Essay Writing with "E IEI O" Structure!

          I have focused many of this summer's private lessons with middle-schoolers on strengthening their essay-writing skills. No amount of outlining or filling in graphic organizers has as much influence on my students as deconstructing sample body paragraphs based on my E-IEI-O mnemonic device for the five essential elements of every body paragraph:

          I provide examples of both weak and strong paragraphs, and read them aloud with my students. I then give them a checklist that calls their attention to each of the five structural elements above, to consider in terms of: vagueness versus specificity in word choices and examples; whether each sentence builds upon the preceding one; unnecessary repetition of words or ideas; clarity of assertions and examples; smoothness of transitions; inclusion of contextual set-up for quotations; and the overall power of the writer's insights. After this editorial exercise, which empowers them to fill the margins with notes guided by the checklist, I assign a single paragraph response to a short story or a poem. The students may write about the theme of the literary work, or focus on the style and power of the writing. Full of the desire to emulate the strong essay paragraphs that made them exclaim, "Ah, I didn't see that!," and the even greater desire to avoid emulating the weak essay paragraphs whose margins they filled with questions and critical words, they write. 

          Today I have created this example paragraph below, for students to emulate, based on a poem from my book, Writing Success Through Poetry, which you will find on page 52:"Thirsty Plant and Cloudy Sky." This would be helpful for a middle-school student to read and study, along with the poem (so get yourself a copy of my book with a quick click on the link embedded in the title above). 

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“E-IEI-O” Example Essay Paragraph About the Theme of a Poem: “Thirsty Plant and Cloudy Sky,” by Susan L. Lipson

Structure of a theme-based paragraph about literature

E-Establish theme

I-Illustrate theme with quotations from text, set up in context

E-Explain what illustration/quotation shows the reader

I-Interpret implications of the quotation that expand on established theme

O-Overall “take-away” lesson for broader understanding of theme

“Thirsty Plant and Cloudy Sky,” a poem by Susan L. Lipson, presents a metaphorical conversation between two personified friends--Plant and Sky--in which Plant offers comfort to his “blue” friend, but not solely out of love for Sky. Plant initially exhibits compassion: “Now sob, my friend; release a thunderous yell! Shared tears help friendships grow….” But then Plant adds quietly, “And ME as well--truth to tell!” The murmured confession of the ulterior motive alerts the reader that Plant may be encouraging the Sky’s sobbing--that is, rain--to quench his own thirst and boost his growth. Although the reader may doubt the Plant’s love for his friend, viewing Plant as a user more than a giver, no harm has actually occurred, only a mutually beneficial rain. Thus, the poem teaches a lesson about the codependence between friends and the importance of looking at the outcome of our interactions as well as the intentions behind them. 

Notice especially that the essay paragraph provides enough information about the poem it discusses that you don't have to read the poem in order to understand the paragraph. Also note how the "Overall sentence" broadens the topic established in the first sentence, and how the "Interpret line" offers an opinion based on "reading between the lines" (not based on the text itself, but on an opinion of what seems to be implied).

Remember AMELIA BEDELIA and Her Confusion over Homophones?

     Puns make use of the double-meanings within homophones--words that sound the same, but have different meanings--to make us laugh…or GROAN, in many cases! I recall, as a child, finding this pun-based joke surprisingly amusing:

                   What's black and white and red [read] everywhere?... A newspaper!

Forget the fact that the joke is completely out-of-date, since many people don't bother with newspapers anymore. The point is that everyone enjoys, even though they might cover their enjoyment with a groan, figuring out a clever pun--especially children.

       

       The classic pun-centered children's books about Amelia Bedelia featured the hapless housekeeper  confusing her orders from her boss because she heard homophones instead of the boss's intended words. When told to "dust" the furniture, she throws dust around the room; when told to "dress" the chicken, she puts the dead bird into a doll-sized dress, etc. Homophones comprise both homographs, words spelled identically that have different meanings (such as "dust" and "dress"), and homonyms, words spelled differently that sound the same and have different meanings ("red" and "read," "bare" and "bear," "knight" and "night," etc.). Young children can also enjoy a homophonically humorous picture book by Fred Gwynne (a.k.a. the actor who played "Herman Munster" on the old TV sitcom, "The Munsters"), titled The King Who Rained.   Using Gwynne's book, as well as Pun and Games, by Richard Lederer,  I recently prompted some of my private students, from 8 to 12 years old, to write their own mini-stories about someone's confusion over a homophone. Of course, they also had to use my "D.A.D. Technique" (Description, Action, Dialogue) to paint a word picture. This year, as always, the kids show obvious enjoyment in playing with words and creating slapstick scenes. Plus, it forces them to brainstorm lists of homophones, and appreciate the complexity of our language in the process. 

Homograph Confusion Exercise--Student Sample, by A.C.

“COAT”

“Hey, you over there, go put two more coats on the wall. It looks a little bare,” I direct the worker. I turn away and shout to my boss, “We’re putting two more coats on the wall…” I check the map [by map, this young author meant architectural plans]. “Wall X on the right wing,” I tell him. He nods.

Wiping sweat from my brow, I start drilling again. I turn back around, hoping the worker is back with paint by now. But when I turn around, there are two yellow construction jackets plastered to the wall and no worker in sight. “What the—“ I stammer. All the workers around me burst out laughing.

“It was a good joke, Kim,” one of them sputters.

“It’s not funny,” I bark at them, but even my boss has started to laugh, so I can’t help but join in.

TRY WRITING YOUR OWN SCENE USING HOMOPHONIC HUMOR! And please post your comments below (or on my Google+ page). 

Creating a First-Person Narrative Out of a Nonfiction Article

     After reading a book called The Invisible Thread, I decided that this memoir, about a white woman who befriended a hungry child begging outside her New York apartment building, would make a very interesting writing prompt. The woman, Laura Schroff, bought lunch for the boy, Maurice, and after talking with this appreciative, earnest, abused child, she promised to keep him from going hungry. In addition to taking him out for lunch once a week for years, she even packed him lunches for school, which she left with her doorman for Maurice to pick up every day. I read a description of the book to my students from ages 10 to 14, and offered six different prompts from which they could choose. An assignment that called for an exploration of narrative voice would offer a way to not only enrich writing skills and imagination, but also to elicit compassion from my students. My students created stories from the boy's point-of-view, from the woman's point-of-view, and from her doorman's point-of-view (the doorman delivered packed lunches to the hungry boy). Some chose the prompt about two kids during school lunch time, one with daily lunches who notices another who never has lunches. And the last prompt was to write a poem about this story of compassion.

     Featured below is one of the remarkable pieces I've collected in response to this prompt. This story was written by an eighth grader, F.H., and he displays proudly his recently developed skill with the third-person omniscient voice. The details, too, add such richness to the scene, such as: "They froze, as if having a staring contest"--one of my favorite similes. Here are "then and now" photos of the real people who have become the characters of my student's story, which appears below them.

TRUST : A New Thing  

     Mother was having another ‘business meeting’ with the local drug gangs again. Maurice knew well enough what that really meant, but nonetheless, he had to leave the house early for school. Not that it was an issue. The old house smelled of drugs enough to make police dogs at school sniff and bark at him. Maurice’s feet took him out of the ghettos and into the nicer area of town. There were big glass skyscrapers and fancy people in their fancy suits. This was the best place to be able to find money – there was enough dropped on the ground.  Just a few feet away, he noticed an annoyed- looking woman whose face read: “Taxi. Where is the taxi?” She would do. He walked up to her and pulled on the sleeve of her coat. They froze, as if having a staring contest. But Maurice’s stomach couldn’t hold it any longer. Not daring to break eye contact, Maurice told her. “I’m hungry.”

     Suddenly, the woman seemed to realize what he was doing here. Her eyes searched the road, and she pointed her finger to her prey. She walked off in her gesture’s direction. Maurice turned, unsure if he should follow. When he didn’t, she turned, and asked him, “Do you want a cheeseburger?” He felt a rush of excitement, and he nodded, unable to find his tongue. 

     The stranger bought him a cheeseburger, and a shake, and a whole serving of fries. It wasn’t exactly a traditional breakfast, but, Maurice felt gratitude towards the woman. Just as he was about to finish his fries, he realized that they could help later. He put the fries into the paper bag, now empty, and placed it carefully in his backpack. “They’ll get cold, you know.” Maurice felt his cheeks turn pink, the way it would if his hand had been caught in the cookie jar. Not that they could afford cookies.

     “I’m uh, you know, saving them for – for lunch.” He seemed to force those last words out, and the woman, still nameless to him, studied him with a perplexed face. Her eyes drilled into his face.

      “Do you want me to pack you lunch for tomorrow?” 

      

      Maurice was shocked. “You don’t need to do that, ma’am.” Maurice was scared, questioning where this pity had come from. He knew that she was trying to help, but Maurice knew not to trust people so easily. But the lady was not listening. She was writing something on the back of the receipt, and she handed to him her address.

      “I’ll leave early tomorrow, so you’ll just go to this building”-- she pointed her pen to the address –-“and get your lunch from my doorman.” She got up before Maurice could object. “C’mon. I’ll walk you to school. It’s over there, right?" Maurice nodded, and followed her out the building, dazed. Neither of them spoke, Maurice knowing she didn't want to ask him personal questions. Onlookers seemed to watch them with craning necks--an African American kid dressed like he came out of the homeless shelter, and a white woman in a work suit with two briefcases. Yet it was the police officers that scared Maurice. They halted and narrowed their eyes, but the lady kept on walking. They had reached the school. 

     “By the way, I’m Laura.” The woman looked at her watch and jumped. 

     But just before she could walk off, Maurice told her, "I'm Maurice." She waved at him, and Maurice waved back. Maybe he could trust her. 

DO I HEAR APPLAUSE? (Oh, that's from my hands! How about yours?) Applaud in a comment below or on my Google+ page, if you have trouble commenting here. THANKS!

Sharing Words from Teacher Heaven

I am in Teacher Heaven after reading an absolutely brilliant literary response to this quotation from H.G. Wells: "Advertising is legalized lying." This young author has been fascinated by our previous lessons on the subtleties of word-spinning, as seen in ads for products and political campaigns. He has synthesized much of our discussions in this lively, wry essay on advertising. And his essay structure outshines many high school, even college-age, writers. The only editing I did--I swear!--is to alter some misspelled words and delete one superfluous phrase. The vocabulary and information about obscure plants, etc., are all his! I provided nothing, in terms of the information he shared, except for the initial prompt by H. G. Wells.

Legal Lying

 by D.S., age 10 

H.G Wells once declared that advertising was simply legalized lying. In many cases, his statement is completely true, but to understand why, we will have to take a journey back in time to around 4000 BC, the time of the ancient Egyptians and Greeks. In the large cities of these ancient civilizations, merchants crowded together in marketplaces and inevitably competition arose. This competition sparked the roots of modern ads. In an environment where people had their choice of where to shop, instead of depending on one sole shopkeeper, the merchants had to squabble over the stream of revenue that came into the marketplace. As the marketplace rapidly expanded, the merchants would have to convince shoppers to buy at their stall. Soon, shrewd shopkeepers found out how to present their product in the most favorable way possible, namely by omitting some important information. In this way, "Discounted Week-Old Cabbage" was discarded in favor of "Cheap Value Cabbage." Advertising, and its association with lying, was born. Meanwhile, in archaic England, the first advertising had taken a slightly different path. Shops began to hang wooden signs outside of buildings to publicize their establishments and to clarify what they did. For example, a wooden board with a drink on it would be a pub, or a hammer and nails would mean Carpenter, and so on, and so forth. The great-granddaddy of the classifieds in the newspapers of today were born.

Let us fast-forward now to the 16th century. The first paid ads are beginning to pop up in the newspapers of the time. The most shrewd of the advertisers have realized that the public believes that the newspapers are to be trusted and that many people read them, so, taking advantage of the lust for money that many people possess, they paid advertisers money in order to let their ads reach a wider audience. This was also when people began to realize that the products in ads weren’t exactly what they claimed to be. By the time Mark Twain rolled around, "quack" medicines featured in "quack" magazines and paid testimonials had already begun to crop up around the Western world. Admakers and entrepreneurs were really little more than scammers who took advantage of the public`s gullibility to sell products with grand names like Revalenta Arabica, which took advantage of the obscurity of the name in order to attract customers into thinking that it was some new scientific wonder, which was, in fact, simply dried lentil flour with the nutritional value of ground split peas. In the face of this, people like H.G Wells slowly began to realize the true nature of advertising.

Let us now move to the early 20th century. In the face of increasing public pressure, lawmakers began to take steps towards limiting and restricting advertising. Before the turn of the century, advertisers were required to state any harmful information or anything negative associated with the product. But once again, admakers found a way around the restrictions. At the turn of the century, we arrive at our predicament today.

Many of you, I am certain, have seen the fine grey print that seems to haunt the bottom of every ad site, or heard the speed-talk at the end of commercials. This is what has become of the efforts to stem the onset of false advertising. The truth is hidden away nearly out of sight to the common consumer. What is happening today is like governing mining with laws written when there was still a man shaking a pan over a stream--if you are an adult not in prison, you can stake a claim. Companies can comply with the law by hiding the information NEARLY out of sight, and still do perfectly legal actions. So, at the end of this long journey, H.G Wells turned out to be right. But all we can do for now is keep our eyes open and ears sharp for the legal lying all around us.

Art Gives Birth to Art: Poetry Born of Photo Prompts

My students, when writing fiction, have heard me coach them with a lot of film references:

• "Your words are the cables that connect the DVD playing in your mind with the DVD player in your reader's mind." (I used to say "video" and "VHS player," so you know how long I've been using this metaphor!)
• "When you write dialogue, think of yourself as a film or TV director, and make your characters do interesting actions while they talk, actions that show us who they are. Like the old saying goes, 'Actions speak louder than words' sometimes."
• "Be sure to add description and action to a dialogue to bring it to life like a movie in the reader's mind; otherwise, if you use only dialogue, it's like listening to a radio show, not a movie."
• "Movies don't start with 'once upon a time'; they pull you right into a scene, and then allow you to figure out what's going on. Write that way, starting with a scene."
• "When you switch speakers in a scene with a lot of dialogue, you indent to help the reader follow who's speaking; it's like a close-up shot in a movie, alternating from one person to another, during a conversation."
• "You can show a character with greater depth, sometimes, via the reactions of other supporting characters. Like in a movie, when an actor says a line, and the others raise their eyebrows and nudge each other, the viewers question their first impression of the main character, which makes that character more interesting."
• "If you rely on adverbs, rather than vivid verbs, to show how an action is done, you're not showing a scene."

My students also hear me comparing the editing process to sculpting or painting:

• "Your first draft is like a piece of wood or stone that you've carved with a basic shape. Then you start editing, or sanding your sculpture, adding texture and changing the form in certain spots. You might chip off certain pieces and then smooth them over again. That's what I call 'editing for substance.' Finally, you polish the sculpture with shellac, or whatever polish you use--and that's the proofreading stage, where you fix the spelling, punctuation, and grammar mistakes and make the whole piece shine."
• "Start your scenes like a painter starts filling a canvas. Add color with descriptions and actions. Add texture with words that convey a certain mood."
• "When you overuse figurative language, it's like filling a wall with beautiful paintings that all compete with each other so you don't know where to look or what to focus on. One well-placed painting, like a strong metaphor or simile, will draw your eye and make you think, but too many will overwhelm you."

                       

And when I teach poetry, I often give musical references:

• "A poem is a song without music; its rhythm can evoke mood as much as its words."
• "You can rap a couplet poem!"
• "Repetitive phrases act like a song chorus, to make the reader remember the point of the poem."

In short, what I'm writing about today is this:

The appreciation of art prompts the creation of art--and vice versa.

That is why I not only talk about other art forms to teach writing, but also use those art forms as prompts. Today's exemplary student work was prompted by a photo of a boy blowing bubbles while sitting in a wheelchair. The poem, by P.K., age 11, reflects extraordinary empathy from the able-bodied poet. 

Popped Bubble

Bubbles

have courage

whereas I

have fear.

They have courage to fly away,

but I have a fear of standing up.

They have the courage

to face danger in the world,

but I have a fear

of confronting life.

Bubbles

can fly

as high as they like,

but nobody

will get in their way.

Nature,

Life,

always get in my way.

They push me till I can no longer stand.

If I try, they will push me again.

They do this until

I am powerless,

courageless.

I am a popped bubble

in a wheelchair.

Enough said!