This Lesson's Title:

What's your Fifth Element?

creating an organized and convincing argument about something's importance

This R.A.F.T. writing assignment was developed for WritingFix after being proposed by NNWP Teacher Consultant Carol Lubet during an AT&T-sponsored in-service class for teachers.

The intended "mentor text" to be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the chapter book The Snow Walker by Farley Mowat. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author, especially from chapter 1 of the book.

Check out The Snow Walker at Amazon.com.

If you are a Washoe County teacher, click here to search for this book at the county library.

Teacher Instructions & Lesson Resources :

Step one (sharing the published model):  Farley Mowat is a Canadian born writer and naturalist.  He describes the land, people and the animals of the Far North with unparalleled understanding, empathy, and clarity.  His book, The Snow Walker, begins with a ten-page chapter called  “Snow.” 

Mr. Mowat introduces us to the topic of snow and its significance to the people of the Arctic by telling a story of how the Greek world in 330 B.C.  was “rocked” when Pytheaus returned to Greece from a voyage to Iceland.  Pytheaus described a white, cold and frozen substance the Greeks had never before imagined.  The Paradigm of the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water now shifted to conceive of the possibility of a fifth element of tremendous significance: snow.

Share the first chapter aloud.  Certainly celebrate the language, but ultimately come back to the big and interesting idea here: snow was something incredibly important to some (the ancient people of the Arctic) and was completely not understood by others (the ancient Greeks).  In our modern world, your students will have lots of items that are incredibly important to them but are not understood by others.  The Greeks somehow became convinced that snow might be an all-important fifth element. 

This assignment will have students plan and write a persuasive essay about something they would have trouble living without; their goal is to convince an audience who does not understand the item of its fifth-element-like importance.

Step two (introducing student models of writing):  Before students plan to write, have them discuss any or all of the provided student samples with partners or with small groups.  The embedded discussion tools with these student samples will focus their discussions on organization and word choice. Specifically discuss these two traits aloud with the class.

• We're looking for student samples for all grade levels for this prompt!  Help us get some, and we'll send you a free resource for your classroom!  Contact us at publish@writingfix.com for details.

Step three (thinking and pre-writing): Use WritingFix's Persuasive Essay Graphic Organizer to have students map out their arguments and reasoning before writing.  This graphic organizer doesn't include space for planning the essay's conclusion, but a conclusion with this assignment might be better planned only after the essay's body has been planned and written. 

The Rough Drafting Tool we've attached to this writing assignment has a word choice tool embedded in it; this will assist students in building a voice foundation that will be discussed more thoroughly in the revision stage.

• Persuasive Essay Graphic Organizer
• Rough Draft Sheet with Embedded Word Choice Post-It

Step four (revising with specific trait language):   To promote response and revision to rough draft writing, attach WritingFix's Revision and Response Post-Its to your students' drafts.  Make sure the students rank their use of the trait-specific skills on the Post-Its, which means they'll only have one "1" and one "5."   Have them commit to ideas for revision based on their Post-It rankings.  For more ideas on WritingFix's Revision & Response Post-Its, click here.

• Sheet of 6 Organization Post-It Notes
• Sheet of 6 Voice Post-It Notes

Step five (editing for conventions):  After students apply their revision ideas to their drafts and re-write neatly, require them to find an editor.   If you've established a "Community of Editors" among your students, have each student exchange his/her paper with multiple peers.  With yellow high-lighters in hand, each peer reads for and highlights suspected errors for just one item from the Editing Post-it.  The "Community of Editors" idea is just one of dozens and dozens of inspiring ideas that is talked about in detail in the Northern Nevada Writing Project's Going Deep with 6 Trait Language Workbook for Teachers.

Step six (publishing for the portfolio):   When they are finished revising and have second drafts, invite your students to come back to this piece once more during an upcoming writer's workshop block.  Their stories might become a longer story, a more detailed piece, or the beginning of a series of pieces about the story they started here.  Students will probably enjoy creating an illustration for this story as they get ready to publish it for their portfolios.

Interested in publishing student work on-line?  We invite student writers to post final drafts of their original at WritingFix's Community of Student Writers.  This is a safe-to-use blog for students and teachers. No writing is posted until it is approved by the moderator. Contact us at publish@writingfix.com if you have questions about getting your students published.

Learn more about author Farley Mowat by clicking here.