For years, I've been asking the following question ...
What if we taught composition like Bob Ross teaches painting?
Not only is this question the title of my second textbook which I am currently peddling to publishers, but it's at the heart of my Teach It "Write" 5-Week Mastermind - a course now being offered by The National Writing Project.
Over the past few weeks, I've been creating a ton of new content with teachers from all over the world.
Here's the super cool thing about my templates ... they are universal in that students can apply them uniformly across the expository modes.
What a student does tactically for literary analysis - they can do for rhetorical analysis, synthesis, argument, persuasion, and even research.
To demonstrate, I am sharing two distinctly different writing workshops today.
The first is a synthesis essay that we ran with a group of juniors this summer that explores the following essential question: should schools start later?
The second writing workshop has students performing literary analysis from a selection of poems that explored the theme of roadkill (interesting student choice)
In viewing both writing workshop videos, you'll see that the compositional moves are the same in terms of constructing two distinctly and uniquely different essays.
And that's the cool thing about taking a Bob Ross approach to the teaching of composition.
The process of writing gets totally demystified.
All of the typical guesswork gets eliminated.
Bob Ross used one template (the wet-on-wet technique).
Our students, likewise, can take a uniform approach as they transition across the expository modes.
The National Writing Project and I are teaming up yet again to offer my Teach It "Write" 5-Week Mastermind.
The next session will begin the evening of September 25th at 7 EST.
We meet live in Zoom for five consecutive Sunday evenings.
For those looking for some really good PD to shore up your ability to teach composition, check us out.
Happy teaching and happy writing!
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