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Classroom Spotlight: Our Literary Scribes: Celebrating the Writing Process in 6th Grade Language Arts
Our Literary Scribes: Celebrating the Writing Process in 6th Grade Language Arts
The 6th Graders had a reading party. Not really a “party” in the traditional sense (there were no cookies or cake), but rather a celebration of writers, their craft, and the product of their labor. We had the party a coupleof months ago in 6th grade Language Arts classes to celebrate students’ written mimics of Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street. The novel is stylistically unusual, with short chapters made up of poetic prose. Each chapter is a vignette about an aspect of the author’s Mexican-American life in 1960s Chicago, though technically the novel is considered fiction. The students were charged with mimicking one of her chapters, using the literary elements learned in class–such as simile, metaphor, personification, rhythm, and rhyme–while writing about their life experiences. The pieces are as varied as the students themselves, and their final products are nothing short of literary. They demonstrate an ability to create tone and imagery, conjuring a vivid understanding of not only what is being described, but the writer's connection to it. Their works were the delicacies served as our party’s fare.Our party began and ended in solemnity. As they quietly filed into class one Friday before a school break, each student found a printed copy of their final drafts at their seat. They also received a small index card with another student’s name upon it, and when directed, moved to the seat belonging to that student and read their paper. Having finished reading one paper, they came up to the front of the room and traded in their card for another, proceeded silently to a different seat to read, and so on. This silent “popcorn reading” celebration continued for nearly forty minutes, after which students espoused their admiration for each other’s work. Interestingly, each thought the papers they read were better than their own, a charming moment of classmate collegiality to be sure, but also a display of self-criticism that can and will interfere with the creative process of writing. Hence, the need for celebration, with many expressions of wonder and exclamations of “Notice how wonderful everyone’s writing is!”
In the interest of inviting the larger Brandeis community to our party, I thought I would share some short, randomly selected excerpts from several different mimic chapters. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.
- “Their street comes to a dead end, and you can hear the sound of cars next to it, but it’s like we are in a gopher’s hole, because we aren’t next to the road when we are on my grandparent’s street, we’re in a whole different world.”
- “The Ranch is spacious, with massive windows and fields so big you'd think they are stretching before exercise.”
- “The door was too stubborn to let us in so we’d have to push our shoulders against it, as if we were playing football.”
- “Sometimes, her clothes are like a comfortable little bed for you to put your head on in restaurants when you’re tired of a long day, to forget your worries and take in the smells of pizza baking and garlic bread dipped in oil, like a little river of smell and comfort slowly rushing into your nose.”
- “Inside the cabin the creaky smooth floor holds the weak and tired furniture.”
- “My brother, he is active. Always running around like a cheetah on a sugar rush, looking for something to do.”
These excerpts are but a small sample, and they were easy to find among the multitude of papers turned in for the class. Furthermore, none were edited post submission, but rather the final products from the students themselves. Brilliant writing is literally everywhere in our student’s work; one need only give our scholars and writers the opportunity to find themselves and their voices on the pages.
