Personal Essays Hanging Around Town

Our second published pieces of the year - our personal essays - are now up around town! You'll find a breakdown of whose pieces are hanging where below.

Each essayist chose a goal for the unit from three of the big focuses we had as a class: writing a strong introduction, organizing in paragraphs, or elaborating our essays by including anecdotes and examples to support our ideas. While each essayist had one goal in particular, you'll find evidence of all three goals in each of the pieces you read.

We used mentor texts (published essays) to help us write strong introductions and conclusions, sometimes mimicking the phrasing or craft moves (e.g. making an interesting comparison or including our experiences with our topic) that the mentor texts used in their introductions and conclusions. Using mentor texts in this way helps push us to try new things as writers. We also studied anecdotes in mentor texts and noticed that many of the craft moves we learned in personal narrative (like, dialogue, inner thought, and tiny actions) can still be used in our essays to support our thesis idea.

At the end of our unit, we wrote six word essays, inspired by Ernest Hemingway's six word memoir. This required us to synthesize our essay; after several weeks of elaborating, we had to get down to the heart of what we were trying to say across many paragraphs, and sometimes pages, and say it in just six words. This work is more challenging than it first appears! You can find our six word essays hanging outside of Room 101.

Here's where you can find our pieces (by the end of the year, we'll all have been shared in each place, but we will have some repeats of where you'll find our piece along the way):

Tavolo - Will, Caroline, Evan, Lauren, Scarlett, RJ, Ryan, Eva, Jackson, Matt, Antonio, and Emma

River Road Books - Vivian, Alex, Patrick, and Ben

Fairwinds - Georgia, Megan, Dylan, Annie, and Serafina

first published pieces are up around town!

Our first published pieces have been hung around town! You can find our published personal narratives at Tavolo, Fairwinds, and River Road Books. We're so lucky to have places in town that value our writing and allow us to hang it to share with others!

Personal narratives are true stories from our lives. In this unit, we worked hard to write in the moment, rather than a summary, using details like tiny actions, dialogue, setting, and inner thought. We set goals for our writing at the beginning of the unit, choosing one of the three goals: writing a strong lead, using a storytelling voice, or elaborating (stretching out) the heart of our story. Comparing the personal narrative on demand that we wrote on the first day of school with our published piece and on demand at the end of the unit, one month later, showed so much growth for us already as writers!

Here's a break down of whose pieces are where:

Tavolo - Emma, Antonio, Vivian, Jackson, Georgia, Annie, Matt, Megan, Ben, Alex, Dylan, and Patrick
Fairwinds - Evan, Eva, Caroline, Serafina, and RJ
River Road Books* - Ryan, Scarlett, Will, and Lauren

*pieces at River Road Books will be up by the end of next week. They're doing some renovations on Monday and thought it would be best for us to wait to hang them so that our pieces aren't damaged.

We hope you're able to visit the place hosting your piece, but also make it to the other places to read our classmates' pieces.

Published Fantasy Pieces Around Fair Haven

Room 101's published fantasy pieces are hanging around town! Thanks to Jack M., Caroline, Harris, and their families for helping to hang these pieces! As always, we're so appreciative of Fair Haven businesses that are supportive of our writing work.

When you check out our fantasy pieces, be sure to scan the QR code hanging in front of each piece to hear the writer read aloud his or her "about the author." You may also want to take our pieces out (they're our most elaborated pieces so far this year) so that you can read the entire story, including the character cards or setting maps we included at the back of our pieces (most of our fantasy books had these, and we wanted to include them, too!).

Here's where you can find our pieces:

Tavolo - Ellie, Connor, Cameron, Jack S., Maia, Marcus, Megan, Harris, Lily, Lucas, Christina, Maisy, Braiden, Quinn, and James

Fairwinds - Harry, Patrick, and Caroline

River Road Books - Sophie, Jack M., Sal, and Maddie

Published Personal Essays Around Fair Haven

We're excited to share that our personal essays have been hung around town! Thanks to Sal, Ellie, Maddie, and their families for helping to hang these pieces.

Each hanging piece also has a QR code in front of it. The QR codes are the black and white images that can be scanned with a smartphone (there are free apps to scan them). Once the QR code is scanned, you'll be sent to a link that will allow you to listen to the class read our six word essays.

Here's a breakdown of whose pieces are where:

Tavolo - Patrick, Harry, Sophie, Jack M., Sal, Megan, Harris, Lily, Lucas, Christina M., Maisy, Braiden, Quinn, Chrisina U., and James

Fairwinds - Ellie, Caroline, and Connor

River Road Books - Maddie, Jack S., Maia, and Marcus

We're so thankful to these Fair Haven businesses for allowing us the space to share our writing!

Realistic Fiction Pieces Around Fair Haven

We're excited to share that our realistic fiction pieces have been hung around town! Thanks to Caroline, Lucas, James, and their families for helping to hang these pieces.

Each hanging piece also has a QR code in front of it. The QR codes are the black and white images that can be scanned with a smartphone (there are free apps to scan them). Once the QR code is scanned, you'll be sent to a link that will allow you to listen to the writer read golden lines from his or her piece. Hearing the lines read aloud by the writer really brings the writing to life!

Golden lines were chosen, practiced, and recorded by the writer. The lines reflect the writing goals of each writer during this unit. Some of our goals were to use a variety of details (e.g. action, thought, dialogue, setting...) and to include sensory details and figurative language. (Some writers had the goal of add paragraphs more consistently throughout their piece, which won't be reflected in their recording.)

Here's a breakdown of whose pieces are where:

Tavolo - Jack S., Maia, Marcus, Harry, Patrick, Sophie, Jack M., Sal, Maddie, Megan, Harris, Lily, Lucas, Christina M., Maisy, and Braiden

Fairwinds - Quinn, Christina U., and James

River Road Books - Ellie, Caroline, Connor, and Cameron

We're so thankful to these Fair Haven businesses for allowing us the space to share our writing!

Poems in the Making by Mac

Poems, Poems in the making. In class we were recently making poetry books. The whole class was working really  hard. So was I. It was very hard work, too.

The video above contains photos of our class's poetry anthology covers taken by Mac. It's set to Some Nights by FUN, a song chosen by Mac for the video.