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On Friday we wrote about self-consciousness and self-empowerment, but did not share what we wrote.

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Self-Empowerment and Self-Consciousness - Click on pic to open PDF.

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Students defined the two terms on their own and then compared notes. White board notes incluse what we thought about and discussed.

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How to come up with a topic sentence that allows for analysis. This means there has to be something to prove, not just stating a fact.

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Part one is evaluating prompts, finding evidence, and organizing ideas before writing. We break it down step by step to help students learn to think about what they want to say in a way that will lead them to organizing their ideas effectively in their writing.

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After the planning comes the writing. Including in the writing steps is EDITING and REVISING. Students have a CLEAR Checklist to help them check to see if they are meeting all of the assignment's requirements. Students must print a draft, read it aloud, then make corrections and hand in both drafts.

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For eighth grade students, the CLEAR paragraphs are already familiar. Those who have demonstrated independent mastery (or close to mastery) of writing a CLEAR paragraph wrote two paragraphs with a dangling thesis to connect the content of the two paragraphs. This is a way we differentiate work to keep all students challenged.

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You can click on the sample paragraphs pictured here to see two complete paragraphs. The first is a first draft of a paragraph that has most of the parts of a CLEAR paragraph, but not all. There is also room for expanding on ideas.

The second paragraph is an example that shows how to add depth and really break down the evidence in the analysis with detailed and complete explanations.

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Thunderbolt Kid Descriptive Writing Example

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Today juggled a variety of assignments:
1) Finished writing their paragraphs, conferencing with Jenn and Liz as needed.
2) Edited and revised their paragraphs using a checklist.
3) Filled in their weekly reflection.
4) Began a Choice Story Assignment where they self-selected a story to read and annotate. We will complete the stories on Monday.

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After reading stories together in class and discussing theme, motifs, symbols, and descriptive language, students chose their own stories and carefully read stories on their own and annotated the texts.

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#FunFact: It is thought that scented candles were first created in #India, as they made wax by boiling fruit of the cinnamon tree! #Candles #sweet #trivia