the purpose and organization of essays. They studied and color-coded the parts in a four paragraph essay, to see how it introduces a topic, makes a claim, expands for one paragraph about each part of the claim, then concludes. For their first essay, published recently, each student wrote using the same, provided thesis about Hillbrook’s campus and classrooms. Their work hangs next to their author photo in the classroom.
On Monday, after a warm-up correcting grammatical errors in sentences, students began the essay-writing process again, this time brainstorming and mapping ideas for a four paragraph essay on a topic of their own choosing. Idea generation can be hard! Luckily, students’ year-long writers’ notebook practice gave them lots of their own work to look back on for inspiration. Students’ Heart Maps, memory-writing, lists of important people, places and hobbies, and prior warm-ups and projects got them in the groove to chart their topic and what major details they plan to include in the body paragraphs. They’ll be challenged as they write to implement essay organization while including effective examples and evidence, practicing more sophisticated transition language, and more. Within the week, they’ll have moved through the entire writing process again and published their new essays. Write on!