Toy Paragraph

Students in Language Arts (I think their schedules call it English, but I must be old school; it'll always be Language Arts to me) have been writing Toy Paragraphs these last few days. It is a combined personal essay/comparative essay. I use "essay" loosely as most of the writings are a paragraph or two long. This is just what we're looking for at the beginning of the year. We would like to see where our students are as writers and this essay gives us a bit of a pre-test.

So far, students wrote a first draft, then shared it with partners using "pair-share" to find out what their readers felt were their best comparisons. After that they wrote a second draft emphasizing more detail on those comparisons. We're now working on getting rid of dead words, and students will hand in a final draft on Monday. The final draft should be either typed or written in blue or black in. Cursive or print is fine. In a final draft, I'm looking for a student to take pride in submitting their best work. I hope this pride translates into few if any punctuation and grammar errors and writing they have spent time polishing.

Ask your student to read their Toy Paragraph to you!