This is the student voice portion of Episode 3 (Promptapalooza) where I talk to juniors about them being assigned or selecting their own prompt as writers.

This episode features in order:

-Ronan M

-Joe B

-Nate S

-Tommy L

-Merrick D

-Jake F

-Mrs. Laura M (Department head)

-John M

-Jason G

I am SO grateful and appreciative of my guests sharing their thoughts on this process. It really does help my instruction and planning and I truly love hearing their position and perspective.

I know this may feel terrifying and arduous (it is), but the writing is SO great when kids feel engaged and in charge.

Sketchnotes link here.

There will be an addendum to this podcast with student voices! Please be on the lookout for it!

We ask students to write an introduction statement and then "write the same idea but with different words" for a conclusion statement. In this episode, I talk about how I ask students to:

-develop a word bank for terms they will use repeatedly in their essay while they are writing outline or graphic organizer

-creating a word bank at the start of the project allows them to have the vocabulary on hand and use it as they are writing; I have found asking them to think about vocabulary in the middle of the writing process can be a stumbling block

-having students restructure a simple sentence so that they know how to write a conclusion statement with ease and confidence, it can be as easy as writing subject + predicate, and then reconfiguring it to be predicate + subject

Examples used in podcast:

Gender: feminist, equity, femininity, masculinity, gender roles, roles of women, roles of men

Historical: Factual, true, accurate, objective, literal

Social: Marxist (this will take some parsing) collective, societal, structural, demographical, social strata

Thesis statements examples:

Version 1: -When examining Arthur Miller’s The Crucible through critical lenses, it becomes evident that gender, historical, and social contexts play a significant role in shaping the events and characters in the story.

Version 2: Shifting perspectives to consider roles of women and men, the accurate depiction of hysteria in our country’s history, and the framework of social strata can highlight connections when analyzing the plot and characters of The Crucible by Arthur Miller.