Body : Explain to the students that they are beginning the stages of "Response Writing" to a written work. Explain that rather than reading a written work first, the class will work on the more important part?how to engage in responding. After informing the students that this is a money based activity, and that students are welcome to keep the money but not steal from others, take out the unopened roll of quarters and break it open. Explain to the students that they are each to be given one quarter (even if they don't intend to keep one) and to examine their and their partner's quarter. Then explain that as soon as each student takes a quarter, he/she should write a short five-sentence paragraph which explains "what just happened"--meaning what was the process of watching the teacher come around the room, taking a quarter, looking at a partner's, and writing about what just happened. The students will spend at least three to five minutes writing their short paragraphs.
Next, ask each student to share his paragraph with the student who he is sitting next to and whose quarter he examined earlier. Have them read their paragraphs aloud to each other and compare their very alike writing?looking for similarities. When they are done (in about two minutes) write the words "Plot Summary" or "Summarization" on the board. Call the students to attention, and tell the students that you want them to try and not do that style of writing again when writing about literature or other published works, as it is called "Plot Summary" or "Summarization," which will generally result in a very surface level response to something read. Also, explain to the students that just like their quarter paragraphs, summary writing often results in lack of originality in students' writing and often makes one student?s paper seem just like another.
Now explain to the class that you would much rather they do something different. Write the word "Response" on the board and explain to them that it's much more important for the students to try and demonstrate how they feel about a subject, rather than to simply explain what the subject is. They can do this by asking themselves and answering the questions, "How does this make me feel and why?" This causes them to connect emotively and intellectually with the piece. This kind of demonstrative writing is called "Response." Then ask the students to try and write a short paragraph which demonstrates how they feel about the quarter they have, how they feel about how their quarter compares with another student's, and why they feel that way. Next, ask each student to share his paragraph with the student who is next to him. Have them read their paragraphs aloud to each other and explain to each other how this second paragraph is different than the first. Also, have them identify any specific "feeling" words that are in the second "Response" paragraph. Finally, as a whole class share experiences and impressions of the activity to ensure all students understand the difference between the two writing methods.
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