Gr6 Humanities: Our Writing Process

Thank you to everyone who came out to Family Friday to learn more about the work we’re doing.  We appreciated you taking the time to read through our essays and give us valuable feedback.  Our goal is to internalize our writing process and be able to guide our own thinking by using the supports of the essay structure.

We began our process by brainstorming beliefs that were important in our lives.  Once, we decided on a belief we turned it into a thesis statement.  As a class, we developed an template to serve as a outline of the essay progression.  We thought about how the belief came to be, what role it plays in our lives, and what are hopes are for the future.

To make sure we maintained the integrity of the essay structure, we used an essay planning sheet to develop our topic sentences for each paragraph.  One of our goals during that process was to transition the reader into new paragraphs by signaling to the reader that there had been a shift in time.  We used introductory phrases as signals.

Once our structure was clearly established, we began to draft.  Students worked on expanding the details of their personal experiences and further expressing the depth of their belief.

In partnerships and small groups, students gave feedback to each other and made important revisions to their work.  Today, students were able to receive feedback from the families who came to visit.

Students are continuing to focus on their essay structure and their sentence structure as they make revisions and edits for their final drafts.

Questions we’ve asked while we’re revising:

Our grammar goals: