Teaching Endings

On Monday we discussed endings to editorials in my ninth grade class.  This is how the teaching went:

1. Me:  I’ve noticed many of you are ready to write an ending, but aren’t sure how to go about it.  So let’s talk about it.  Will you pull out the mentor texts we’ve been studying and reread each of the endings?
2. Everyone finds their texts.  This is possible, because they each have binders with a “Text Section,” and I post the mentor texts on our Moodle site for those who forgot/lost/ate their binders.  They read.
3. As they start chatting because they’re finished reading, I say:  Will you talk with a partner about what you are noticing about the ending.  How are the editorialists crafting their endings?  What is important about the endings?  What can you do in your own editorial?
4. They talk.
5. Then we begin collecting their ideas:
   

   It feels over, like you know it’s finished.

   It makes you want to go do something.

   It makes you go, hmmmm.

   Hey, he started his last sentence with ‘And.’

   This one started with ‘But.”

   Here’s one starting with an ‘Or.’

   The endings are short.  Pitts wrote just one sentence and made it into a single paragraph.  Can one sentence be a paragraph?

   This one is only two sentences.  Man, they really make me what to do something, though.

6. The things they noticed opened the doors for teaching how to write a powerful ending:

Make your stance clear at the end.

Call the reader to action.

Up the emotional appeal — really hook ’em.

Break conventions to get the reader’s attention. Starting the last sentence with a conjunction is very common in editorials.  Why do you think editorialsts do this?

Yes, one sentence can be a single paragraph.  What is the effect it has?  Why did the writer do it?

The lesson ended with a quick write session, where students used their writer’s notebook to play with an ending for their editorial.  First they reread their editorials (whatever they have so far) then they had-a-go at an ending.  Five minutes later they were making their own choices as writers (some continued to draft their ending, others worked in another capacity) and I conferred.

Later that day I was in a second grade writing workshop.  They were working on writing endings for their narratives.  This is what struck me:

They were looking at endings and talking about the things they noticed the writers doing to end their stories.  The process these eight year olds were engaged in was exactly the same as the process the fifteen year olds used that morning.

This is why Writing Workshop is powerful.  Good teaching is good teaching . . . no matter the age of the students.  Looking at mentor texts and asking:  “How did the writer make this?” is a powerful teaching strategy.  We know our instruction is sound when the technique can cross grade levels because our focus is on teaching writers, not teaching writing.