After having written the three body paragraphs, it is time to write the Introductory paragraph. Several students were missing today, so we recorded this instruction as well. We wrote an intro for our Chrysalids (influences on David) paragraph. Your paragraph will be similar but should not copy any parts of this one.

The students took turns with each writing one of the sentences for our two previous body paragraphs. In this video, seven volunteers collectively write the third of our body paragraphs, with three others helping to edit them after the fact. The importance of this activity was that students held up their sign to indicate what the purpose was for each sentence as we wrote them. It should hopefully help everyone understand what a sentence number two should accomplish or how to approach a sentence number six. After trying this activity and having students write the three paragraphs themselves, they said they “got it” and it finally clicked for a lot of them. When I asked them to go back to their rating scale that they’ve kept to indicate their “comfort level” as we have approached these different steps in writing a Formal Literary Essay, where several originally rated themselves as feeling a level 6 or 7 (slightly comfortable), many of them just adjusted their scale to indicate their comfort with these types of paragraphs is at a 9 or 10, as confident as can be. Awesome!!

Here is the Essay – body paragraphs – written collectively by students.

PS: Tre was missing this day, so they included a little warm “well wishing” to him at the end.