VPS Writing Unit 4: Literary and Comparative Essays
Resource: If… Then…Curriculum, Literary and Comparative Essays, pages 41-55
These teaching points were pulled from the If… Then… Curriculum by Lucy Calkins and Colleagues, pages 41 – 55.
The unit is 25 days, so you will need to choose which teaching points best match the needs of your students.
Some of these objectives may be used as mid-workshop teaching points or for targeted small group instruction.
They are not meant to be followed exactly, but are listed as suggested teaching objectives to allow your
students to meet the common core standards. You may to use some of them as mid-workshop teaching points
or for small group instruction.
Standards:
Materials:
• short text suggestions (unit will go more smoothly)
− Every Living Thing by Cynthia Rylant
− Eve Bunting texts
− Patricia Palacco texts
− Baseball in April by Gary Soto (“The Marble Champ”)
− House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisnero
• texts from readers workshop
• Opinion Writing Checklist
Bend 1:
Writing Literary Essays about Texts
Note:
Teachers will suggest and demonstrate strategies, but should not expect every writer to use it to
explore the same text at the same time. You will want writers to draw from the toolkit of possible
strategies. Teachers will emphasize the value of rereading and reconsidering texts to allow for new
thinking with each subsequent read. The goal is for students to notice details and nuances which
promote new ideas to write about.
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Writers complete an on-demand writing prompt as a starting point for instruction. Give these instructions
(The Literary Essay: Grade 4, Unit 4 Opinion, Calkins, p.viii) to your students.
“Think of a topic or issue that you know and care about, an issue around which you have strong feelings.
Tomorrow, you will have forty-five minutes to write an opinion or argument text in which you will write your
opinion or claim and tell reasons why you feel that way. When you do this, draw on everything you know
about essays, persuasive letters and reviews. If you want to find and use information from a book or
another outside source, you may bring that with you tomorrow. Please keep in mind that you’ll have fortyfive minutes to complete this, so you will need to plan, draft, revise, and edit in one sitting. In your writing,
make sure you:
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Write an introduction
State your opinion or claim
Give reasons and evidence
Organize your writing
Acknowledge counterclaims
Use transition words
Write a conclusion”
Use the Opinion/Argument Writing Learning Progression to evaluate student work (Writing Pathways, p.82).
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Writers scrutinize the details of their lives for ideas and capture moments in their writing journals.
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Writers grow ideas about a text through writing. (Teacher models how to grow and write about ideas using
short texts for several days.)
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Writers aim to capture an image that stayed with them after finishing a story. They write about why that
image feels so unforgettable.
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Writers linger on the beauty of the language of a text by copying a few lines into their notebooks and then
write to explore why the line is so powerful or how it fits with the whole story.
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Writers record a turning point in a text and explore how this moment fits with the whole book.
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Writers explore how they might live differently if they took the lessons in the story really seriously.
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Writers choose one text that is especially important to them and write about various aspects that stand out.
They may start with prompts such as, “I notice…”, “The surprising thing about this is…”, or “I wonder if…”.
Writers write long.
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Writers investigate places in the text that seem most worthy of pausing over to look for ideas. This is an
inquiry lesson where the class can co-construct a chart called “Moments that Lead to Great Thinking.” It will
include: character change, lessons characters learn, and issues characters face.
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Writers remember to interpret as they think and write. They use prompts such as “The thought I have about
this is…”, “This made me realize that…”, and “At first I thought…, but now I think…”.
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Writers rephrase ideas using sentence starters such as “That is…” or “In other words…”.
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Writers entertain new possibilities by saying, “Could it be that…”, “Perhaps…”, or “Some may say that…”.
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Writers elaborate on ideas by using phrases such as “Furthermore…”, “This connects with…”, “On the other
hand…”, “This is true because…”, “I am realizing that…” or “But you might ask…”.
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Writers write thesis statements by rereading the seed ideas in their writers’ notebooks. They push for seed
ideas that are central to a text and provocative. Examples:
− “So and so is a good friend because A, B, and above all because C.”
− “So and so succeeds because of A, B, and avoe all, because of C.”
− “This is about so and so who learns/ turns out to be/ changes to be/ becomes (what by the end).
− “Early in the text…, but later in the text…”
− “At first I thought… but now I realize…”
− “Some people think… is about (the external plot), but I think that it is really about (the deeper
meaning.”
− “My feelings about… are complicated. On the one hand, I think… On the other hand, I think…”
(Writer explores how their feelings or ideas about a story, character, or theme are conflicted; the
reader feels more than one thing at a time.”
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Writers use their thesis statement to plan for their essays. Each part of the thesis statement can become a
topic sentence for different paragraphs.
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Writers use the “boxes and bullets” style to plan for their essays. You may have students create physical
folders for each topic sentence in which they can place evidence. Or, students can collect and write straight
onto draft paper, working with one page per bullet.
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Writers gather evidence for subordinating points by retelling a part of the story that supports the idea, then
“unpacking” that part, writing about how it illustrates the idea. Writers notice when the author has spent
time stretching a scene out or repeating images, so you might want to retell those parts.
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Writers quote from the text and unpack those quotes by talking about how the quote addresses the relevant
big idea. The teacher may hand out copies of a text for students to cut and paste relevant parts into their
drafts and then write how that part supports the thesis (less copying time, more intellectual work). This
teaching point is included in the 4th Grade Literary Essay Unit, so you may want to reference it.
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Writers create introductions that orient and engage the reader. They may want to write a tiny summary
before the thesis statement.
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Writers create conclusions where they link the story to their own lives or link the story to a social issue in the
world.. Example: “This story teaches me that I too…”
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Writers read their drafts carefully, looking for places where there are gaps in thinking or transitions. One
kind of gap is lack of evidence to support a certain point. Or, the writer may need help to make connections
by using transition language (“This part shows…” or “The actions of this character prove the point that…”)
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Writers edit drafts by making smart choices about paragraphing, punctuation, and verb tense.
Bend 2:
Write across Texts
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Writers compare two objects (a basketball and a football or a pen and a pencil). This can be done by writing
in the air or shared writing. Students will realize that certain qualities become more essential to the
description. When thinking about two subjects, you will want to lay out the features that merit attention.
Then students can do similar work on their own.
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Writers choose a text that is in some ways like and in some ways different that the story they wrote about in
their literary essay. You may want to pair students who wrote about text A and now are reading text B with
students who wrote about text B and are now reading text A.
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Writers write a compare and contrast essay in a single day. They may follow the same structure as
comparing pens and pencils.
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Writers revisit texts to annotate them with more complex interpretations as they read over nuances and
details that develop the theme.
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Writers write more complex thesis statements. They do this by revisiting the text to look for:
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themes and big ideas
images or objects and how they were used to bring out the a significant point in the story
moments when a character has strong feelings or reactions
moments when characters have insights or learn something
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Writers include paragraph(s) showing why texts/characters are the same and paragraph(s) on why texts are
different.
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Writers choose between two common structures for their comparative essay. Provide samples of both.
1) Block Structure: Students write one body paragraph all about one text, and use the second body
paragraph to write about a second text.
2) Point by Point Structure: This contains synthesized body paragraphs: each body paragraph
includes discussions of both texts. Perhaps one paragraph discusses similarities in texts and the
next paragraph discusses differences in texts.
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Writers collect evidence (as they did in Bend 1) to support their claim. They do this by:
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retelling a part of the story that supports their idea
writing a brief summary of a relevant part of the story
using lists of moments that support the idea
explaining craft moves that the author used to reveal the idea
analyzing how point of view influences the story’s theme
collecting quotes to support their idea
Bend 3:
Edit and Publish: Prepare Essays to Share with the World
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Writers monitor their own progress with checklists, to-do lists, and other tools.
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Writers include information on both texts in the introduction of comparative essays. They may use prompts
such as “Story A is about… and story B is about…” or “Both of these stories are important because…”
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Writers conclude essays by summing up what was said and then closing with inspirational lines.
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Writers work with a partner to look for gaps in thinking or transitions, and fill those gaps as they revise.
Writers self-assess their work against expectations and may use the Opinion Writing Checklist.
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Writers polish their essays by looking for opportunities to use complex sentence structures. Teaching a
lesson on appositive commas or beginning sentences with dependent clauses will help students’ writing to
sound more sophisticated.
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Celebrate by setting up a rotating display in the classroom that highlights the books as a pair, with the
comparative essays tucked inside one of the books, creating a suggested path for reading for others in the
class. Another idea is to post their essays on Good reads.com.