We are about to begin our new unit of study on essay writing. Essay-writing has become a hot topic in schools, especially because many standardized tests, including the SAT, have added a writing section, usually in the form of an essay. Students are asked to write essays well into their college years, and we believe it’s crucial that they get a strong start, learning the skills and strategies to craft compelling essays, as well as developing a positive attitude toward the genre.
Your children will become essayists over the next several weeks, and they’ll start by collecting essay ideas in their notebooks for a little bit of time. Then they’ll develop their ideas through the now-familiar writing process, choosing an essay idea and turning it into a draft that will be revised and edited until it becomes an essay to publish.
As your children move through this unit, they’ll learn how essayists take an idea, an observation, or a question, and grow ideas about it. They will learn how to turn an idea they have into a thesis, of sorts, and then how to present evidence to support their claims about that thesis. Our experience tells me that it may be difficult, at first, for young writers to switch gears toward essay writing, especially because they’ve gotten so strong at writing personal narratives. A large part of the energy in this unit will be dedicated to familiarizing students with the genre of essay, to learning to think and organize thoughts like an essayist, and to crafting an essay that moves smoothly from the thesis statement to the supporting evidence. We will move quickly through the writing process, and we will revisit essay-writing again later in the year.
As always, we will continue to work on the mechanics of writing with your children. At this point, there is a clear expectation that writers pay attention to spelling and punctuation. Once students learn how to spell a certain word or use a particular kind of punctuation, we want to see it reflected in their writing, even in notebook entries and first drafts. During this unit, your children will learn more about the variety of uses for commas. Often when students are learning something new they tend to overuse it, so you may see an overabundance of commas for a while--their use of commas will soon become more precise.
We thank you for supporting your child’s writing development. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
Lynnea West and Jason Pusey
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