Over the course of my 20+ year career in the ELA classroom, I have been peddling the following essential question:
What if we taught composition like Bob Ross teaches painting?
When we assume our inner-Bob Ross of composition, two things happen:
- We position ourselves as the expert writer in the classroom and "paint" with our students during writing workshops
- We equip our students with accessible and purposeful heuristics
The secret to Bob Ross's success as a teacher is that he used a single heuristic every single time he approached painting a natural landscape: the wet-on-wet technique.
And for those of you that are familiar with my work, you have come to know that for every expository essay a student writes, they can tackle each body paragraph while manipulating the syllogistic method.
And here's the beautiful kicker - several classic children's stories are written syllogistically (like "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie").
In today's writing workshop, I demonstrate for teachers and students how to construct an essay that adheres to the narrative thread of this classic bedtime story.
For real - a syllogistic body paragraph that sustains a cogent line of reasoning follows the narrative structure of "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" deductive process.
Over the course of the next few weeks, I will demonstrate this concept further for each of the expository modes, as well as all six FRQs featured on both AP exams.
This is a fantastic and concretely simple way to illustrate this complex concept.
Please reach out if you need anything along the way.
In the description of the YouTube video, there are links to download the entire lesson and all the content you'll need to run this unit in your classroom.
Happy teaching and happy writing!
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