English 101, Unit One
Essential Question:
What kind of writer are you? An inquiry into what good writing means to you...
Conceptual Knowledge
1. The writing process is different for everybody, but it is always recursive.
2. Understand narrative as a literary form.
3. All writing has a voice, point of view, and intended audience.
4. Understand the value of peer editing and peer revision.
5. Understand the difference between peer editing and peer revision.
Procedural Knowledge
A. Produce writing that has a clear focus, a purpose, and a point and which demonstrates audience
awareness.
 How to focus writing (genres, point of view, audience)
 Determine purpose in writing (thesis)
 Understand how to read and write different genres
 Understand how to write for different audiences
 Recognize different voices in writing
 Develop your voice in your writing
B. Use revision to extend thinking about a topic, not just to rearrange material or “fix” mechanical
errors.
 Use writing to explore ideas and generate topics
 Revise written materials to further thinking
 Write one piece in different points of views
 Write one piece for different audiences
 Write one piece in different genres
C. Understand how to peer edit and peer revise.
 Learn strategies for effective partner/group work
 Learn strategies for peer editing
 Practice peer editing
 Learn strategies for peer revision
 Practice peer revision
Frontloading
Journal: Write about your relationship with writing. Do you love it, hate it, or something in
between? When do you use writing in your life? Is there someone who really helped or hindered
your writing? How do you think you will use writing in your future?
Survey: What kind of writer are you?
Have students fill out this survey, which will humorously detail different writing processes and
styles.
Anticipation/ reaction guide-- the writing process. Students will indicate what they do during their
writing process. We will go back after the unit project, and again at the end of the year, to see if
their process has changed.
Lesson Plan Sequence
Journal: (frontloading for reading, to be written on front page of 3-2-1) When did you learn to
read and write? How was that process for you?
Entrance ticket: Read “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie
and fill out 3-2-1: three things I liked about this piece, two things I wonder about, and one thing
this piece taught me about writing a memoir.
Hillock's Questioning Hierarchy:
1. Which book taught Sherman to read?
2. Why did Sherman want to learn to read so badly?
3. What novel did Sherman read in kindergarten?
4. What was the relationship between Sherman and his peers?
5. How were Indians who “failed” treated by non-Indians?
6. How was Sherman perceived by his teachers?
7. Why do you think that many Indians choose to fail?
8. Why does Sherman think that teaching writing to Indians is akin to “sav[ing] our lives?
9. How does the use of the words “I am smart. I am arrogant. I am lucky” serve to repeat a key
point in Sherman's success and why his has continued to teach writing?
Exploration One: Mod, Hip Hop or Classical? Who are you as a writer?
Written in Class
Explorations are informal writing times to relax and let your writing flow. You should worry less
about spelling and grammar and more about thinking through ideas and pondering options and
questions. For this Exploration, write about the song you chose to describe yourself as a writer.
Why did you pick this song? How does this song reflect your feelings about writing? If the song
has lyrics, pick some specific lyrics and explain how these relate to you as a writer. If the song has
no lyrics, why do you think you were drawn to this song to describe you as a writer? Are there
particular parts of the music that inspire you? Is this a song you like or dislike? Does this song
represent a specific genre (style) of music? What does this say about your style of writing?
Some other questions to ponder, if you would like… Do you listen to music when you write or do
you need silence? What sort of rituals do you have for writing? Do you think you write better
when you are in certain places?
[2+ pages (in class)]Journal: Bottom line, what is good writing to you? Is there a difference
between writing that you personally think is good and writing that is considered good in school?
Mind mapping: make a list of the characteristics of good writing. We will be adding to/revising
this list throughout the year, so be sure to hang on to it!
3 minute buzz- three thing you learned, one you are wondering about, and one thing you want to
know...
Guided reading: For a reading, to be determined. I want students to think about what does this
author do in their process of creation? What would this author say about good writing?
Free-Response think aloud-- What are you thinking as you write?
Exploration Two: Writing: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Written in Class
Explorations are informal writing times to relax and let your writing flow. You should worry less
about spelling and grammar and more about thinking through ideas and pondering options and
questions. For this Exploration, write about both a positive and negative academic writing
experience you have had.
For the good: What made it successful? What were the steps you followed in writing? How did
your teacher help or hinder this experience? Were there any lessons you learned about writing
from this experience?
For the bad/ugly: What made this traumatic? How did the teacher help or hinder this experience?
What could have made this experience better? Were there any lessons you learned about writing
from this experience?
Be sure to
a) describe these key moments in rich detail
b) question, wonder, think about these moments
What lessons can you take away from these experiences as a student? As a writing teacher, what
can I learn from your experiences?
[2+ pages (in class)]
Frayer model- Used to frontload narrative
Think aloud- Point of view and voice
Hot seat- an issue from different points of view
RAFTS- Practice different narratives in class
Exploration Three: Writing to be proud of!
Explorations are informal writing times to relax and let your writing flow. You should worry less
about spelling and grammar and more about thinking through ideas and pondering options and
questions. For this Exploration, choose several examples of writing that you are proud of- this can
be a copy of a funny email you have written, something you posted on Facebook, a blog, a letter, a
story you wrote in the fourth grade, a college application essay… please draw from your list of all
of the genres of writing you can remember doing in school and in your non-academic life. I want
this to be writing that YOU like- not a paper that you got an A on but hated writing. I want you
to explore what happens when writing feels good- those conditions that must exist for writing to
“flow.” What happens when you write something you are proud of? Consider the following
questions:
Why did you choose this piece of writing? Talk about how you created this piece of work. How
did you get the inspiration to write this? What parts of this writing example are your favorites?
Why? Do you think that these parts are examples of “good writing”? Why or why not? Do you
think you could revise this piece of writing to make it better? How and why (or why not?) What
is a lesson that you learned from this piece of writing that you can take with you as you approach
college writing assignments?
Then, analyze those pieces of writing as though they’re someone else’s: if you’d found these
somewhere, what would you think about this writer? What, specifically, do these texts do well?
What is each genre? How well does each one meet, or challenge, that genre’s conventions? What
particular characteristics do these texts have? [2+ pages]
*Please be sure to attach the writing samples to your Exploration
Group work
How to effectively work in groups (to set up good group work for the rest of the year)
 how to assign roles
 how each student can contribute uniquely
 how to help all students contribute
Activities:
What color learner are you? Activity for students to discover their learning style. I will talk a lot
about how important it is for students to take charge of their own learning and to make sure that I
am teaching to all colors! We will have a class discussion about what kinds of learners would work
best together in groups.
The colored hats- Introduce the notion of the colored hats. Have students complete a task (see
list of grammar tasks below), using the colored hats. Debrief the activity, talk about how it was
helpful to have the different roles in the groups. Tell students that they should always have a
variety of hats in each group. I will also talk about always making sure there are a variety of
learning colors in a group. Do students see a relationship between the colors of learners and the
colors of hats?
What a good group looks like- Students will draw Y charts on what a good group looks, feels, and
sounds like.
Jigsaw reading-Expert peer editing
Jigsaw reading-Steps for revision
End of unit
Questioning Circle-- “What is good writing” to review the unit before final projects...
Your unit writing project is an extended, more formal piece of writing. Your
Explorations should help generate ideas for your unit writing project, and while
you may be able to draw from them, you’ll need to reorganize and reframe the
material for your longer writing project.
Culminating Project-- Creative Non-Fiction
A Literacy Autobiography
or
A Memoir: All About Writing
or
A (True) Story About the Cultivation of Genius
or
.............. (Insert your title here!)
Compose a narrative of yourself-about your learning as a writer. What have you learned from
your experiences as a student and a writer? What can you share from your experience that might
resonate with the rest of your classmates? If you like, you could include the piece of writing you
brought to class as an example of writing you are proud of. You might incorporate your writing
into your narrative. The purpose of this narrative is to give us a glimpse into who you are as a
writer. I want you to take some risks as you do this and see how it feels and what you find out
from the compositional risk-taking. The approach is up to you.
Some ideas for content:
 You could develop a theme that runs across your writing experiences throughout your life.
 You could focus on a particular period of your life.
 You could develop a few incidents in depth.
 You could highlight just one intensely memorable experience in detail, or explore your
relationship with one person who has been important to your writing.
 You may focus on experiences in or out of school, or both.
 This experience you focus on could be positive, ambiguous, or negative.
Your unit project is a longer narrative of yourself as a writer—and your audience is up to you. You
might be writing for yourself, for your classmates, for me, for your best friend, for a struggling
writer, for your fans, for an extra-terrestrial! You can write it from any point of view you would
like- your own, a teacher's, your parents', your dog; you could even do it from multiple
perspectives! As you can see, you have plenty of freedom in how you write this narrative; but there
are some things you'll need to include..
In your Writing Project, you’ll want to make sure that you
 Relax and enjoy looking really hard at your own writing experiences;
 Center your unit project around exploring, questioning, and wondering about who you are
as a writer, what you do as a writer, and how what you do applies to many different kinds of
writing;
 Closely and carefully analyze what you do as a writer (as you did in Exploration Three);
 Incorporate evidence from your own writing to speak to/illustrate what you do as a writer;
 Technicalities: 4-5 pages, double-spaced, normal fonts and margins.
What’s due the day this is due:
In a stapled packet, you’ll want to turn in
 [written last, but first in the packet:] a Cover Letter, addressing some/all of the following:
what was your writing process like as you wrote this unit’s writing project? What challenges
did you encounter? How did you address, or attempt to address, those challenges? What
breakthroughs did you have? What do you wish you’d have done but perhaps you ran out
of time, or you didn’t quite know how to do? Also, revisit the strategies (below) that we
worked on this unit. What strategies did you especially gain confidence in, do you think?
What made that happen? [3/4 page, single-spaced]
 Your Writing Project (4 pages, double-spaced, normal fonts and margins, Works Cited
page, if necessary.)
 Your class colleagues’ written response
 Explorations 1-3
 Pick at least four pieces of in-class work that you think really contributed to this unit
project. Please let me know, in your cover letter, how these pieces helped you plan your
writing.
Writing Strategies We’ll Be Working On Throughout This Unit:
You should be able to answer these questions by the end of the unit::

Why am I writing this? How can I say this distinctively? (How to write with a clear focus, a
purpose, an audience, an awareness of why this piece of writing is important. Don’t fake it!
Think of a way to make this meaningful to you!)
 How do I go about this impossible task? (Where to begin: explore strategies for generating
ideas, organizing material, providing and learning from feedback.)
 OK, I spent an hour cranking this out- now I’m done, right?!? (Wrong. How to use
revision to realize what is great in your writing and how to expand on that.)
 You want me to come up with something new?!? (Using writing as a tool for exploration.
It is OK not to know exactly where you are going when you begin your writing. A good
writer lets if flow out and learns how to pick out the good from the bad. When you are
surprised by something you say in your writing, you are on to something!)