Writing an essay

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• havo
• Leerjaar 4

Lesson created 

by Ms Backx

for Mavo Muurhuizen

havo 4 

June 2021

Writing an Essay

Based on

1) Teaching Adolescent Writers by Kelly Gallagher

2) Reading and Writing Short Essays by Morton A. Miller

Tables in groups of 4

Post Its (2 colours) 

A3 paper and A3 testpaper (if you can find it)

Part One 

Start with what you already have: 

Product review of a bamboo bicycle

 

https://booomers.com/blogs/news/bamboo-bike-review-fast-easy-to-manoeuvre-and-fun

Ask students to form groups of 4 and Hand out the tests of testweek 3

Instruction: 

* within the group of 4, make couples for checking and grading

each other’s work. 

*Use a pencil, not a pen

*Don’t be sweet, be realistic (that’s nicer) 

Give students 20 minutes to thoroughly check each other’s work and walk around assisting

What are you looking for?

* Spelling errors

* Grammatical errors

* Non-fluent sentences

and * Informational errors (maybe later)

Teacher encourages group discussion and positive feedback among students!

Use Post-It  1.

To give your classmate feedback and inform him/her 

Why

you are grading their work with Insufficient/Sufficient/Good/Excellent

Part  2

Continue with the hand-out:

Thesis: A good piece of writing is always divided into logical paragraphs

P. 68 copy to be handed out

Instruction

Use your pencil to DIVIDE the text 

about the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers into paragraphs and give the paragraphs a TITLE. 

Share with your group! Discuss! 

10 minutes 

For Variation you could let the write titles on the whiteboard or in Padlet

What were you looking for? 

* How do we divide texts into logical paragraphs?

* Which information do we group together or not?

* Are you itching to check your own writing again? 

(because none of you made paragraphs...) 

Use Post-It  2.

By now you can guess your assignment:

Use this post-it to write down titles to the paragraphs that you are dividing your own text into

Hand in your work with the 2 post-its

I have given my lovely classmate some positive feedback on their writing

Yes, I have!

No, I haven’t

Maybe, I tried

Yes, I know how to divide a text into paragraphs that make sense

Yes, I do

No, I don't

Not sure

Thank you!

Have a great weekend!