- After intense reading, discussion, and personal writing, students isolated ideas about which they felt strongly and felt the need to express. Working in pairs, we pushed each other to talk more about these ideas, helping one another decide if we each had enough to say about our idea.
- Working individually, students mapped out their claims and 3-4 chunks of supporting information from the text as well as a conclusion that expressed a new understanding.
- Drafting and revising followed. During the revision stage, students worked to: make sure sentences flow smoothly from one to the next; make sure the tone is consistent throughout and has a sense of authority; make sure text evidence is illustrated with quotes from the text and is clearly explained.
- Quick editing for capitals, punctuation, and spelling was the last step.
Looking ahead, we will now be reading several short nonfiction articles and writing in response to them.
