Reviving the Essay: How to Teach
Structure without Formula
by Gretchen Bernabei
Do reading school essays put you to
sleep? Inject new life into essay writing
and learn to teach structure without
formula. Gretchen Bernabei will wake
up your students’ writing with dozens of
practical voice-building lessons that
foster structured prose without force-
feeding formulas.
Testing results confirm the need for
students to unify their essays with
something internal. Victoria Young
from the Texas Education Agency
explained that an essay is more
focused and coherent if its unifying
theme is “one step away from the
prompt.” Students do understand what
it means to locate and identify one real
belief, full of passion and experience,
from the prompt. And then sometimes,
students are given the freedom to
dream up their own topic to develop
into a more focused thesis, assertion,
or opinion.
The many and varied lessons in
Reviving the Essay help students
transform a prompt or a personal idea
into something of their own, something
true and something that reflects they
have digested it, found the hard-
earned truth in it, or the paradox in it,
or the human struggle within it.
Gretchen Bernabei’s 23 years as a
writing teacher in the Texas public
school system has found that students
need guided practice in order to find a
unifying message for their essay
writings. They need guidance to
develop a feel for more compelling or
interesting thoughts. Reviving the
Essay is her latest book for Discover
Writing Press and one that every
teacher of writing and language arts
will want to add to their school
bookshelf.
Bernabei makes teaching essay writing
fun again…for teacher and student
alike. Reviving the Essay contains 30
exceptional lessons with motivating
visual prompts, and reproducible
sections that include text, graphics,
and photos. Chapter headings begin
with “Finding Your Message”, and end
with “Crafting the Essay for a Reader’s
Ears.”
Lesson names, some of which follow,
reflect the variety, fun and depth of
this powerful teacher asset:
Truisms
Mixed Feelings: The 52/49 Split
The Insight Garden: Growing Opinions
from Art, Literature and Life
The Story of My Thinking
Tevye’s Debate
Sound Effects
Dialogue
Ba-da-bing! A Sentence-Imitating
Exercise
I Want to Show You Something
Structure without Formula
by Gretchen Bernabei
Do reading school essays put you to
sleep? Inject new life into essay writing
and learn to teach structure without
formula. Gretchen Bernabei will wake
up your students’ writing with dozens of
practical voice-building lessons that
foster structured prose without force-
feeding formulas.
Testing results confirm the need for
students to unify their essays with
something internal. Victoria Young
from the Texas Education Agency
explained that an essay is more
focused and coherent if its unifying
theme is “one step away from the
prompt.” Students do understand what
it means to locate and identify one real
belief, full of passion and experience,
from the prompt. And then sometimes,
students are given the freedom to
dream up their own topic to develop
into a more focused thesis, assertion,
or opinion.
The many and varied lessons in
Reviving the Essay help students
transform a prompt or a personal idea
into something of their own, something
true and something that reflects they
have digested it, found the hard-
earned truth in it, or the paradox in it,
or the human struggle within it.
Gretchen Bernabei’s 23 years as a
writing teacher in the Texas public
school system has found that students
need guided practice in order to find a
unifying message for their essay
writings. They need guidance to
develop a feel for more compelling or
interesting thoughts. Reviving the
Essay is her latest book for Discover
Writing Press and one that every
teacher of writing and language arts
will want to add to their school
bookshelf.
Bernabei makes teaching essay writing
fun again…for teacher and student
alike. Reviving the Essay contains 30
exceptional lessons with motivating
visual prompts, and reproducible
sections that include text, graphics,
and photos. Chapter headings begin
with “Finding Your Message”, and end
with “Crafting the Essay for a Reader’s
Ears.”
Lesson names, some of which follow,
reflect the variety, fun and depth of
this powerful teacher asset:
Truisms
Mixed Feelings: The 52/49 Split
The Insight Garden: Growing Opinions
from Art, Literature and Life
The Story of My Thinking
Tevye’s Debate
Sound Effects
Dialogue
Ba-da-bing! A Sentence-Imitating
Exercise
I Want to Show You Something
Why We Must Run with Scissors
Voice Lessons in Persuasive Writing
(290 pages)
By Barry Lane and Gretchen Bernabei
Writing powerful persuasive prose
begins by stirring up voices deep
within the writer. As readers, we
remember some of these voices of
passion, humor, hope and chutzpah.
We forget all the bureaucratic,
jargon-filled position papers that mask
real voices with dead words
pinned in paragraphs on the page.
There have been many great books on
teaching the rhetoric of persuasion,
but few tackle the complex art of
liberating the dynamic voices of the
student persuaders themselves. Why
We Must Run With Scissors-- Voice
Lessons in Persuasive Writing shows
teachers how to approach persuasive
writing from the inside out, teaching
not only the craft of persuasion, but
also the wild and crazy art that informs
it.
Composed of 83 practical,
classroom-ready lessons with
examples of student writing from
grades 3 to 12, this unique and
user-friendly professional book
provides teachers with an idea-packed
curriculum for sparking a class of
creative and savvy persuaders. Inside
you will find lessons on:
Exploring your personal persuasive
power
Imagining your audience
Finding persuasion in all forms of
literature
Mining passionate opinions from the
real world (fix size of dot)
Using humor and parody to teach
persuasion
Digging beneath an entrenched
position
Finding your own distinct voice, even
when writing to a uniform prompt
Dressing as the Enemy
Crafting beginnings and endings
Learning the secrets of elaboration
Acing the state persuasive writing test
without ?. . .
Assessing our arguments and efforts
with sample student papers
Using rubrics and other tools for
student self-evaluation
..........and much, much more.
Voice Lessons in Persuasive Writing
(290 pages)
By Barry Lane and Gretchen Bernabei
Writing powerful persuasive prose
begins by stirring up voices deep
within the writer. As readers, we
remember some of these voices of
passion, humor, hope and chutzpah.
We forget all the bureaucratic,
jargon-filled position papers that mask
real voices with dead words
pinned in paragraphs on the page.
There have been many great books on
teaching the rhetoric of persuasion,
but few tackle the complex art of
liberating the dynamic voices of the
student persuaders themselves. Why
We Must Run With Scissors-- Voice
Lessons in Persuasive Writing shows
teachers how to approach persuasive
writing from the inside out, teaching
not only the craft of persuasion, but
also the wild and crazy art that informs
it.
Composed of 83 practical,
classroom-ready lessons with
examples of student writing from
grades 3 to 12, this unique and
user-friendly professional book
provides teachers with an idea-packed
curriculum for sparking a class of
creative and savvy persuaders. Inside
you will find lessons on:
Exploring your personal persuasive
power
Imagining your audience
Finding persuasion in all forms of
literature
Mining passionate opinions from the
real world (fix size of dot)
Using humor and parody to teach
persuasion
Digging beneath an entrenched
position
Finding your own distinct voice, even
when writing to a uniform prompt
Dressing as the Enemy
Crafting beginnings and endings
Learning the secrets of elaboration
Acing the state persuasive writing test
without ?. . .
Assessing our arguments and efforts
with sample student papers
Using rubrics and other tools for
student self-evaluation
..........and much, much more.
Lightning in a Bottle:
Visual Prompts for Insights
$39.00
Gretchen Bernabei, co-
author of Why We Must
Run with Scissors: Voice
Lessons in Persuasive
Writing, has produced an
easy-to-use CD so that
teachers don’t have to re-
invent the prompts-with-
artwork wheel. Lightning
in a Bottle contains 266
discussable prompts to
print onto transparencies
for classroom use.
Prompts include thought-
provoking statements
accompanied by
photographs your
students will want to talk
about.
In the “How do I use this”
section, clickable from the
opening screen, teachers
will find instructions for the
11-minute writing exercise
that will have students
practicing making
connections between the
statements and their
worlds. Also included are
alternative text structures,
so that students and
teachers will never feel
the trap of formula writing.
“How can we get more
writing connected with this
literature?”
“How can we practice
responding to the kinds of
prompts that students
will see on the TAKS test?”
“How can we get kids to
write from the heart?
From their own
experience?”
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