Middle School Writing Assignments

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MIDDLE SCHOOL WRITING ASSIGNMENTS

Middle school writing assignments vary considerably not only from school to school but also from teacher to teacher. The sample assignments below illustrate some of this variety.

Provided here are select assignments in sequence and samples of students’ responses to those assignments. In some instances, teachers agreed to allow use of their names, and their assignments appear immediately below the name. When teachers chose not to allow this use, the assignment appears under “anonymous.” In the case of those students who chose not to allow use of their names, I have provided pseudonyms.

Note that the assignments and student papers are provided without any editing.

Sandra Woffington (Grades 6-8 at a West Coast Middle School)

Ms. Woffington taught at a private school with low enrollment. Consequently, her middle school class was a combined group of Grades 6-8. The nature of the class made it more efficient to give the same assignments to all students, regardless of grade level. Although this approach raises significant questions regarding assessment, it allows us to compare performance variation by age. We should expect to see more problems among the younger writers owing to their overall lack of experience and training.

Assignment 1

Your assignment is to write a scary story. I have introduced you to the elements of basic story structure (plot, character, exposition, POV, dialogue format, MLA format, development, climax, resolution, etc.). After writing your first draft, add active verbs and remove passive verbs (unless used correctly). Finally, add specific details.

Analysis

This assignment was given just before Halloween, so we can imagine that students were in the mood to exercise their imaginations. The timing was good. Also positive is that Ms.

Woffington—a writer herself—introduced students to the basic elements of fiction, as listed here:

1. Narrative opening (presents a main character and a situation/setting)

2. Inciting incident (something happens that causes the main character to take action)

3. Development (because the main character takes action A, it leads to situation B, and

the protagonist needs to take new action, which escalates the tension in the story)

4. Climax (the highest point of tension)

5. Resolution

6. Denouement (a final relaxing of the story, tying up loose ends, and so on)

The idea of “active” and “passive” verbs is problematic. Many teachers are confused about verbs, and they generally believe that any use of the word “be” is “passive.” This is incorrect. I suspect that what teachers are actually getting at is the difference between existential verbs

(linking verbs and forms of “be”) and action verbs. “Passive” refers to the structure of a sentence, not to a verb type. Specifically, a passive construction shifts the object to the subject position and the subject to the object of a prepositional phrase at the end of the sentence. We differentiate active sentences from passive sentences, but we do not differentiate active verbs from passive verbs because they do not really exist. Consider these examples:

 Fred wrote the book. (active)

 The book was written by Fred. (passive)

Student Papers

Kiley Quan (Grade 6)

Lost without you, Dead because of you (draft 1)

So here I am, (who ever I am, what ever my name is. Well he said my name was Destiny, but you can call me what ever you want.) At a funeral were no ne knows me except the dead person. In the same old, worn out ugly clothes I wear everyday; Black pants, black combat boots and my brown hair hung down my back. I felt like I should be wearing something else, something more honorable, Because I am standing before my best friend, whom I loved, whom I was with every single day and minute I could be with him, whom handled my sarcastic, overly determined, slightly dark and dramatic attitude; which he called imaginative, goal driven, funny, and sadly mature because of the life experience I’ve gone through. He whom is the saint that taught me to look at life in a entirely different perspective from the one that I had of life. His perspective was beautiful and positive. Without him life is imposable to see in that light that actually made me happy. He was whom I turned to in times of desperate need of support. He made me complete. He is whom saved me from the exempt at death that was my doing, whom stopped the knife from stabbing my heart, he is whom saved me from the falling of depression so deep that I would cut my arm apart to drink the blood, and be unsatisfied with the amount of pain

I felt, so I would seek the pain so unlivable. I’d kill myself in the most inhumane way I could think of. He whose name is Sam Begley is my hero and will always be my hero. I jumped up in fright; I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked up to see a blurry image of a boy that looked a lot like Sam, with his hand on my shoulder.

“Get up you troubled child or I’ll call the security,” the boy said in a worried, scared voice that seemed a lot like a women’s voice. My vision cleared and it wasn’t a boy I saw, it was a women.

She was tall, had long blond hair that was French braided in the back, her skin was Californian skin; sun tanned, dirty blond skin. Just like Sam`s skin and hair and then it sunk in. This is Sam`s mom. She looked at me like she was disturbed, scared, worried and horrified.

“GET UP, HELP ANYONE THAT’S MY SON! SECURITY” Mrs. Begley yelled, know she sounded in pain. Like she was chocking up, crying, scared, and mad at the same. I noticed I was lying down for the first time; I began to wonder what was going on, and sat up to an upright position. I felt and arm brush against my arm and looked to the side of me. I was lying in Sam`s casket!

For the first time I actually really wondered what did really happened, I wanted to ask someone what happened to me and how I got in the casket but I figured everyone was a little to freaked out to answer me. Across the aisle of the funeral home I saw Mrs.Begely running toward me with security. I hopped out of my best friend`s resting place and ran out of the building to hide. I ran around the backside of the home and found a hiding spot were no one could find me, behind dumpster covered in trash bags. I felt sad, because of the thought, of that being my last look at Sam. I heard footsteps. Of the security guards I figured. I felt a chill of nervousness go up my spine, I pinched my arm so hard that my arm bleed. I didn’t feel the pain though, it felt good and it stops anxiety. I thought of what Sam had once said to me.

“Don’t make yourself bleed, just because you’re nervous. Do what I do, Just think about something that calms you down! When I need to be calm, for tests and things I think of you.

Your laugh, smile, dark long brown hair and you’re crazy long eyelashes that I`m sure you got from your birth mom.” I released my pinch, with thought of that fond memory. When I think of

Sam the world melts away and I get lost in memories. Know that I think about him and the comments he said, I guess he indicated that he had a crush on me, but we were just friends. He always said that my troubled mind was a reason why he loved me. It made me strong. Sam said that I was a free spirit around him though. Myself he said, Happy, free, open-minded, and it was true. I felt like me around him.

“She went out of the back door, come on guys.” I was alarmed by, the speaking of the security guards that I forgot that were after me.

“So what did the mom say happened?”

“She said the girl turned into a psyche path, she was out of it like unconscious. Mumbling stuff, then she started screaming and crying. She climbed into the dead boys casket. Weird right.”

“I don`t see the girl, she probably just has mental issues if it really happened, I mean the story …its a little out there. She might be the crazy one. Lets go back inside. The ceremonies probably been canceled anyway. If it is we get some donuts.”

“I doubt that she made the whole thing up. The lady looked truly terrified, and besides if we ever need proof there’s a whole room of witnesses. Ok, we`ll head back. I`m in the mood for some glazed donuts.”

I sat there frozen in the cold air until I couldn`t hear their footsteps anymore. If Sam were here and not lying dead in the building, he would surly help me. When they were gone I got up and found the nearest shop. Thank goodness it was just around the corner, because it was starting to get dark. The little shop sold coffee, a family business obviously. I sat in a seat and hoped that the clerk would not spot me and kick me out. I mean why shouldn`t he, I’m technically a homeless, messed up 12 year old, who ran away from home because I was living with unfit

© 2014 Taylor & Francis abusing parents who were one drugs 24/7 and probably don’t even know I’m gone. Plus their not even my real parents anyway. I was adopted, they weren’t even the was who told me, I found out on my own when I was looking through their files. I hit my foot against the coffee shop`s table in anger and accidently nocked it over, know that got the owner`s attention.

“Scram you little rat,” he yelled

“Sorry,” I said and ran out the door. I started running fast cause the owner walked out of the door. He was older, maybe in his early fifties or so. He had shaggy dirty blond hair and blue eyes that were so blue they looked fake, if you didn`t make the guy mad he actually might come off as a creepy, but nice guy. He stopped chasing me after a couple steps out of the door, but I ran faster, cause now he held a raiser in is hand and yelled,

“YEAH THAT’S RIGHT, RUN AND DINT COME BACK.” I stopped running when he went inside again, but know I had a new problem. Where in the heck am I going to sleep For the night? All the other nights I would sleep in the school`s gym and since I dropped out of school and ran away from home. I can’t hide in the gym before the school closes. So I walked for hours trying to find somewhere to sleep, and when I couldn`t find anywhere where I wouldn`t freeze. I decided to go back to my fake parent`s apartment. They’re probably drunken on cocaine anyway.

When I got into the apartment complex questions flowed through my head. Why would people like these ever adopt a kid? Did they want to ruin kids lives by making them live in conditions like this. My parents were are so unfit to parent a child. I mean how did the even qualify to adopt? I grew up surrounded by drugs and mental people. It does explain why I grew up to be a messed up girl. When I walked up to the doorsteps, I hesitated to open the door. I didn’t want to walk back into my past, I didn`t want to walk into a room filled with grief and drugs. I stood by the wall and slid down to the ground and tried to fall asleep. I drifted of to a light sleep until I

© 2014 Taylor & Francis heard footsteps, I tried to be completely still because you never know what kind of person is walking around this type of community. The footsteps were getting louder, I leaned over to see whom it was but it was so dark out, I could only see the persons figure. The person seemed to be a young boy about my age, because of his height. He was wearing what seemed to be like skinny jeans and a nice jacket.

What the heck is a boy doing around here that obviously has that kind of money? I wondered. I mean if Sam was alive he`d surly be here with me, because I’m scared to death and don’t know were I belong. But then again if Sam were alive I wouldn’t be here in this position right now.

The boy stopped at the footsteps of the stairs to the apartment and seemed to be staring at me intently, most people would be scared at this moment. But for some reason I was not. I could not see the boys face, but I had a feeling this was someone who was here for me, who could save me.

I knew I was supposed to go to him so I walked toward him and he put his arm out for me. And I took it. He smiled at me nicely and then his smile turned evil, he pulled me toward him closer until I could hardly breath and he took his other arm from his back which revealed a knife and held it to my throat, not slicing it but close enough to make a cut. When I looked at his face, I knew this was my worst nightmare coming to life because the boy whom wants to kill me, whom threatens to choke me and slit my neck is who saved me once. Sam.

“ I once loved you, took care of you, saved you and to repay me, you only burdened me.

Even when I needed you most you were never there. I needed you when your birth mother climbed through my window and choked me to death. When she would beat me everyday for saving you from murdering yourself, I also was dying inside to. Supporting both of us like you couldn`t do anything with out me. I was tired of lying to you about everything. So now I get my chance after death to finely kill you like you killed me. You nasty, ugly little human, weakling,

© 2014 Taylor & Francis unstable little girl.” He strengthened his grip on my throat more and knew that I was dying. Not only because he is choking me and cutting my throat, but because he whom I thought loved me has come back to life from the dead to hunt me down and kill me. The words that come out of my Sam`s mouth kill me inside the most, his words kill my heart. I am dying and my last word to

Sam was.

“Sorry” and I fell to the floor in pain. And he said

“That does not count” And stabbed me in the head with his knife and left me to die.

Kiley Quan (Grade 6)

Lost Without You, Dead Because of You (draft 2, final)

I, a person whose ignorant of a piece of information of great importance such as my own real name and meaning in life, has lost the one thing that gives me the will to live; my best friend. I stand alongside of him, I stand peering over my hero with more grief then I can abide. I am present at my beloved companion`s funeral where not a soul knows who I am except him. In result of my endeared friend’s passing; my heart is overflowed with sorrow and indignation. I wear such a dishonoring outfit: black pants, black combat boots and my brown hair hung down my back, though I have more gratitude for my beloved friend then I will ever be able to express.

He is whom I will ever love, whom I accompanied every single second I could, whom handled my sarcastic, overly determined, morbid and dramatic attitude; which he viewed as imaginative, goal driven, funny, and slightly dark. He, whom, is the saint that taught me to look at life in an entirely different perspective, from the dark, dreary and depressing perspective that I had of life.

His perspective was beautiful and positive. Without him life is imposable to see in that light, that actually made me happy. He was whom I turned to in times of desperate need of support. He

© 2014 Taylor & Francis made me complete. He was whom saved me from the attempt at death that was my doing, whom stopped the knife from cutting through my skin and slicing through my heart. He is whom rescued me from plunging into the depression so deep that I would take a jagged sharp knife and rip through my skin; slit my arm into two gory pieces, bring them to my lips, open my mouth and suck out all the blood. Still I’d remain unsatisfied with the amount of excruciating pain I felt. I would seek the pain so agonizing and unlivable; I’d murder myself in the most bloody, inhumane way I could possibly think of. But he whose name is Sam Begley saved me from that dreadful nightmare, therefor he whose name is Sam Begley is my hero and savior. If he shall come back to living from his death, I will treat him with the utmost respect at all times. A chill of fright ran up my back; I felt cold skin touch my shoulder. I glanced up above me to see a blurry image of a boy that looked very familiar... a lot like Sam, his hand placed on my shoulder. I felt warm sensation because of seeing Sam, but disappointed also because it’s too good to be true. Sam can’t be alive.

“YOU MESSED UP CHILD, GO FIND A THERAPIST. THAT’S MY SON. I WILL

CALL SECURIY!” He said to me. He sounded confused, scared, sad, and as if he had been disrespected. Sam’s beautiful face changed and formed a new face; a face that looked like it was in pain and worn out. The face belonged to a woman, she was tall, had long blond hair that was french braided in the back. Her skin was Californian skin; sun tanned skin. Like Sam`s skin and hair. It sunk in. This is Sam`s mom. She was crying and her beauty and resemblance to Sam was not to be seen, because of her weary baggy eyes, and lack of skin color due to the shock and horror of what had happened.

“GET UP. HELP ANYONE. THAT’S MY SON! SECURITY” Mrs. Begley cried. She fell down to the floor in pain and because of feeling helpless.

“Oh Sam, my baby. I’m so sorry. I will kill that woman,” Mrs. Begley mumbled as she passed out on the floor. What women, I thought? I noticed, on order to see Mrs. Begley, I had to lean over, so I figured I was lying down. I began to wonder what was going on, and what happened. I sat up to an upright position, and I felt something cold and chilling brush up against my side. I looked over to my right and saw a dead body lying next to me, Sam’s lifeless body. I had been lying in Sam’s casket! For the first time I actually really wondered what I did, that I don’t remember. I wanted to ask someone what happened to me and how I got in the casket but I figured everyone was a little too freaked out to answer me. Across the aisle of the funeral home I saw an old lady running toward me with security. The old lady seemed to have been in tears, so I guessed that she was Sam’s grandma. I climbed out of my best friend`s resting place and ran out of the back door, which led to an ally-way. I found a hiding spot, where the guards wouldn’t find me; behind a dumpster covered in trash bags. I climbed my way through all that trash and took a seat. It smelled terrible, but I didn’t care. A sad feeling rushed through my body causing a tear to run down my cheek, because of the thought of that being my last look at Sam. Dead, in a casket.

I shed more tears, one after another. I wiped each and every one of the stupid things off my face, because I hate when I cry. I guess it made me feel vulnerable; usually I’d go to Sam when I feel this way. He`d let me rest my head on his shoulder and he`d comfort me and talk to me.

Suddenly I could hear the distant sound of footsteps, probably the security guards that were after me. I felt a chill of nervousness go up my spine; I pinched the skin on my arm so hard that my arm bled. I didn’t feel the pain though, it felt good and it stops anxiety. I thought about how bad that sounded and of what Sam had once said to me.

“Don’t make yourself bleed, just because you’re nervous. Do what I do. Just think about something that calms you down! When I need to be calm for tests and things, I think of you.

Your laugh, smile, dark long brown hair, your brown eyes and you’re crazy long eyelashes that

I`m sure you didn’t get from your birth mom. Something you inherited from nobody but yourself. ” I released my pinch, with the thought of that fond memory… Now that I think about him and the comments he made, I guess he had a crush on me. I always thought of him as someone who was worth more than me though. He would`ve deserved better. When I think of

Sam the world melts away and I just get lost.

“She went out of the back door, come on guys.” I was alarmed by the speaking of the security guards and had forgotten that they were after me.

“So what did the mom say happened?”

“She said the girl turned into a psycho-path, she was out of it, like unconscious.

Mumbling stuff, then she started screaming and crying. She climbed into the dead boy`s casket.

Weird, right?”

“I don`t see the girl, she probably just has mental issues, if it really happened, I mean the story …it’s a little out there. The lady might be the crazy one. Let’s go back inside. The ceremonies probably been canceled anyway. If it is we get some donuts.”

“Cop Bob, come on. I doubt that she made the whole thing up. The lady looked truly terrified, and besides if we ever need proof there’s a whole room of witnesses. Ok? You are right though, we`ll head back. I really should be watching my diet because of the wife, but whata`heck? I am craving some glazed donuts.”

I sat there frozen in the cold air until I couldn`t hear their footsteps anymore. The temperature must`ve dropped like 10 degrees in the time that I was sitting there. Well I guess that’s normal in Minnesota, in the winter. If Sam were here and not lying dead in the building, he would surly help me. When the guards were gone and I couldn`t hear their footsteps anymore, I

© 2014 Taylor & Francis climbed my way through the trash bags and stepped onto the snowy sidewalk. Thank goodness that before I ran away from home I grabbed my (fake) mother’s combat boots, and warmer clothes. If I hadn`t I would’ve been dead of hypothermia by now. I walked on the sidewalk for what seemed to be hours, without s sight of other pedestrians. Just the occasional passing car, until I came across a building. I was glad I found a building, because it was dark out then. The building was a little shop, called “Blue Eyed Coffee,” weird name I thought. It was a family owned business obviously. The coffee shop walls were brown; there was a little backroom where the coffee was made. Little blue tables and chairs filled the room. I sat in a seat by a wide circular window facing the sidewalk and the street. I hoped that the clerk behind the counter would not spot me and kick me out. I was doubtful that he would, he was making frequent trips to the backroom to refill his coffee mug anyway. But I mean if he did see me, he would kick me out. I mean why shouldn`t he, I’m technically a homeless, messed up 12 year old, whom ran away from the apartments because I was living with unfit abusing parents who were on drugs

24/7 and probably don’t even know I’m gone. Plus their not even my real parents anyway. I was adopted; they weren’t even the ones who told me that I was adopted anyway. I found out on my own when I was looking through their files. I slammed my foot against the coffee shop`s table with so much power and anger I accidently knocked it over, now that got the owner`s attention.

“Scram you little rat,” he yelled in a deep, crass voice.

“Sorry” I said and ran out the door. I bolted out the door as fast as I could because the owner walked out of the door. He was older, maybe in his early fifties or so. He had shaggy dirty blond hair (probably hadn`t been washed for years). I stopped running, because thank goodness he stopped following me after a few steps out of the shop’s entrance. I ogled at his atrocious face and then realized a creepy truth; why his shop was named “Blue Eyed Coffee.” The colors and

© 2014 Taylor & Francis sizing of his pupils were not matching. His right eye was dark black and the other was aglow, an intense ultramarine. I stared into his eyes and my body froze my body wouldn`t listen to my brain. I let out a screeching sound, feeling helpless and motionless. He grinned with glee and slowly he took his hands out of his pocket, to reveal a knife. A knife covered with the remnants of fresh blood. My instincts kicked in and I took off down the side walk.

“YEAH THAT’S RIGHT, RUN AND DON`T COME BACK,” he yelled at me. When the man walked back inside of the coffee shop, I slowed down. I was exhausted, cold and my skin was tingling. I sat down on the sidewalk, with my boots in the gutter and pounded my head at the ground; crying like no tomorrow. My best friend died, my parents are on drugs, I am homeless and have been almost murdered. No point in living.

“Hahahaha” I heard from behind me in an old voice. I brought my bloody head from the ground and turned around to see who laughed. It was a homeless man, obviously on drugs. He had on old rags and his face was worn out and leathery. I dragged myself to the old man and sat down next to him.

“I`m like you” I said to him. I fell asleep next to him for a while, but I was awoken by the distant sound of footsteps. I looked to my side where the man had sat, but he was nowhere to be found. My head ached from the pounding, but I gathered the will to stand up. The footsteps where getting louder, so my walk turned into a jog.

“Hi” I heard in the distance from behind. I turned around, to see a boy my age wearing skinny jeans and a shirt. I couldn`t tell his facial features because it was still dark out.

“Hi, I never gave you a name. I named you Destiny. Now you have a name,” the boy held out his hand for me to take.

“Sam?” I said with hope, in my weak voice.

“Yes Destiny, it is I; Sam. I have come back for you.” Letting my guard down I ran to him with pure joy. I jumped into his arms, and he caught me. I looked into his eyes and he hugged me, his hug tightened around my waist. He took out what was in his pocket. He took out a gun and pulled the lever and pushed it against my throat, making me want to hurl.

“This is your destiny!” He said.

“I saved you from death. I had to lie to your weak ugly little face every day, I had to support you AND I. What did you do for me? NOTHING. You burdened me with beatings every day from your birth mom, because of saving you, worthless scum, she would climb through my window and pinch my back. It was your turn to save me, but you just had me give you strength. I needed some too! So now I get my chance to kill you, like you killed me.”

“Bang” I heard the gun blow. I could barely think anymore. I was dying, not only because of the bullet, but mostly it was his words that killed me inside. Just because he hated me and killed me I love him still though. That did not change him saving me.

“Sorry,” were my last words to Sam.

“It doesn`t matter anymore Destiny,” Sam said to me. He kicked my side, sending excruciating pain throughout my partly numb body, and left me dead. My throat filled with blood on the sidewalk.

Analysis

Kiley’s story illustrates some of the problems that arise when narrative is the first assignment students receive. The challenges inherent in narration are so great that assessing students’ finished projects is fraught with difficulty. With limited experience reading literature, most students lack a solid understanding of narrative structure even after receiving direct

© 2014 Taylor & Francis instruction. In Kiley’s story we immediately see how this lack created problems. Short stories tend to set the scene early. Many students struggle, however, to set the scene in narrative because they so often are told that good writing begins with a “hook.” Kiley appears to be attempting to provide a “hook” when the narrator states that she doesn’t have a name.

A majority of young students do not have much experience in life and find it difficult to develop themes and messages that resonate with readers. Yet theme and message are the heart of all narrative literature. In Kiley’s case, we see her struggle to imagine events that the reader might find scary; instead, she wrote about things that might scare her. The narrator is the victim rather than an autonomous character, and we aren’t given enough information about the narrator to make us care about her. Also troubling is the story’s paradox: The narrator is dead but somehow managed to write the story.

We need to keep in mind, of course, that middle school students are very young.

Nevertheless, there are a variety of pedagogical strategies that could have helped Kiley produce a better story. The numerous structural errors suggest that Kiley did not perform much editing—or if she did, she lacked sufficient editing skills to recognize and correct her errors and did not receive sufficient help in class. More emphasis on workshop activities related to editing would have been beneficial. Although Kiley made some useful changes to draft 1, the question is whether they were substantial. If we look closely at the two drafts, we see that many of the errors in draft 1 were carried over into the final draft.

Also worth noting is Kiley’s effort to “add active verbs,” which resulted in several unhappy constructions, as in “I ogled at his atrocious face.” A thesaurus can help students enhance their vocabularies, but they do not always provide guidance regarding usage.

Finally, how would one grade Kiley’s story? Let’s consider it objectively. Is a reader likely to find it scary? Probably not. Does it convey clear images and character development?

No. Does it have a clear plot line? No. Does it display a good command of sentence structure and paragraph development? No. Does it demonstrate good use of dialogue? Generally no. So should we fail Kiley’s effort here, or should we give her a passing grade on work that is flawed across multiple dimensions? These are not easy questions to answer without more information about the class structure, the teacher’s pedagogy, and the amount of time students had to work on the paper. What is certain, however, is that many of Kiley’s problems here could have been solved through classroom activities that helped her focus on the various problematic issues in her writing.

Elijah Moss (Grade 6)

The Darkness (draft 1)

One day, on a cold winter evening, Serena Kateson and her two children, Emily, seven years old, and Jacob, 15 years old, were at the park. Emily hopped on the swing and said, “push me mommy.”

Serena went over and started pushing the swing back and forth. After about 20 minutes

,Serena finally stopped pushing the swing and said “Hey, kids lets go inside it is starting to become dark.”

The swing came to a slow stop and Emily jumped off. They all started walking inside when suddenly, Serena heard Jacob scream. Serena jerked her head to see that Jacob was gone.

One instant later Emily’s scream split the air and Serena wheeled around, greeted by nothing but

Again she was greeted by nothing but darkness and silence. Serena sat on the ground trying to make sense of what had just happened. One last scream and she was gone, swallowed up by the darkness.

Meanwhile, inside the Kateson’s home, Brandon finished making dinner and he yelled

“dinner is ready, time to come downstairs.”

No one answered. He went upstairs to look for his children, Jacob and Emily, but their rooms were empty and ominously quiet. Feeling a sudden panic, he rushed to his wife Serena’s room. She wasn’t there. He started going downstairs when he heard a noise coming from outside.

He raced to the window starting to feel concerned and looked outside. He heard nothing. He was about to leave the room when he saw a bush move, then another and then he saw a creature appear right in front of the house door. The hideous creature had a dark gray face, a mouth covered with blood, a slim agile looking body, rounded knees, and arms that looked like tentacles with deformed even mutant looking fingers. It looked up at him with empty hollow eyes. Brandon jumped back, screaming. He sprinted to the front door to get a better look at the creature. When he looked through the peep hole he saw nothing, he waited 2 seconds and then heard the sound of breaking glass and a snarl coming from upstairs. He stood there in shock.

After 4 seconds he gathered his nerves unlocked the front door and sprinted out into the darkness of the night.

Brandon’s mind was racing as he dashed into the park. He needed to find where his wife and kids were. He continued running until he saw odd marks on a rock. Upon closer inspection he could see what looked like words from a different kind of language. He studied it and decided

© 2014 Taylor & Francis to flip over the rock. To his amazement, it read another message this time in English, “to find who you love you must read the beast.” At first, he couldn’t make sense of it, but he was so worried and desperate he just needed to keep thinking. He kept thinking until he heard a noise in the bushes, then the horrific creature burst out of the bushes quickly swiping at Brandon. It caught him in the leg. He screamed in agony and with all of his courage he pulled out his pocket knife and threw it at the creature. The knife went whizzing past the creature’s ear. The creature screamed and fell to the ground. He thought he missed but when he examined the creature it turned out the knife sliced off a tiny horn next to his ear. “Wow” he said, grabbing his leg.

He looked at his gash and saw it was down to the bone. He remembered what was on the stone and he started examining the creature until he found writing on the beast. It read,

“Your loved ones are hidden in the tree.”

He thought about what he read and said to himself “What tree?”

He was still thinking when the meaning dawned on him “The tree of Garrderville.”

That was the state tree which had to be at least 367 miles away. He tried to get up, but he couldn’t. He started crawling towards his house, he was almost there when he saw the flashing lights of a car the heard the screech of tires and the car stopped. A man jumped out of the car and said “Are you okay?”

Brandon tried to stand up but instead he fell to the ground.

Brandon woke up in the Saint Evanstons hospital with doctors crowding around him on every side. He tried to sit up, but a hand pushed him back down. The doctors were whispering furiously about something, but he couldn’t tell what because the masks were covering their mouths. Brandon looked down at his leg and saw there was a roll of gauze wrapped around his leg. Brandon also saw he was hooked up to devises that seemed to be giving and taking blood.

For the second time Brandon tried to sit up, this time he fell back down himself as a wave of dizziness washed over him and he passed out.

A couple hours later he woke up feeling energized and awake. The male doctor said something to a female doctor who nodded and said, “You are well enough to leave, we will have someone escort you outside.”

Another female doctor entered the room and gestured Brandon to follow. Brandon got up off the bed and followed the female doctor to the exit. Brandon walked outside into the splendid sun covering himself in warmth. He continued walking until someone came up from behind him and grabbed his shoulder. It was the man that almost hit him with his car. The man said, “Hello, my name is James Hanfrey would you like a ride?”

Brandon answered with a yes and said, “Can you take me to Garrderville?”

“Garrderville - that is at least 356 miles away!”

“Well, it is the least you can do for almost killing me!”

James calmed down and said “I suppose that is a reasonable request. My car is waiting for us.”

Brandon smiled feeling accomplished and followed James to his car. The car was a red

Lamborgini. James hopped in and encouraged Brandon to follow. Once Brandon was ready,

James stepped on the gas, the car purred, and they sped of into the distance. It had been 3 hours since Brandon fell asleep in the car, it seemed almost midnight. Brandon looked at James and said, “Do you want to take a break, it has been at least 3 hours?”

James nodded and pulled over into a gas station. James got out of the car and said, “I’ll be right back, I’ll just get a bag of chips.”

Brandon said, “Okay, I’ll wait in the car.”

James walked into the store and the doors closed behind him. Brandon relaxed in the luxurious seat, when all lights went off in the gas station and he heard a scream. He heard a couple of shelves fall over and Brandon did nothing, frozen in fear. Then the creature appeared at his window and started shaking the car! Brandon jumped into the drivers seat, put the car in drive and stepped on the gas. He heard a tearing sound as the car sped ahead. He looked back and saw the creature running after him, and noticed the creature had torn off the trunk. Brandon continued forward while the beast seemed to have gotten in another car and was chasing after him. It probably knew where he was headed. Brandon’s car seemed to be slowing down. Frantically,

Brandon looked at the fuel gauge and saw it was almost empty. Brandon ignored it and kept trying to drive forward. He looked back and saw nothing. He felt relieved until a car jumped the divider and followed Brandon. Brandon felt hopeless. When he saw the road ahead going downhill he used all the gas the car had and all the energy he had to get to the slope. His car stopped when the car following him smashed into his already damaged trunk, pushing his car forward and down the hill. As Brandon was speeding down the hill he saw that the bridge he was about to go on wasn’t finished. He stepped on the brakes but they didn’t work. His car went of the bridge, rocketing to the ground. “ BOOM!”

His car hit the ground with an explosion……

Brandon crawled out off the burning car with 2 broken legs, a broken hand, a dislocated shoulder, scratches all over his face and body. Brandon clawed at the ground with his hand to reach a small puddle of water. He was about to drink when he heard a familiar voice, it was his neighbor Max Servy. Max ran up to him and started apologizing for what he did. Brandon lay there confused and said, “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I dressed up as the creature as a joke to scare you, but I didn’t mean for this to happen!”

Brandon gestured him to come closer and he said in Max’s ear “Then how did you give me such a big gash in my leg and where is my family?”

“I didn’t touch your family or your leg.”

“Then who did?”

Brandon looked away in disgrace when suddenly he heard a scream. He whipped his head around and saw Max laying on the ground with blood dripping from the corners of his mouth. Just for an instant, Brandon saw the creature appear in front of him. With only a second to scream, it tore off his arms and with one strike of a claw it killed Brandon.

Elijah Moss (Grade 6)

The Darkness (draft 2, final)

One day, on a cold winter evening, Serena Kateson and her two children, Emily, seven, and Jacob, fifteen, played at the park. Emily hopped on the swing and said, “Push me mommy.”

Serena started pushing the swing back and forth. Some twenty minutes later, Serena stopped pushing the swing and said, “Hey kids, let’s go inside. It is starting to get dark.”

The swing came to a slow stop, and Emily leaped off.

They all started walking inside the house when suddenly, Serena heard Jacob scream.

Serena jerked her head around to see that Jacob had disappeared. One instant later, Emily’s high- pitched scream split the air, and Serena wheeled around, greeted by nothing but darkness –

Emily had disappeared as well. Terrified, Serena yelled, “Jacob! Emily! Where are you!?”

Again nothing but darkness and silence greeted her. Serena sunk to the ground, sat on trying to make sense of what had just happened. One last scream, and she was gone, swallowed up by the darkness.

Meanwhile, inside the Kateson’s home, Brandon finished making dinner and bellowed

“Dinner is ready. Time to come downstairs.”

No one answered. He tiptoed upstairs to search for his children, Jacob and Emily, but found their rooms empty and ominously quiet. Feeling a sudden panic, he rushed to his wife Serena’s room.

She wasn’t there. He started downstairs when he heard a rustling noise coming from outside. He raced to the window, concern cramping his gut and peered outside. Nothing. He was about to leave the room when he saw a bush move, then another and then he saw a creature appear in front of the house door. The hideous creature smelled like a decomposing skunk, it had a dark gray face, a mouth covered with blood, a slim agile body, rounded knees, arms that looked like tentacles with deformed, mutant fingers. It glared up at him with empty hollow eyes.

Brandon jumped back, screaming. He bolted to the front door to get a better look at the creature. When he cautiously peeked through the peephole, he saw nothing; he waited a few seconds and heard the shatter of breaking glass and a snarl coming from upstairs. He stood there in shock. After some seconds, he gathered his nerves, unlocked the front door, and sprinted out into the darkness of the night.

Brandon’s mind raced; as he dashed into the park. He needed to find his wife and kids.

He spotted peculiar marks on a rock. Upon closer inspection, he discerned what looked like words from a different language. He studied it intensely and decided to flip over the rock. To his amazement, he located another message this time in English. “To find who you love, you must read the beast.”

He couldn’t make sense of it. A noise in the bushes broke his thought. The horrific creature burst out of the bushes, and swiped at Brandon. It caught him in the leg.

Brandon screamed in agony, and with all of his courage, he pulled out his pocketknife and threw it at the creature. The knife whizzed past the creature’s ear. The creature screamed and fell to the ground.

Brandon thought he missed, but when he examined the creature, but the knife had sliced off a tiny horn next to his ear.

“Wow” he said, grabbing his leg.

He nervously inspected his gash. It cut down to the bone. He remembers what is written on the stone, and he started examining the creature until he found writing on the beast. It read, “Your loved ones are hidden in the tree.”

“What tree?” he wondered.

The true meaning dawned on him, “The tree of Garrderville,

That is the state tree. It had to be at least 367 miles away.”

He tried to get up, but he couldn’t. He started crawling towards his house. He almost reached his destination, when he became blinded by the flashing lights of a car, and heard the screech of tires. The car stopped. A man flung the car door open, jumped out of the car and asked, “Are you okay?”

Brandon tried to stand up but fell to the ground.

Brandon woke up in the Saint Evanston Hospital with doctors crowding around him on every side. He tried to sit up, but a hand pushed him back down. The doctors whispered furiously about something, but he couldn’t tell what because the masks covered their mouths. Brandon fearfully peered down at his leg and saw there a roll of silky, clean smelling, gauze wrapped

© 2014 Taylor & Francis around his gash. Brandon also noticed devises hooked up to him that seemed to be giving and taking blood. For the second time, Brandon tried to sit up. This time he fell back down as a wave of dizziness washed over him and he passed out.

A couple hours later, he woke up feeling energized and awake. The male doctor said something to a female doctor who nodded and said, “You are well enough to leave. We will have someone escort you outside.”

Another female doctor entered the room and gestured for Brandon to follow.

Brandon got up off the bed and followed the female doctor to the exit. Brandon tenderly ventured outside into the splendid sun, which covered him in warmth. He continued walking until someone came up from behind him and grabbed his shoulder. It seemed to be the man that almost hit him with his car. The man said, “Hello, my name is James Hanfrey. Would you like a ride?”

Brandon answered with a yes and said, “Can you take me to Garrderville?”

“Garrderville, that is at least 356 miles away!”

“Well, it is the least you can do for almost killing me!”

James calmed down and said, “I suppose that is a reasonable request. My car is waiting for us.”

Brandon smiled feeling accomplished and followed James to his car. The red

Lamborghini glistened in the sun. James hopped in and encouraged Brandon to follow. Once

Brandon settled in, James punched the gas. The car purred, and they sped of into the distance.

Brandon quickly fell asleep. Brandon woke up three hours later at almost midnight. Brandon looked at James and said, “Do you want to take a break?”

James nodded and pulled into a gas station. James jumped out of the car and said, “I’ll be right back. I’ll just get a bag of chips.”

Brandon replied, “Okay, I’ll wait in the car.”

James sauntered into the store. The doors sluggishly closed behind him.

Brandon relaxed in the luxurious seat, when all of the lights blacked out in the gas station, and he heard a scream. He heard a couple of shelves fall over. Brandon did nothing, frozen in fear.

The creature appeared at his window and started shaking the car! Brandon jumped into the drivers seat, put the car in drive and stepped on the gas. He heard a tearing sound as the car sped ahead. He whipped his head around and saw the creature effortlessly sprinting after him, and noticed the creature had torn off the trunk. Brandon shot forward, while the beast seemed to have jumped into another car and chased after him. It probably knew where he was headed.

Brandon’s car seemed to be slowing down. Frantically, Brandon scanned the fuel gauge and saw it almost empty. Brandon ignored it and kept trying to drive forward. He glanced back and saw nothing. He felt relieved until a car jumped the divider and sped up to follow Brandon.

Brandon felt hopeless. When he saw the road ahead sloping downhill, he used all the gas the car had left and all the energy he had left to get to the slope. His car stopped when the car following him smashed into his already damaged trunk, shoving his car forward and down the hill. As

Brandon careened down the hill, he saw that the bridge ahead wasn’t finished. He slammed on the brakes, but they didn’t work. His car lurched of the bridge, rocketing to the ground. “

BOOM!”

His car hit the ground with an explosion……

Brandon crawled out of the burning car with two broken legs, and a broken hand, and a dislocated shoulder, scratches all over his face and body. Brandon clawed at the ground with his hand to desperately reach a small puddle of water. He was about to drink when he heard a familiar voice. It was his neighbor Max Servy. Max ran up to him and started apologizing for what he had done. Brandon lay there confused and said, “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, I dressed up as the creature as a joke to scare you, but I didn’t mean for this to happen!”

Brandon gestured for him to come closer, and in a strained voice he whispered in Max’s ear “Then how did you give me such a big gash in my leg, and where is my family?”

“I didn’t touch your family or your leg.”

“Then who did?”

Brandon turned his head in disgrace when suddenly he heard a scream. He whipped his head around and saw Max laying on the ground with blood dripping from the corners of his mouth. Just for an instant, Brandon saw the creature appear in front of him. With only a second to scream, it tore off his arms and with one strike of a claw, it decapitated Brandon.

Analysis

Elijah’s story is somewhat better constructed than Kiley’s. The opening provides a mysterious disappearance that has become all too frequent in daily life, so it is likely to resonate with readers. The introduction of the monster, however, weakens the story very quickly. The really scary monsters are the people next door, not some imaginary creature that smells like a dead skunk.

As we would expect in a story written by a sixth grader, Elijah’s story suffers from lack

© 2014 Taylor & Francis of experience. He has the main character, Brandon, walk out of the hospital, which is never allowed in life. All discharged patients must be taken to the entrance in a wheel chair. Then there is the Lamborghini. All modern Lamborghinis are rear-engine designs and therefore have a trunk in the front of the car, not the back. The last Lamborghini with a front-engine design was made in the early 1970s; a mid-engine model was also produced around that time. But it is unlikely that Elijah was thinking about these when he wrote the story, for even committed motorheads have mostly forgotten them. Such factual errors are problematic and hard to dismiss, given the ease with which he could have performed the required research. They indicate, as we saw with regard to Kiley, that he received insufficient feedback during the writing process.

The poverty of feedback may explain why Elijah made so few revisions to the first draft.

When we read them consecutively, it is difficult to find any significant changes to draft 1.

Without more information about the class and how writing instruction was organized, we have no way of knowing what factors led to so little revision and editing.

Aaron LaMont (Grade 7)

Project Blackout (draft 1)

4 Years after the Attack: 1967

Bang!! “Another one?” she asked, “Yes” replied the shooter with a small shout.

“They’re everywhere nowadays” replied the housewife and mother of three children, Janet, one

6, one 10, one 16. They hunted the rabid things for food; it was the only thing left. Their family had managed to survive; the human race, on its last breathes of air before complete termination.

The family was deprived of proper nutrition. The brain lacked all necessary vitamins; the family luckily had an ample supply of vitamin pills. If you were gone one night you were pronounced

It all started four years ago. Everything was normal on Christmas Eve night, while the children where in bed waiting restlessly for the next morning. The long, good, normal night passed. The kids woke up to presents around the Christmas tree. Joshua the youngest got his new favorite toy, a fire truck, Jackson the depressed middle child got a rock, and the oldest child,

Joey got a gun to hunt with his father, Rick. The boys were pleased; they played around with their new things; Joshua rolled his fire truck all around the large house; Jackson threw his rock at the wall numerous times, then ran to his tiny room and cried; Joey and his dad went to the shooting range down the street to practice. It was a great Christmas day!

The next day was just as great, they all played with all their toys. At the families

Sunday dinner they tuned on the news to watch their favorite show, “The Walking Dead.” A special news flash on the bottom of the screen popped up. It had a low voice man ringing over the sound of the show telling everyone to remain calm and stay in their homes. Their show quickly reappeared and everything was back to normal. They finished their show in disgust,

Matt, the best fighter, was eaten alive in his sleep.

Rick was curious about this bazaar, random, news flash. He knew something was happening, something out of the ordinary. Rick decided to step outside and decide what he should do about the situation. The warm summer air refreshed his cold, worn down, sun burned face. As he walked outside he heard a large vibrating noise. A huge spacecraft was coming down to earth.

The monstrous thing wobbled down like a floating metal bird. Rick rushed to tell his wife and kids. He swiftly dodged the couch, chairs and the dining room table to get to the

© 2014 Taylor & Francis spacious backyard, where the kids had been playing. He rushed to his wife and whispered in her ear. She was shocked. Rick told her he needed to run to the store. The family needed as much as they could get, Rick knew it. He got in his Camero and raced off to the nearest Wal-Mart. He bought everything they would need to stay inside their home for one year. He bought a large food supply and warm coats and long pants and a compass and maps of the city and water and tents and bullets for his son’s new gun. The total came to be $1,054.96: a new record that would soon be broken by the other families in need of supplies.

Rick raced home to protect his family. It was late at night and the kids were in bed, no idea what catastrophe was happening. Janet still waiting for Rick’s arrival sat by the children, stroking their heads as they slowly fell asleep. Rick managed to get home safely with the goods.

Janet helped rick unload the goods. They hid them in the closet, so robbers wouldn’t have a chance to steal or ruin them. The two went to bed imagining what they should do next. They came to a conclusion that they should tell the kids. Shortly after, they fell asleep. The next morning Rick had to break the news to the boys. The boys took it like men, they knew the road ahead was rough but they were ready to battle through.

The family was ready for all. Rick was ready to fight whatever came at him. Janet would do anything for her beloved family. Joey, with his new gun, was ready to dominate.

Jackson had actually become a good shot with a sling shot, using his rock. Joshua still had no idea what was going on and was clueless of knowing what the big commotion was about, so he just ran around with his toy.

The news had absolutely no good information. All they could say was stay at home and wait till tomorrow, and wait till tomorrow. Rick decided to take a better look at this hunk of metal now hovering over earth’s crust. He brought his high power binoculars. It seemed to be a

The boys had been a great help. They helped their mother around the kitchen. Jackson killed a squirrel with his rock. Joey hit several birds. Joshua did nothing. The plan was working amazingly well. Everything was completely normal until the air-strike. The military had decided to fight instead of make peace with the visitors.

The bombs went off every minute of the day; the weak missiles were absorbed by the strong alien force field. The confusion of the army was astounding; they had no idea what they were getting themselves into. But they were putting us all into grave danger. The confusion of the government carried over to the household. The family tried to live normal but they couldn’t.

Nobody could get any sleep so they stayed up all night listening to the bombs faint cry in the distance.

As the family was sitting on the couch, in a huddled up ball, to their surprise they heard the bombs stop. The army finally realized they were out-matched. It was now the aliens move.

They made their move. The sphere slowly hatched open…

Rick and the family did not know at the time, so they were happy it was over. The family slept well not knowing what was going on, it was the first night they slept in days. The family slept forever, although they only slept 7 hours it felt like eternity for them. They woke up rejuvenated. The family had warm pancakes for breakfast; it was the start of a good day. A man approached the house; he was well dressed with black hair and broad shoulders. He paced up to the door and hit it hardly like he had never knocked before. The thump rang through the house.

Rick, disrupted from his meal, lazily stood up and walked to the door.

Rick saw the well dressed man, he suspected it was the government telling us again to

“stay inside and keep calm.” But this time it felt different, just Rick couldn’t put his finger on it.

Rick slowly opened the door and asked”What do you want.” The man said nothing. Rick waited for an answer but the man just stood there. After Rick asked for the third time the man started to deform. His neat clothes became ragged and his face of pure white turned to a vomit green, the thing entered the house.

Rick sprinted away, gathering up his family on the way. They went to the bathroom, the place with the only lockable door in the house. The family gathered into the small downstairs bathroom. The thing started thumping on the door relentlessly. Rick had to think fast. He broke out the toilet seat and unlocked the door. The thing opened it and Rick bashed, those years of college baseball paid off. Within three swings the things head was hanging by shreds and by the forth it was gone. The family dodged a bullet there but there were many, many more to come…

The alien zombie war lasted 7 more years. It was hard on the mind and body. The survivors were the ones who could deal with the people of great value in their lives being abruptly taken out. The government made up most of the earth’s survivors. The middle class was nearly wiped out. The government needed a cover-up for their lack of protecting the world. They used top scientists to make a universal brain washing device, it was called “Project Blackout.”

Aaron LaMont (Grade 7)

Project Blackout (draft 2, final)

4 Years after the Attack: 1967

Bang!! “Another one?” she asked, “Yes” replied the shooter with a small shout.

“They’re everywhere nowadays” replied the housewife and mother of three children, Janet, one

6, one 10, one 16. They hunted the rabid things for food; it was the only thing left. Their family had managed to survive; the human race, on its last breathes of air before complete termination.

The family was deprived of proper nutrition. The brain lacked all necessary vitamins; the family luckily had an ample supply of vitamin pills. If you were gone one night you were pronounced dead, it was just how it went. They survived on the barf looking zombie brain, the only edible part of the horrific creatures.

The next day was just as great, they all played with all their toys. At the families

Matt, the best fighter, was eaten alive in his sleep.

The monstrous thing wobbled down like a floating metal bird. Rick rushed to tell his

© 2014 Taylor & Francis wife and kids. He swiftly dodged the couch, chairs and the dining room table to get to the spacious backyard, where the kids had been playing. He rushed to his wife and whispered in her ear. She was shocked. Rick told her he needed to run to the store. The family needed as much as they could get, Rick knew it. He got in his Camero and raced off to the nearest Wal-Mart. He bought everything they would need to stay inside their home for one year. He bought a large food supply and warm coats and long pants and a compass and maps of the city and water and tents and bullets for his son’s new gun. The total came to be $1,054.96: a new record that would soon be broken by the other families in need of supplies.

The family was ready for all. Rick was ready to fight whatever came at him. Janet would do anything for her beloved family. Joey, with his new gun, was ready to dominate.

Nobody could get any sleep so they stayed up all night listening to the bombs faint cry in the distance.

As the family was sitting on the couch, in a huddled up ball, to their surprise they heard the bombs stop. The army finally realized they were out-matched. It was now the aliens move.

They made their move. The sphere slowly hatched open.

Rick, disrupted from his meal, lazily stood up and walked to the door.

Rick saw the well dressed man, he suspected it was the government telling us again to

“stay inside and keep calm.” But this time it felt different, just Rick couldn’t put his finger on it.

Rick slowly opened the door and asked”What do you want.” The man said nothing. Rick waited

© 2014 Taylor & Francis for an answer but the man just stood there. After Rick asked for the third time the man started to deform. His neat clothes became ragged and his face of pure white turned to a vomit green, the thing entered the house.

Analysis

Aaron’s story is written in the third person, but it might have been more effective had he written it in the first person. The reason is that doing so would have avoided the problems that third-person narration creates: Who is the narrator, and how does he or she know what the family was doing, thinking, and feeling?

The lack of familiarity with literary structure is again evident in Aaron’s story, but more troubling are the various improbable elements of the story. Aaron states, for example, that the family was eating “rabid” food, and although he doesn’t make this very clear, that food seems to

© 2014 Taylor & Francis consist of the zombies’ brains. The problem with this idea is that the probability is high that, after doing so, the family would contract rabies and die. But that didn’t happen. Another example is the statement that Rick managed to pack a year’s worth of supplies (e.g., food, clothing) into a

Chevy Camaro, a small sporty car—and moreover paid just a bit more than a thousand dollars for everything.

Arguably more problematic is that the changes Aaron made to his first draft are minor and that he corrected very few of the initial errors. The lack of significant revision and editing may have been the result of several factors, but two seem most likely. First, Aaron may not have been invested in the assignment and didn’t care whether he received a good grade or a poor one.

Second, the feedback he received from the teacher and classmates may not have been sufficiently focused or detailed to provide the guidance he needed to make effective changes.

Ashkan Jamshasb (Grade 8)

Morpher (final, no previous drafts submitted)

The hot sun burned my skin as I biked towards the market to pick up a few groceries for my family. My older brother, Joshua, who’s nineteen years old, sick with the Flew, usually went and ran the errands for his family. My younger sister, Laquisha, who’s fifteen years old, never did anything; she only talked to her friends (the little that she had) on her new phone she got a month ago. My knees wobbled as I walked because I just got out of my karate class and on my way there the sky lit up with a white line, like a shooting star, that traveled along the sky. I have never really seen a shooting star so I made a wish that my brother would get better so I wouldn’t have to do all the chores. I stared at the spot at where I saw the star and I thought the sky’s a little bit darker than the rest of the sky. I approached the entrance of the mall when I saw another

As I walked into the market and I walked towards in the fruits and vegetables section I glanced over toward the candy isle, I decided that my family could wait. I saw WoberDobels,

Shringles, Scroplets, etcetera. I stopped and stared with my mouth open, sucking up my drool when I saw the all and mighty Flabablab. I reach for it when the shelf started to shake, my eyes widened as I looked up at the ceiling that seemed to be shaking more than the shelf. The lights started to flash; it lasted for like 10 seconds with a few screams and then it all stopped. All quiet.

Fingers barely touching the bar, I retreaded back towards the safety of the vegetable isle. I took out my phone and started to dial my mom’s number when the lights flickered again, I looked up and everything seemed normal. Finished dialing, I called my mom, “Hey, Mom are you all right?”

Mom replied, “Jonathan, you are not allowed to get a chocolate bar.”

Surprised, I said, “Did you feel the earthquake?” I paused waiting for an answer; I acquired none, “Is every one okay?”

Mom spoke in a sweet tone, “There was no earthquake honey, are you okay? If your not feel–“

Cutting Mom off, knowing I’m going to regret it later, “I’m all right Mom, I’ll be back soon.”

Mom replied agitated that I cut her off, “Okay, don’t get into trouble, love you.”

At that, I hung up. Considering what my mom had said, I thought I might be a little sick,

I saw two shooting stars in mid-day. On that note I turned around and walked toward the back of the vegetable isle looking at the broccoli with a disgusted face when I heard a man scream in the

© 2014 Taylor & Francis back, curious, I ever so gently pushed the door open, I peeked around the corner and saw a few broken pipes squirting out gas or something like that. The oven in the kitchen burst into flames, completely destroying it and there little fires in other places. I crept toward the sink when I heard something move. I creped slowly at the noise; I looked behind a table and saw a man lying on the floor, around his 40s, with a gash about the size of a ruler in his leg and a few scratches around his body.

The man jumped and started to swing around a roller around for a second staring me dead in the eye. He started to mumble something; I couldn’t under stand what he’s saying but his eyes glanced behind me. Sweat started to drip from my head; I slowly pulled my head up from the man and looked up, staring at the refrigerator in front of me. I rubbed my eyes after looking at the reflection of the refrigerator, seeing the same thing as before, I looked back down at the man and remembered what I learned in my karate class. Quickly reviewing what I learned in class as it approached. When it came within two feet of me I quickly turned around and punched the extraterrestrial once in the chin, I looked at my fist, slowly getting sucked into its body. I yanked my hand out of its chin but it wasn’t letting go, I and kicked it in the stomach and pulled back quickly. After all that, he did not move at all.

The alien looked tall, lanky, tan, and slimy, it had a round head and had a hand with seven fingers and on its other hand it had a gun like thing. I’m stand right between the man and the alien. It looked down towards me, it had eight eyes that were not staring at me, but threw me,

I head a cracking coming from its back. Slowly, I saw six sharp and pointy arm-like things extend out of its back. I couldn’t move my feet were stuck to the floor like they were attached by glue. The arms extended two of the razor sharp arm slowly crept towards my eyes when I jumped and ran behind the counter. Shaking behind the counter, I heard the extraterrestrial

© 2014 Taylor & Francis stepped toward me. I pulled out my phone and dialed 911 and pressed call. I waited a few seconds, and with no avail, I looked my phone and the screen became all fuzzy. I gathered up all my courage and looked around the corner and saw the alien had stopped in front of the man on the floor. The man, treating his wound, looked up and saw that the alien stared at him like a hawk. The man’s jaw twitched as he saw the figure, he reached around for his roller but could not find it. He crawled back muttering for words when the alien, with a blink of an eye swopped his arms down and pierced the man straight threw the heart. Blood squirted out of his mouth like a fountain, and with the last few twitches of life coming out of him, his body stopped and the alien removed his arms from his body and they retracted back into his body. The alien bent down and shoved his face into the man’s wound and sucked the man dry. The alien’s face seemed to morph into the man’s face. His hand turned into the one of the man’s, his other hand stayed the same but with human skin, and his legs, they were exactly the same as the man’s.

I pressed my back against the counter trying to stay as still as possible, maybe he would think that I left. I peaked around the corner and saw him walking towards me and step through some gas, he made a high pitch sound, and I covered my ears and squirmed until it stopped. I looked back over there and saw that part of his foot burned. I waited for a while thinking about my family and my friends, and in the middle of the thought about my friends, I heard a creaking sound. I clanged onto the counter when I felt it start to move. I released it and jumped up and stared into its eyes and this time he’s eyes stared at me. I looked at his chin and the hole in his chin from when I punched it vanished. I grabbed the closet thing to me, which happened to be the same roller that the man had. The arms lifted the counter off of it foundation and the creature cranked the counter back like a catapult. Predicting the launch I jumped out of the way as the counter went completely threw the wall. I ran around the man that died, that now seemed to be

© 2014 Taylor & Francis one hundred years old. I looked back up and the man, if I can even call it that, stood right in font of me, I threw the roller at his head and it stuck into his head. I slowly went into his head and disappeared. I ran around always looking in front of me, the fear of him popping up in front of me when I’m not looking.

I exited the room and scream on the top of my lungs, “RUN!” I waited and I heard nothing but my echo. I glanced around the room and saw that the whole store was empty. I ran around the store and passed by the candy isle and went to the vegetable isle. I saw a man lying next to the broccoli. I asked him frustrated, “Do you know what’s happening?” The man stood up and groaned.

He started, “I saw—“ he paused, he started to cough up blood and he collapsed, there appeared to be a whole about the size of an apple in his back. The man that I saw in the kitchen stood behind him with his gun hand out. My eyes widened and I started to throw broccoli at the alien. Without wasting another second, I ran out into the parking lot and looked around and saw a space ship on top of the market. It wasn’t big enough for more than one of those things. I went towards my bike and grabbed it and started to pull it away when it wasn’t moving. I looked down at its wheels and the sticky stuff from the alien help down the tires on my bike. I started to run in the other direction when I hit him, the man looked like the person who died lying next to the broccoli. He had stabbed me on the left shoulder with one of his arms, natural reflexes coming in, I kicked him in the shins and punched him as fast as I could with my right arm as fast as I could.

I retreated to look at the damage I made and saw nothing he, stood perfectly fine. I dashed as fast as I could away from him, I thought about going to my house but I didn’t want to get my family in danger. I parking lot was completely empty, which never happened. I looked all

© 2014 Taylor & Francis around me and saw no one, I started to think it’s a dream but then I started to feel the pain in my shoulder. I looked at it and the wound wasn’t as big as it felt, but it felt as if the wound became larger. I decided I could lose him if I ran into the woods, I always feared the woods but I wasn’t as scared of it compared to this thing. As I entered the woods I heard something scurry behind me really fast, I looked behind me and saw no one. There’s about one more hour of daylight left.

I thought maybe if I lost him I could call someone for help. I ran for twenty minutes not seeing him once, I decided that this is a good spot. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialed

Mom’s number. I looked around to make sure he wasn’t near and pressed call. To my luck I heard ringing. “Hello? Where are you! You’re late!” Yelled Mom.

I replied looking around, “Mom, I-I-I don’t know what to do. The-there’s this man who is following me.”

My mom replied like I’m joking, “Well did you ask what he wanted? You might have dropped something and he—“

It cut her off and I heard was fuzz, I looked at the screen and it was fuzzy. I looked to my left and the wound I got was getting bigger. I looked to my right and out of the corner of my eye

I saw him, standing, looking at me. I didn’t want to run for the rest of my life so I thought about what my mom said. “What do you want from me?”

He stood there for a second and took a step forward and I he replied in my head with a high pitch noise that sent me running in the other direction away from him. I knew that there’s no running from him. He would just find me again. As I run I thought about the gas incident, how it burned his skin. I had twenty dollars that my mom wanted me to spend on groceries, I thought about going back to the market and using the gas from there. I looked around and saw

© 2014 Taylor & Francis trees as far as I could see. I kept a steady pace so I wouldn’t run out of energy. I started to think about everything that I could have done so I wouldn’t be here, and then I saw a road.

I saw cars driving by, the first human life I saw in hours. I ran towards the street and to my luck I saw a gas station across the street, on the sidewalk. I looked back; the man disappeared. I waited for a break in traffic and sprinted across the street to the gas station. The man, alien thing stood across the street and with his arms coming out of his back started to walk across the street destroying any cars that were in his way. Some gas from one car got on his leg, he stumbled and a car hit him full force and he went flying twenty feet away from me. I ran toward the station and put in my twenty in the machine and with the gas prices these days I could only get four gallons of gas. I looked to behind me and saw him less than ten yards away. My parents didn’t have a car so it took me a while to figure out how to do this, he stood right in front of me with his arms like prongs about to go into me. I fired. It touched his skin and nothing happened for a second and then he fell. His skin began to bubble and burned like paper. He screams a high-pitched noise that made my ears thud, hearing my heart beating in my ears.

I stood with pride, but when the gas got on my wound, it burned like fire, looking at it. It started to look like the skin of the extraterrestrial before he morphed into the two men. I touched it and my finger started to sink into it, I couldn’t think. I didn’t want to turn into that thing. I looked at the gas that spewed out on the alien. Without much choice, the alien laid there, shriveled up like a broken action figure. The wound had spread to half of my face to my waist.

Without much time, I grabbed the gas and started to spray it on my skin. It burned like putting my face on a hot stove. Three seconds into the operation, I ran out of gas. The parts that I did slowly started to recover. Every inch that it covered felt like I was putting my body into hot water, the arms on my back started to form by moving my ribs and making arms. I leaned up

© 2014 Taylor & Francis against the gas thing and I had little to no time to stop this. I ripped the top off of the gas distributer and gas spewed out onto my skin and it burned so bad it felt like I was taking a shower in lava. The last thing I remember were people looking at the alien and I with aw and fear. One of them was trying to call someone, but they complained that their phone wasn’t working.

When I woke up I lied in a hospital. My left arm was shriveled up and thin, my ribs felt wobbly, and my whole body tingled. With my family around me, my brother became better and he did all the chores and my sister’s phone broke and she helped the family.

Analysis

Given that Ashkan is an eighth-grade student, it is reasonable to expect his writing to be better than that of his sixth-grade counterparts, but that is not the case here. Ashkan did provide more details than we saw in Kiley’s story, but the level of detail is offset by the numerous errors in structure, spelling, and word choice. We therefore can conclude that, generally, students do gain writing proficiency as they become older, but the degree of improvement varies significantly from person to person.

Assignment 2

The next assignment from this class is an analysis of Richard Connell’s 1924 short story,

“The Most Dangerous Game.” It was the third assignment in a sequence of three that began with narrative (the second in the sequence was a persuasive paper, although it was labeled a

“debate”). The assignment follows:

We discussed the nature of a thesis-driven paper and how to analyze a work of literature.

We then read and discussed “The Most Dangerous Game,” looking at the plot, the characters, and so on. For your thesis assignment, analyze the story.

Analysis

Literary analysis involves identifying and examining a story’s theme and message. That is, students must be able to reach a conclusion regarding what the story means. This conclusion is the thesis that they argue. Because literary works tend to present the complexities of human nature, it is possible to find multiple messages in a given work. Consequently, when we give literary analysis assignments, we should expect to see a variety of theses in their papers. The number of theses is not inexhaustible, however. An example that I often use to illustrate this point is Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. One cannot reasonably argue that the play is about demonic possession.

The assignment seems clear enough—for experienced writers. I question whether it has enough detail for middle school students. Also, without knowing more about the instruction that preceded the assignment—did the students study successful models of literary analysis? did they analyze other stories for theme and message before reading “The Most Dangerous Game,” and so forth—it is difficult to predict how well prepared the students were for the assignment. As indicated in Preparing to Teach Writing, assignments should be fairly detailed, stating clearly what students are expected to do and offering some success criteria.

Student Papers

The first essay comes from Aaron LaMont. I selected it on the basis of two premises: first, that it is useful to consider a student’s growth as a writer over the course of a semester;

© 2014 Taylor & Francis second, that it is useful to compare students’ proficiency in narrative with their proficiency in exposition. (Note that multiple drafts were not submitted for this assignment.)

Aaron LaMont (Grade 7)

In Richard Connel’s short story, “The Most Dangerous Game,” world-renowned hunter

Sanger Rainsford falls off his boat into the Mediterranean Sea. He falls into a trap by swimming to Ship-Trap Island; General Zaroff goes into the hunt with Rainsford as his target. At first

Rainsford has no sympathy to the hunted; he believes animals have no fear. But when the sides flip, and he becomes the hunted, his thoughts change to a different perspective; he suddenly does not like the idea of killing for fun. And though he still kills all the people on the island he keeps the same perspective, killing Zaroff to put an end to the suffering. He will leave the island and abandon hunting forever.

Rainsford argues with his fellow hunter Whitney that hunting is a great sport and animals do not feel fear. “Great sport hunting (Whitney),” “The best sport in the world,” agreed

Rainsford. “For the hunter” amended Whitney, “Not the Jaguar,” “Don’t talk rot Whitney” said

Rainsford… “Who cares what the Jaguar feels (Rainsford).” Rainsford shows no sympathy at first for the hunted, but it will change after the hunter becomes the hunted. Rainsford has been invited in and is at dinner with General Zaroff. “The cocktail was surpassingly good; and,

Rainsford noted that the table appointments were of the finest—the linen, the crystal, the China.”

This shows the general owns and applies the finest of everything; it makes the story unpredictable and surprises Rainsford even more when hunting humans is brought up. Rainsford introduces his take on the deadliest animal but the General proves him wrong. “I’ve always thought,” said Rainsford “That the Cape buffalo was the deadliest of all big game,” … “No sir

Rainsford is repulsed to hear that General Zaroff hunts humans and feels the fear of being hunted." I refuse to believe that so modern and civilized man like you seem to harbors romantic ideas about the value of human life. Surely your experiences in the war- (Zaroff,) did not make me condone cold-blooded murder, finished Rainsford stiffly." Rainsford, due to his human nature declines to hunt humans after he knows if he does not hunt there will be consequences.

The general asks Rainsford to hunt one more time with him, when he declines the General offers to play against him for freedom. “You don't mean- cried Rainsford. My dear fellow said the general have I not told you, I always mean what I say about hunting (Zaroff.)"…"And if I win- began Rainsford huskily. "I'll cheerfully acknowledge myself defeated." Rainsford realizes if he could beat the general he could accomplish his main goal leave the evil island forever. After

Rainsford makes the most complicated trail possible he rests for the night but he wakes up to footsteps. "It was general Zaroff. He made his way along with his eyes fixed in utmost concentration on the ground before him" … "The generals eyes had left the ground and were traveling inch by inch up the tree"… "A smile spread over his brown face (Zaroff.) He very deliberately blew a smoke ring in the air and walked away" Rainsford was let loose this time;

Zaroff wanted more of a challenge.

Even though Rainsford kills Ivan, some dogs and Zaroff, he never kills for pleasure only to survive. "Rainsford knew he could do one of two things. He could stay where he was and wait.

That was suicide. He could flee. That was postponing the inevitable."… "Rainsford knew Ivan must be holding the leash." Rainsford realizes he is being followed, he needs to act fast. His premier hunting abilities help him. Rainsford sets a trap by setting his knife down in the path of

They must have reached the knife."…"General Zaroff was still on his feet. But Ivan was not. The knife driven by the spring tree, had not wholly failed." Rainsford has successfully gotten rid of

Ivan but Zaroff is still on the loose, Rainsford runs toward the ocean. "When the general and his pack (of dogs) reached the place by the sea, the Cossack stopped. For some minutes he stood regarding the blue-green expanse of water. He shrugged his shoulders." Zaroff thinks that the smart Rainsford has dove into a death trap, he assumes that Rainsford is dead. Zaroff is surprised by Rainsford popping out of his room, “Rainsford! Screamed the general how in god’s name you got here. Swam said Rainsford, I found it quicker than walking through the jungle. I congratulate you, he said (Zaroff) you have won the game. Rainsford did not smile, I am a beast at bay, he said in a low hoarse voice (Rainsford) Get ready general Zaroff,"…"I see he said (Zaroff)

Splendid" … "The other will sleep in this very nice bed. On guard Rainsford…"... "He had never slept in a better bed." Rainsford put out those bad men and leaves the evil island to go home.

When Rainsford gets home he quits hunting, he feels different, in a way sympathetic for the hunted.

Rainsford starts arrogant and careless. He states he does not care for the hunted. But when the sides flip he feels the fear of being hunted. He goes through a series of events happening on the island. First with him shock at how a civilized man can go cruel to being hunted by the best hunter in the world. Rainsford realizes how hard it is to be ready at any second to be brutally killed by an outside force. He gives up his hunting career and life. He tells no one about his experience but he will always remember.

Analysis

Students begin examining and discussing literature in elementary school; in many

© 2014 Taylor & Francis districts, instruction starts in first grade. This instruction generally follows a similar approach, with students receiving a handout that asks them to identify the title of the story and the names of the characters and to write a brief plot summary. The focus on these features usually continues until middle school, where students are introduced to the more complex issues of theme, message, and interpretation. The problem is that for several years students have practiced summarizing stories, and we see the consequence in Aaron’s paper. It is merely a summary of the story, without a thesis and without any interpretation of what the story means.

If we examine Aaron’s scary story and this essay, we find that he has many of the same errors in both: careless sentence construction, haphazard punctuation, and little sense of paragraphing. The inattention to detail is significant; Aaron did not even provide a title for the paper. Nevertheless, if we consider the two efforts side by side, Aaron’s essay is a bit clearer than his story. The improved clarity is congruent with my argument in Preparing to Teach

Writing that narrative is far more difficult for students than exposition.

Over many years, I have noted that few students attend to details, and I have concluded that it is because they simply are not asked to do so on a regular basis. As a result, they tend to believe that such matters are unimportant. Several factors may contribute to students’ inattention to details, but two seem most significant. In some cases, the teachers themselves have a uncertain grasp of punctuation, formatting, use of evidence, and so forth. In others—perhaps a majority— teachers may recognize that the work required to make students more attentive to details is

Herculean and that most students would probably fail. If failure is not an option, the only course is to accept whatever students can produce.

Jack Fukuyama (Grade 7)

The Hunters and the Hunted

In “The Most Dangerous Game”, written by Richard Connell, a strong fearless hunter goes on a trip over seas. On the way he falls off of his boat and swims ashore an island. On this island he meets General Zaroff another good hunter who got bored of hunting because it was too easy so he decides to hunt humans instead. Later in the book Rainsford is being hunted by

General Zaroff and now knows fear because of him. In this short story thriller a showdown between two very good hunters comes to play.

Rainsford is strong and strong minded. He is a good hunter and is a good challenge for general Zaroff. General Zaroff had never had challenge hunting until he found his match another hunter named Rainsford. They play a wicked game trying to hunt each other and it ends up in disaster. “Ship-Trap Island” earned its name from the history of killing sailors and sinking boats, which foreshadows Rainsford and Whitney sailing past it. In the first couple of paragraphs of the story, it shows that the island itself is dangerous, and it is trying to suck you into the short story.

“What island is it?” Rainsford asked. “The old charts call it ship-trap Island.’ ” Whitney replied

(1).

Rainsford does not like the idea of hunting humans. His is astonished that General Zaroff would kill a human for his own enjoyment. “I can’t believe you are serious, General Zaroff. This is a grisly joke….what you speak of is murder.” (22). Rainsford did not get the fact that General

Zaroff was serious. General Zaroff thought that because Rainsford was a hunter, and a soldier that he would understand why he would want the challenge of hunting humans. “Surely your experiences in the war-- “Did not make me condone cold-blooded murder.” (22). Rainsford knows there is a difference between hunting animals and hunting humans. After talking to

General Zaroff about hunting, Rainsford was so fearful that he could not sleep. “He was tired in every fiber of his being, but nevertheless Rainsford could not quiet his brain with the opiate of sleep. (24) Rainsford was afraid to sleep because he thought the General would do something to him in his sleep.

As the hunt began, Rainsford didn’t know what to do. At first he was out of control with panic and fear, but soon got himself together. “I must keep my nerve….He had not been entirely clear-headed….Now he had got a grip on himself, had stopped, and was taking stock of himself and the situation.” (25) Rainsford knew if he kept panicking that it would do him no good.

During the hunt, General Zaroff finds Rainsford after one night, and is not satisfied and gives him another chance; which Rainsford takes more seriously. “The Cossack was the cat; he was the mouse. Then it was that Rainsford knew the full meaning of terror.” (26) Rainsford knew that

Zaroff was playing with him and, if he didn’t pick up his game he was going to die. General

Zaroff was too smart for Rainsford’s traps, but still couldn’t catch him, so he decided to use the dogs. “Rainsford knew now how an animal at bay feels….Twenty feet below him the sea rumbled and hissed. Rainsford hesitated. He heard the hounds. Then he leaped far out into the sea….” (29) Rainsford was so desperate that he would try anything now, even though he didn’t know how it would all turn out.

As the game ended General Zaroff thought he was alone and thought that Rainsford had escaped.

As he walked in to his room and found that he was not alone: ‘I congratulate you,” he said. “You have won the game.” Rainsford did not smile. “I am still a beast at bay,” he said in a low, hoarse voice. “Get ready, General Zaroff.” The General made one of his deepest bows. “I see,” he said.

“Splendid! One of us gets to furnish a repast for the hounds. The other will sleep in this very excellent bed. On guard, Rainsford….” He had never slept in a better bed, Rainsford decided”

(30).

This shows that Rainsford won the fight, and is now finally at rest, and does not have to worry about anybody hunting him again. He got his revenge and is now happy. Rainsford did not like that he was hunting humans but thinks its ok to hunt animals. “‘Why should I not be serious? I am speaking of hunting.” “ Hunting? General Zaroff what you speak of is murder.’”

(22) This shows that Rainsford does not approve of what General Zaroff is doing. Later on

Rainsford understands that the general is going to have him play the game with him. “You’ll find this game worthy of playing,” The General said enthusiastically. “Your brain against mine. Your word craft against mine. Outdoor chess! And the stake is not without value, eh?” (24) This obviously states that Rainsford and the General are going to play the game together.

I think that Rainsford left the island, and went back to his ship, because even though he was a hunter and didn’t feel for the animals, he didn’t like the idea of hunting humans. He even said earlier in the story that he thought none of the animals felt any emotions or knew fear; but he definitely knows that humans can feel fear and know fear. Even though he probably still thinks the same way about the animals, his experience might make him think a little more about their feelings. I think that killing General Zaroff is a better option because you don’t want a mass murderer running around on his own little island killing people just because hunting got boring.

Any way, if Rainsford didn’t kill him and joined him, imagine what two good hunters on an island who capture people to hunt them would do to the society.

Analysis

Like Aaron, Jack fails to provide a thesis or an argument. Instead, he merely summarizes the plot of the story. There also are similar types of errors in structure, word choice, formatting,

© 2014 Taylor & Francis and punctuation. We see that when Jack focuses on plot summary, he lacks any motivation to use secondary sources to support his reading of the story. Indeed, this is a characteristic that we find among most students who don’t really grasp the nature of a literary analysis. Also interesting are the last several lines of the paper, beginning with “I think that killing General Zaroff.” Jack’s emphasis that the paper reflects his thinking suggests that he is unsure about what a paper like this is supposed to do. It also suggests that Jack perceives the writing assignment as a form of examination rather than an exploration of the message.

Ashkan Jamshasb (Grade 8)

The Hunted Hunter

In Richard Connell’s short story “The Most Dangerous Game” a man named Sanger

Rainsford goes hunting and falls off his boat and lands on an island and meets a man named

General Zaroff, who hunts Rainsford. Sanger Rainsford is shocked to learn that the general is hunting men. Rainsford is a strong man; he does not fear anything. Rainsford stays on the island and hunts animals, because even though Rainsford has no empathy for the animals he hunts, he is repulsed that the general hunts human for sport although he makes traps that kills, he does so to survive, and he knows the difference between killing animals and humans.

Early on, Rainsford argues with Whitney, a hunter, that hunting is a great sport and animals do not feel fear. Rainsford is an expert hunter. He hunts for the fun of the sport, but his friend, Whitney, has sympathy for the animals: “’Don’t talk rot. Whitney,’ said Rainsford

‘You’re a big-time hunter, not a philosopher. Who cares how a jaguar feels?’” (14). Whitney feels sympathy for the jaguars during the hunt. Rainsford hunts for the fun of it not caring how

The first thing Rainsford’s eyes discerned was the largest man Rainsford had ever

seen… ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ said Rainsford, with a smile which he hoped was

disarming. ‘I’m no robber. I fell off a yacht. My name is Sanger Tainsford of New

York City.’ The menacing look in his eyes did not change… ‘I’m Sanger

Rainsford of New York’.. ‘I am hungry.’ The man’s only answer was to raise with

his thumb the hammer of his revolver. Then Rainsford saw the man’s free hand

go to his fore head in a military salute, and he saw him click his heels together

and stand at attention (16-17).

With a gun pointing at his heart, Rainsford does not lose his composure and talks in a civil manner and does not get shot. General Zaroff says he has found a new animal that is harder to hunt than any other animal that he has ever hunted: “’But no animal can reason,’ objected

Rainsford. ‘My dear fellow,’ said the general, ‘there is one that can.’… ‘I am speaking of hunting.’ ‘Hunting? General Zaroff, what you speak of is murder’” (22). General Zaroff hunts humans as his new animal and Rainsford wonders if he is going to be hunted next.

Even though Rainsford kills Ivan, gods, and Zaroff, he does not take pleasure; he kills to survive. He is able to reason, unlike the animals, and he wont hunt, but he is forced to.

His foot touched the protruding bough that was the trigger. Even as he touched it, the

general sensed his danger and leaped back with the agility of an ape. But he was not quite

quick enough; the dead tree, delicately adjusted to rest on the cut living one, crashed

down and struck the general a glancing blow on the shoulder as it fell;” (27-28)

The trap in this case saved his life. He had experiences with life and death situations before, like when he was in World War I he had to dig a foxhole to protect himself.

He stepped back from the quicksand a dozen feet or so, and, like some huge prehistoric

beaver, he began to dig… when it was above his shoulders, he climbed out and from hard

saplings cut stakes and sharpened them to a fine point. These stakes he planted in the

bottom of the pit with the points sticking up. With flying fingers he wove a rough carpet

of weeds and branches and with it he covered the mouth of the pit… he heard a sharp

crackle of the breaking branches as the cover of the pit gave way; he heard the sharp

screams of pain as the pointed stakes found their mark (28).

Rainsford has been in many situations, because he knows how to stay alive and has mastered traps. The general’s dog falls into the trap. Rainsford’s last attempt with traps is his most successful one: “They beying hounds stopped abruptly, and Rainsford’s heart stopped too. They must have reached the knife… for he saw in the shallow valet that General Zaroff was still on his feet. But Ivan was not. The knife, driven by the recoil of the springing tree, had not wholly failed”. Rainsford is satisfied with killing Ivan, only because it helps him survive, he did not kill him for pleasure.

Rainsford will continue to hunt animals, because he is revolted at the idea of killing people for entertainment. Rainsford is knows a lot about hunting; he is a smart man, who is good at solving puzzles: “’But no animal can reason,’ objected Rainsford. ‘My dear fellow,’ said the general, ‘there is one that can.’… ‘I am speaking of hunting.’ ‘Hunting? General Zaroff, what you speak of is murder’” (22). Rainsford figures out that the general is talking about hunting men. He even talks about hunting collecting heads: “’And now,’ said the general, ‘I want to

Rainsford, ‘that you will excuse me tonight, General Zaroff. I’m really not feeling at all well’”

(23). Rainsford knows that the general’s new collection of heads is the heads of humans, because the general says he has found a new animal to hunt. Rainsford had chances to kill, but he chose not to. “Twenty feet below him the sea rumbled and hissed. Rainsford hesitated. He heard the hounds. Then he leaped far out into the sea…” (29) He chose to jump instead of going face to face with the hounds.

Rainsford stays and hunts animals, because he believes that animals do not feel fear; he kills Ivan and the general to survive, and he shows a strong moral sense of what is hunting for sport and what is murder. The general once said, “’God makes some people poets. Some he makes kings... Me he made a hunter.’” Rainsford is also a hunter, and in this case, a better one.

Rainsford will keep on hunting, because he loves the sport, but he will only kill animals.

Analysis

Ashkan used block quotations in his paper, which suggests that the teacher introduced students to MLA formatting conventions beyond citation. He is older than the two previous writers, which raises some unanswerable questions about student maturation and writing performance. Ashkan formatted the quotations correctly, but if we look closely we see a very common error. Large numbers of students struggle to integrate quotations into the text of the paper, and such is the case here. The quoted material simply appears; it lacks an explicit (and necessary) connection to the point the student wants to make.

The lack of a thesis and the frequent errors—even to the extent of typing Rainsford’s name incorrectly—indicate that Ashkan did very little editing and that whatever assistance he

© 2014 Taylor & Francis had from other students was not very helpful. What students and teachers need to keep in mind at all times is that a paper loses all credibility among “real” readers when the text is full of errors.

Yet, even given these numerous problems, we find that when we compare Ashkan’s scary story with his essay, the essay is better written.

Joyce Harris (Grade 8 at a Midwest Middle School)

Teachers face a dilemma. On the one hand, they have been taught and seem to believe against all evidence that a writing sequence must begin with narration. Given this reality, the question to be answered is this: Is it possible to produce a narrative assignment that does not put students in the difficult position of having to manufacture a story when they have so little experience with narrative fiction? The assignment that follows suggests an option that seems to work.

As is common in our public schools, the teacher’s assignment sequence began with narration and then moved to analysis and argument. Her instruction was different from what we usually find, however. First, she gave students models of the type of writing she was teaching.

These were personal experiences written by ordinary people who nevertheless had interesting stories to tell; the stories had a message that resonated with readers. Second, she made it clear to students that they were not supposed to make up stories but instead were to take on the role of a recorder. That is, they were to get someone, preferably an older family member, to share an experience from his or her life. The effect these approaches had on student performance is evident in the student papers that follow.

Assignment 1

Your first assignment involves narration. That is, you are going to tell a story that has a message. The message of a story is usually a lesson that readers can relate to. I don’t want you to invent a story, though. Instead, I want you to talk to your older relatives and get them to tell you stories about their lives. Take notes as they talk; you will be able to use them later. You then should select the most interesting story and turn it into a well-written narrative. You may find as you are writing that you need more information, more details. Don’t hesitate to go back to your relative with questions. Your stories should be at least three pages, but they can be longer.

Analysis

Although starting an assignment sequence with narration poses several challenges, this assignment illustrates what is arguably the best approach for students. It does not ask them to invent something, nor does it ask them to write about themselves. Moreover, the assignment gives students some basic experience as researchers, asking them to go out into the world and collect information. It offers good preparation for different types of research in the future. The papers that follow are all final drafts. Initial drafts were not included in the submissions I received, but the teacher informed me that she typically requires three drafts of a paper before students submit their final drafts.

Student Papers

Esti Birenbaum (Grade 8)

How I Came To Have My Dad

When my mother was 12, my grandparents left New York and moved to Israel to help

They settled in the city of Beersheba, and my mother was struck by how different it was from New York. New York’s population was in the millions. But Beersheba only had about

150,000. And then the weather. Beersheba was hot, hot, hot. And dry, almost a desert. To make matters worse, everyone spoke Hebrew, which my mother didn’t.

My grandparents rented a small apartment and put my mother in school. The apartment was much smaller than the one they had lived in in New York, and the air conditioner did not work very well and the neighbors were noisy. If husband and wife weren’t fighting they were playing loud music. But mostly they were fighting, and sometimes at night it was so loud that my mother couldn’t sleep. She cried every night. It was worse after she started school. The children were mean to her because she was from America and they thought that she was a rich American b—ch Jewish princess. But she wasn’t. And they laughed at her because she couldn’t speak

Hebrew and they refused to speak English to her even though they could. So she often cried during the day, too. Which meant that she was crying night AND day. She begged her mother for them all to move back to America, but the answer was always “no.”

The days turned into weeks, the weeks into months. As happens, Mother learned to speak

Hebrew, and she did well in school, but she didn’t make many friends. She was always treated as the “outsider.” Her father, my grandfather, worked at the Israeli Defense Forces headquarters as an analyst, and he always talked about the Arab threat. He talked about it so much that my mother was always afraid, thinking that the Arabs could attack at any moment and kill them all.

When she graduated from high school, she immediately was required to join the military. In

Israel, all young people must join the military. My mother didn’t want to join, but she had no

The worst part for her was the never ending harassment from the men. My mother was very pretty when she was young, and she had to put up with a lot. Sometimes, during training, she would have to camp out in the desert for days. And guys would touch her when she was asleep in disgusting ways. After her training was over, she was sent to Tel Aviv to work as a clerk for some officers. It was easy work for her but very very boring.

For two long years she served. When her time was finally up, she was so happy that she cried. She returned home to Beersheba and enrolled in Ben Gurion University to study mathematics. My grandparents were not happy with her choice. They followed Hasidic practices and believed that my mother should be married. My mother disagreed, and they fought about this again and again. Finally, my grandfather had enough of the fighting and he told my mother that she must respect him and his wishes. He contacted a “shadchan,” or “matchmaker” to arrange a marriage for my mother. The shadchan contacted him a week later and told him that she had a

“suitable” husband. My mother was only 20 and the man was 30. The families got together to introduce him to my mother, and they spent about an hour together surrounded by the families and at the end of that meeting it was agreed. They would be married.

It isn’t clear to me how my mother agreed, but she did. The wedding took place a month later with the usual Jewish celebration. My mother told me that I was conceived that night, for the man she married was my father.

Like my grandparents, father was a Hasidic Jew. That means that he followed conservative Jewish traditions. For example, he had a beard, side curls called “payots,” and he always wore a hat outside the house. There were other things too but I won’t mention them. Even though my grandparents practiced Hasidic traditions, they were not very strict with my mother.

But after she married my father, things changed. He insisted that she drop out of college. She had to cover herself from head to toe when she went out of the home. Not like the Arab women, but pretty close.

The idea of arranged marriages is that young people don’t know what love is. In an arranged marriage, “true” love grows over the years. This didn’t happen for my mother. I was born, and time passed, but she never came to love my father. She grew more and more sad. More and more unhappy. One day, when I was three years old, she made a decision. While father was at work, she packed a suitcase, called a taxi, and took me to the Beersheba airport.

I don’t remember the flight or the things that happened immediately after, but my mother took me to America. We landed in Chicago. My mother had left my father a note and one for my grandparents explaining that she could not go on in a marriage without love.

Mother had taken a small amount of money when we left, and she used this to rent a small apartment near the United Center. She got a job working in a restaurant. She told me that my father tried to find us, but America is a big country, and he didn’t know where to look. My mother no longer wore clothes that covered her from head to toe, and she was free to talk to people outside the immediate family. I started preschool and had to learn English.

Time passed. My mother was accepted at Northwestern and began studying math again. I could tell she was happy, and I was too. She divorced my father. It made my grandparents so angry that they told her that they never wanted to see her again. But that changed eventually.

One summer they came to visit. I was six by then, and I didn’t really remember them, but they were nice. I was glad that they made up with my mother.

One day when I was seven, Mom told me that she wanted to have a friend over for dinner. That was strange because she didn’t entertain much at all. When the evening arrived, a

© 2014 Taylor & Francis nice man showed up at our door. His name was Saul. All through dinner he told funny stories about when he was in the army. He was a lawyer, and he also told funny stories about some of the people he helped in legal cases. Mom and I laughed a lot!

Like my father, Saul was Jewish, but he was like a regular person. He didn’t have a beard or wear side curls. He didn’t wear a hat outside unless it was winter. I could tell Mom liked him and that he liked her. After that dinner, we started doing things together. We went to the Field

Museum and to Navy Pier. We went to Grant Park for a concert. I liked him more and more because he was funny and kind and because of the way he looked at my mother.

One day when I was eight, Mom asked me how I would feel if she married Saul. I was old enough then to understand those things. I asked her if Saul would then be my daddy, and she said “Only if you want him to be.” I liked that she was giving me a choice. I said yes.

Several months later, in June, Mom and Saul married. It wasn’t a big fancy wedding. It was fairly simple, at the Northwestern Chapel. Mom looked so beautiful and Saul looked very handsome. There was a reception after, where lots more people came. I guess they wanted the free food. It was kinda late when we got home, and it was a bit strange when Saul didn’t leave but stayed the night. I woke up thinking that I would have to get used to having him in the house.

Then, at breakfast, something really wonderful happened. Mom and Saul were sitting with me at the table and Saul told me that he really wanted us to be a strong family and that the best way to do that was if he was my dad. I thought that was strange because I already had a father and told him so. I told him that I didn’t think a person could have two fathers. That’s not what I meant, he said. He said he knew I had a father, but that he wanted to be my dad. That if he adopted me he would be. I thought about that for a moment and realized he must love me a whole lot to do that, and it made me cry. Are those happy tears or sad tears he asked. But I

And that’s how I came to have my dad.

Analysis

Esti’s paper illustrates the advantage of an assignment that asks students to report a narrative told by someone else. She didn’t have to event something, which for a young teen can be cognitively and rhetorically challenging; instead, she reported the narrative of her mother.

Although there are gaps in the narrative, they aren’t egregious ones like those in the “scary story” examples. Also worth noting is that Esti did not record her mother’s narrative but rather used her own language.

The title of the narrative is effective, for many readers are likely to be interested in learning how a child might come to have a dad when all children have a birth father. The first paragraph also works well, setting the scene for the narrative. There are many instances in which

Esti provided nice details to make the narrative rich. She referenced her father’s side curls and beard, as well as Grant Park and Navy Pier, for example. In addition, we find few structural errors throughout. One result is that the narrative is highly readable, for there are no structural problems that distract us from the flow of the narrative.

LaShona Johnson (Grade 8)

Grandfather

My grandfather come up from Mississippi to work at the Ford factory when he was 19 or

20. They was no work in Mississippi in those days, and I guess theys not much work there today neither. Anyways, he come up for work and got him a job. He say it didn’t pay much but it was

© 2014 Taylor & Francis better than what he could make on the farm. He like Chicago but say the winters was hard cause of the cold. It get real cold in Chicago during the winter. He didn’t have much warm cloths so he be cold during the winter. He like Chicago anyway an work hard at the plant. Things be goin pretty well for him until 1968. That summer they hold a big political meetin in Chicago to see who gone be next president. My grandfather walking downtown one night and see this big crowd so he go on over there to see what goin on. Next thing he know the police was yellin an screamin an hittin people with they clubs. My grandfather wasn’t doin nothin just walkin but they hit him anyways. In fact they hit him many times so hard that his skull crack. He go down with blood all over an no one come to help him for a long time. When they finally come he unconsus and they take him to the hospital. He be there a long time an when he finally able to go home he not be right. something wrong with his head. Grandfather not be able to work much after that. He have these headaks that hurt him real bad. Doctors say he be ok in time but that aint so. Life be hard for him after that. He an old man now and still aint right. He kind though. I loves my grandfather and wich that didn’t happen to him.

Analysis

LaShona’s narrative has great potential. The police riots during the 1968 Democratic

Convention in Chicago are barely remembered these days, but they marked a significant turning point in American society. LaShona had the opportunity to develop an interesting first-person account of what was happening in the streets at that time. The problems here are related to her use of African-American English, and her narrative suggests that she may not be fully bidialectal. But they also are related to the fact that LaShona seems not to have received sufficient feedback related to revision and editing to shift the narrative toward Standard English.

She should have received feedback that helped her break up the single paragraph into smaller ones. Of course, our limited information makes it impossible to know exactly what factors were at work here. It is possible that LaShona ignored the feedback, just as it is possible that the feedback she received was not helpful in her case. But if she worked through three earlier drafts, we should expect her submitted paper to be better than it is.

As we saw in some of the scary-story narratives, LaShona’s paper raises the issue of assessment. How should a teacher grade her narrative? From an objective standard, it is a failure.

On the other hand, its inherent potential may encourage a teacher to give it a passing grade in the hope that further writing instruction will reduce the AAE features. The issue is whether we are to hold students like LaShona to the learning outcomes set for the class as a whole or whether we are to make individual exceptions. The latter approach poses numerous difficulties, among the most serious of which is the risk of passing LaShona on even though she is not meeting established academic standards.

Magdalena (Grade 8)

Crossing the River

My father is from Vera Cruz Mexico. It’s a city on the east coast of Mexico, and my father told me that it is a place where there is lots of oil that is being turned into gasoline. There are many refineries there. When oil is turned into gasoline, the process produces large amounts of gas—not the kind of gas that is gasoline but the kind of gas that is like what we use in our stove. Anyway, the refineries have to get rid of this gas, so they burn it. Because the gas smells really bad when it is burned, the refineries burn it at night so that it doesn’t upset the people so much. With many refineries in Vera Cruz, all of them burning this gas, the night sky is not dark

My father was young and wanted to work in the refineries to help his parents, but he was not able to get a job there. He had a cousin who had gone to the States who had a good job and he wrote to my father and told him that he should come to the States to where he could find work. My father talked it over with his parents and they gave him their blessing.

He took the bus from Vera Cruz to Nuevo Laredo. From there he took another bus to

Ciudad Acuna, a small town on the border with Texas. His plan was to cross the border at

Ciudad Acuna because it was small. Laredo, on the other hand, is big and well garded. Also the

Rio Grande river at Ciudad Acuna is very shallow and easy to cross.

When my father arrived at Ciudad Acuna, he was very tired and he did not have much money. Instead of getting a room at a hotel, he camped out beside the river. He planned to rest and then cross the next night and then walk to the town of Del Rio in Texas. It is not a long walk my father says. But as soon as it was dark that first night he saw hundreds of people just like him walking into the river. It made him worried because he had thought that Ciudad Acuna was so out of the way that he would be able to cross quietly. But with hundreds of people crossing he was afraid that the border police would be waiting to catch them all. But then he thought that maybe once these were across the night would be quiet. If that was true then the next night he would just leave later. But it didn’t happen that way. People kept coming. Hundreds of them through most of the night. Without much sleep he was tired in the morning so he found some shade under a bush and went to sleep.

The next night, the night he had planned to cross over, it was the same. He didn’t know what to do. So he waited another day. He was afraid. On the third day he talked to some men

© 2014 Taylor & Francis from Merida, a city in the south of Mexico, about crossing. They told him that they had crossed three times already and yes, the border police were always waiting on the other side but that with so many people crossing they couldn’t catch them all. The key was to run very fast.

My father thought about that and decided that he would take his chance that night. But he also thought that the men from Merida were wrong. Running fast would not save him because the police could run fast to. He came up with a different plan.

As soon as it was dark, he watched the people crossing the river. They ran fast as soon as they reached the other side. When an especially large group entered the river, he joined them.

But on the other side he did not start running. Instead, he laid down and hide in thick bushes and trees on the other side. He heard shouts and screams as the border police caught people and put them in vans. But no one came to get him. No one even came close.

He waited there the rest of the night. When the sun began to rise, he lifted his head to peek through the bushes. They were thick so he couldln’t see much. So he crawled forward little by little until he could see better. He looked around and didn’t see any border police. He rose and started walking toward the town. Everyone he saw in Del Rio was Mexican so he didn’t stand out at all. No one suspected that he had crossed the river.

With the little money he had left, he bought some bread and a bus ticket to Chicago where he cousin lived. He was still nervous about being caught so he tried to not call attention to himself. He tried to act casual. But he really didn’t feel relaxed until he got on the bus to

Chicago. Then he knew that he had made it and he felt refleif. The bus took several days to reach

Chicago because it was a long ways from Del Rio and there were many stops. But when he finally arrived, he called his cousin to come get him and he did. His cousin helped him get a job at a packing plant and he still works there after many years. He met my mom a few years later

© 2014 Taylor & Francis and they married and had me. Sometimes he still worries that the border police will catch him and send him back to Mexico but he has been here so long that he doesn’t worry as much as he did at first. I hope he is right about them not coming because I would be sad if my dad was sent back to Mexico. I would miss him.

Analysis

Magdalena’s narrative seems representative of the sort of writing we find among students who have reached the mid-level of proficiency. She has a fairly good grasp of narrative structure and detail, as evidenced in the first paragraph, which sets the scene for the narrative. Her control of punctuation is weak, but she has a good sense of paragraphing and chronological sequencing.

With students like Magdalena, improved proficiency requires more instruction in punctuation conventions, sentence patterns, and vocabulary. With such instruction, she might have chosen, for example, to use the word “anxious” rather than “nervous” in the second sentence of the last paragraph. An aid to this instruction would be to encourage Magdalena to do more reading and to keep a reading log for vocabulary enrichment.

Without revealing the actual name of the student, who chose to remain anonymous, it seems worth noting that “Magdalena’s” surname is Anglo-Saxon, not Mexican/Hispanic. This fact may incline us to conclude that the narrative is fiction.

Assignment 2

We are all taught as children that we should not lie, yet a recent study reported that people tell a lie about every five minutes. One simple example is our response when someone asks how we are feeling. We may actually feel terrible, but we always say we feel “fine.” We

© 2014 Taylor & Francis may call this a “white lie,” but it is a lie nonetheless. For this assignment, you are to examine the following question: Should people always tell the truth? Successful papers will consider the question thoughtfully and in detail, and they should be about three pages long.

Analysis

This assignment seems quite reasonable and likely to produce thoughtful responses from students—until one reflects on it a bit. Answering the prompt question involves an argument or persuasion, and the two rhetorical forms are substantially different. Argument requires evidence based on reason and external support (logos and ethos), whereas persuasion requires emotion

(pathos). Some students may write an argumentative paper and others a persuasive paper, which makes assessment problematic. Moreover, it isn’t clear that eighth graders will have sufficient research skills to find evidence in support of an argument. Those who choose to write persuasion are likely to draw on personal experiences and/or generally held opinions that may easily come across as truisms. Stated bluntly, the assignment is not sufficiently focused to elicit students’ best writing.

Maria Elena (Grade 8)

Lying

A decision stretches over the horizon at a crossroads in every person’s life, including mine. On the one hand, a journey beginning with the truth appears frightening, and on the other is quick and easy way out with an impulsive lie. Each path leads to a different prespective and I can not turn back. A lie follows me around as surely as the seasons change. This is the season of deception. Even though telling the honest truth can place an individual in trouble. In the end, the

White lies are small and often told to protect someone, make them feel better, but each lie leads to larger problems and can easily spiral out of control. Lying becomes an addictive havit.

Whenever someone asks me for the truth, it place me in an uncomfortable position. they might be terribly hurt by my words, but I have learned that only the truth can conquer the pain caused by a misunderstanding. No one wants to be deceived; one does not want to face someone with a false identity.

Telling the truth can be difficult and land me in a whole new sea of problems, but this situation is far better than waking up each morning with a guilty conscience and hating myself for my actions. Fears of my lies coming to haunt me bring nightmares and thoughts of the consequences to face in the future. The people we care the most about do not deserve to be captured in a trap of lies—they deserve to know the whole story, true feelings, the truth. “Romeo and Juliet” is the famed Shakespearian tragedy of two lovers whose lies eventually caught up to rob them of happiness and most dramatically their lives. Lies not only harm people who tell them, but many others are dragged into the messy maze of misconception.

A lie is like a balloon about to burst under the tension and confusion surrounding it—I want to release my feelings in a rush of emotion to rid myself of my troubles, but one lie can shatter the peace. Lying is a way to seem something I am not, to make be seem better than I am.

After I lie, especially to my parents, I cannot stand the awful sign I feel hangs over my head, reading LIAR in bold print. I know I need to be punished.

Honesty frees my soul of guilt and regrets. It shows maturity. Choices made each day shape character and every path leads to longer, winding ones. The truth will always be there, as comfort and a reminder of reality. Without it, I would be lost. That said, “Beauty is truth, truth

Analysis

Maria Elena’s paper illustrates the problems inherent in the assignment. She is a good writer insofar as she has fairly good control of writing conventions, but the overall paper is unsatisfying because it lacks content. We can’t describe it as an argument, for there is no thesis and no evidence to support a thesis. Maria Elena relies on simple platitudes for support. Recall that a thesis must provide a statement in the form of “x is y” that is open to challenge or disagreement. Most readers are likely to agree in general terms that, “In the end, the decision to speak the truth is always best.” Nor can we describe the paper as persuasive, for it is too much about Maria Elena. It does not address readers in ways that would persuade us to avoid lying.

Anthony Wysocki (Grade 8)

Lies and Life

In every person’s life, I believe, there will come a time when telling a lie is necessary.

Although lieing does often lead to negative consequences, at times there is simply no better alternative.

Deception often leads to trouble. For example, as we learned in history, President Clinton of the United States was in trial and made deceptive statements concerning extra-marital affairs.

The President was later charged with making perjure statements. William Jefferson Clinton because of his false statements became the second President of this country to become impeached.

But, there are some situation where deception is actually the best and most tactful course

© 2014 Taylor & Francis of action. In Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird Sheriff Heck Tate lies about the way in which Jeremy and Jean Louise Finch were attacked and rescued. Tate justifies this by saying that if he reaveled the whole truth and just the truth a hero and a shy man named Arthur Radley would have his life disrupted for no good cause! The protagonist in the story agrees with Heck

Tate when she says “It would be like killing a mockingbird.” By this Jean Louise, (Scout), meant that to reveal Arthur would be similar to killing an innocent creature. So lies can kill.

Using a hypothetical situation one can see that indeed lieing is sometimes necessary. For example, say that your sister gets her hair cut and you don’t particularly like the new style. If your sister asked you what you thought of her hair it would be both rude and pointless for you to tell her that you disliked it. This might depress her and make her upset. But, if you instead tell your sister that she for example definitely has a whole new look, although you may be deceiving her it will still undoubtedly be in both your and her best interest.

In order to keep secrets it is important to sometimes lie. My mother’s brother, Daavid, has two children neither of which he had with a space, and both of which he abandoned. For years my mother deceived me into thinking that Daavid had not children. But, last year it became necessary to tell the truth. I understand that in this situation my mother needed to lie to me so that she would be faithful to her brother and keep his secret as requested.

In my personal experience I have discovered that it is sometimes important to lie.

Reasons for this may vary from keeping secrets to being careful so as not to be offensive to others. Lieing is not something that I feel should be done on a regular basis, but I do feel that when used very rarely and very carefully it can be vital and for the best.

Analysis

Anthony’s paper, like Maria Elena’s, illustrates the difficulties students face when an assignment is not well written. With little evidence to support his claim that lying is acceptable in some situations, Anthony draws on his history class as well as his English class for evidence.

The problem is that the Clinton and Harper Lee examples conflict. The aim is not to show that lying is sometimes harmful and sometimes beneficial but rather that there is no better alternative.

The examples do not succeed. Shifting to the hypothetical example is also unsuccessful, but the personal example of the mother is even more so because it lacks sufficient details. In the last paragraph, Anthony expresses his personal feelings on the issue, but doing so raises the question of whether the aim the paper is self-expression or persuasion. If the latter, as I have suggested, then Anthony’s personal feelings have no place in the paper.

Although there are several structural errors throughout the paper, Anthony demonstrates that he has some control over writing conventions. As in the case of some previous examples,

Anthony would have benefited from receiving more guidance and instruction during the writing process.

Ann-Marie Chen (Grade 8)

Telling the Truth

People lie, and they lie a lot. The fact that they do raises a couple of interesting questions.

First, why do we lie? And second, is lying wrong if everyone does it? It seems important to examine what a “lie” is. What does it mean to “always tell the truth”? One type of lie is when a person is trying to cover up a wrong action. If, for example, a child knocked over and broke his mother’s favorite flower vase, he might lie to avoid being punished. Or if a driver is pulled over

Even though this type of lie seems to happen often, I would argue that it actually is rare in the broad skeem of things. Most children don’t break vases, and most people don’t commit crimes.

Another type of lie is when a person does not tell the truth in order to what I would call

“just get along.” For example, if a friend shows off her new dress and asks me if I like it, I will say “yes” even if I don’t like it at all. Or if my mother asks me if I had a good day at school, I will tell her “yes” even if I did not. This type of lie is not intended to gain any advantage or to avoide punishment; it is intended to “just get along.”

I would argue that people tell this sort of lie all the time and always have. The reason is pretty simple. Living among other people can be a challenge so they are good lies. Others expect us to be polite and cheerful all the time, even when we aren’t feeling well or are stressed or unhappy. So we might say that this type of lie is one of the things that makes society possible. If that’s the case, then the idea that we should “always tell the truth” is pretty ridiculous because always telling the truth would have a bad effect on society because it would hurt people’s feelings. So, I also would argue that the second type of lie isn’t a lie at all. Instead, it is a kind of oil that makes it easier to live in a society made up a total strangers, most of which we must interact with even if we don’t really want to.

Analysis

The minor errors—repetition, word choice, and sentence structure—that appear in Ann-

Marie’s paper are trivialized by the sharpness of her analysis. Her ability to differentiate what we

© 2014 Taylor & Francis might consider to be “selfish” lies from “selfless” ones shows an ability to think more deeply about the topic than we saw in the previous two papers. But when Ann-Marie took the next step and identified the selfless lie as an important factor in preserving the social fabric, she was operating at a high level of analysis, especially for a middle school student.

We should be concerned about its brevity and her choice of supporting examples. At the same time, we would want to reward her for her critical thinking and for her general control of language. Effective feedback during the drafting phase of this assignment would have pointed out ways Ann-Marie could have expanded her analysis of selfish/selfless lies and how both function in society.

Rebecca House (Grade 9 at an East Coast Middle School)

Assignment 1

Everyone experiences painful events in life. Write an account of your most emotionally painful event and tell what you learned from it. Your paper should be about 850 words.

Analysis

Assignments similar to this are far too common. They immediately raise the question of teacher authority. That is, does a teacher have the authority to require students to reveal painful or unpleasant experiences about themselves, to make private writing public? My conversations with many students who have been asked to respond to this type of assignment are uniform in that a majority indicated that they simply made up a story to satisfy the teacher. Although I have no evidence to show that the student papers presented here are fiction, they certainly seem a bit farfetched for narratives of true experiences.

Student Papers

Ella (Grade 9)

Lucky to Be Alive! (draft 1)

Ok, well, it was a beautiful spring day, a perfect day for flying. My parents had decided to vacation in Palm Beach, and my father who has his own airplane and knows how to fly was going to fly us down. We packed everything we needed, especially sun screen, and I thought it would be great to get away from the New England snow for 10 days, that’s how long we were goning to be on vacation.

We took off and everything was fine for awhile and then this big storm hit us. There was wind and rain and lightening. It was awful and scary. Then the plane was hit by lightening and started to fall! Dad tried to keep us in the air, but it was hopeless. Down we fell until we crashed in a swamp. Somehow we had ended up in Missippii. The swamp was wet and dark and smelled bad. Strange noises came from everywhere. We had been thrown from the plane which was in a million pieces before it exploded and blew up. Fire was everywhere.

Dad said we had to walk out of the swamp and find help. There were creepy things in the water and suddenly I saw a huge allegator coming right at me. I tried to get away but it bit my leg right off. Dad hit the allegator and it swam away. Lucky for me, my mom grabbed me leg befor the allegator could swallow it.

At the hospital the doctors sowed me leg back on and soon I was ok. We never made it to

Florida for the vacation. From all the pain I learned that I’m a very lucky person.

Ella (Grade 9)

Lucky to Be Alive! (final)

It was a beautiful spring day, a perfect day for flying. My parents had decided to vacation in Palm Beach, and my father who has his own airplane and knows how to fly was going to fly us down. We packed everything we needed, especially sun screen, and I thought it would be great to get away from the New England snow for 10 days, that’s how long we were goning to be on vacation.

Everything went fine at the beginning. We took off from the airport and soared into the sky. Not a cloud in site. Things started to look troubling, though, over North Carolina. Clouds started to gather. At first they were white and puffy, but soon they turned dark gray and then black!

Rain started to fall and the wind started to howl! Our small plan was bouncing up and down, up and down. I started to feel sick. Then the lightning came! It was all around us. My dad couldn’t control the airplane it was bouncing so much! I knew then that I might die!

I don’t know how long my dad fought for control of the plane. I was screaming, my little brother was screaming, my mother was screaming! Then there was a big flash of light and a huge

BOOM! We were struck by a bolt of lightning! The motor of the plane started to make a funny sound, and we started to go down.

“Dad!” I screamed. “Save us! Save us!”

Mom was a reck. She kept yelling that she didn’t want to die. But the plan kept falling. I could see the ground rushing up to meet us. I braced for impact! And then we hit. Another

BOOM and the plane broke into a million pices. I was thrown into the air, and I could see my family also thrown into the air. We all landed with a thud. We were in what looked like a swamp.

I pulled out my phone to see where we were and saw that we were in a swamp in Missippii. We were far from civilization and far from Palm Beach. The swamp water was green and slimy and

© 2014 Taylor & Francis smelled really, really bad, sort of like one of those porta-potty toilets that has been used a lot and had not been cleaned in a long, long time. There were lots of trees that had green stuff hanging down like in the movies, and there were all sorts of animal sounds. I don’t know what they were, but they sounded creepy.

Dad said we have to walk out of here to find help. We started walking but it was hard to walk in the swamp. I had lost my shoes and my feet were stepping on really awful stuff in the swamp. It was so gross that I wanted to cry. Suddenly, I saw something in the water. It was an alligator! It was coming right at me! It was huge! It bit my leg and took it right off! I screamed!

Dad ran to me. Mom fainted. My little brother just stood there like an idiot. Dad used his belt to stop the bleeding and mom picked up my leg which the alligator had dropped. My brother said that it was lucky that I don’t taste so good or I’d be without a leg.

Somehow we managed to walk out of the swamp and get help. An old couple without any teeth decided to help us. They had an old truck, so they threw some straw in the back for me to rest on. Then I was rushed to a hospital where the doctors sowed my leg back on. It was a miracal.

The pain of the crash and the alligator eating my leg was very intense. What I learned is that miracals do happen and that I’m lucky to be alive!

Analysis

Ella’s first draft suggests that she has a good imagination, but it doesn’t really seem relevant to the assignment, which appears to ask for authentic events. In addition, Ella either does not have much control over structure, or she is very careless with regard to typing and spelling. It seems clear that she did not bother to run spell check. Given the absurdity of the narrative, we might suspect that Ella was disengaged from the assignment, just putting down

© 2014 Taylor & Francis words to have something to turn in. Another possibility, however, is that she was making a point about the assignment. After all, it isn’t really possible to fail this narrative, for the student could respond to any criticism of its absurdity by claiming that she is not the best writer and that she

“did the best she could.” If one were to point out that the events are not possible, she then could state that she dramatized them to make the story more “interesting.”

William (Grade 9)

My Dog (draft 1)

When I was 6, my parents agreed that I could have a dog. I wanted a new one but mom said that we had to get one from the animal shelter so I ended up with a used dog. The dog was supposed to be my birthday present, so I wasn’t happy about getting a used dog if you know what I mean. Nobody wants a used birthday present, right? At least I got to pick the one I wanted.

The animal shelter was noisy and smelled really bad. I remember that I tried not to breathe but it was no use. There were two kinds of dogs there in the cages. The first kind we hyper. They went kinda crazy if we got close to the cage. The second kind seemed to be crazy in a different way. They just sat there looking off into space like they had lost it from being caged for so long. I didn’t know it then because I was little but now I know that any dogs in the shelter that aren’t taken by anyone end up being gassed. I think those that stared off into space sensed that they were going to be gassed and it impacted their brain in a bad way.

Anyway, I looked around trying to find a dog that hadn’t gone crazy and was about to give up when I saw one that looked normal. I selected her and called her Lady. She was a good dog and we did lots of stuff together. One day we were playing in the dog park close to the house

© 2014 Taylor & Francis when I threw her ball too hard and it went into the street. Before I could stop her she ran after the ball and this crazy woman in a red car ran over Lady and skwashed her to death. Lady had blood all over her and she was dead. I carried her home and buried her in the backyard. My parents told me that I’d feel better in time, but that was a couple of years ago and I don’t. They offered to get me a another dog—another used one that is—but I don’t really want one. What I learned is that people seem to think that living things are disposable.

William (Grade 9)

My Dog (final)

When I was 6, my parents agreed that I could have a dog. To get them to agree, I had to show that I was responsible. I did that by keeping my room clean, by doing my homework each day, and by helping around the house. My mom said that we would go to the animal shelter to get my dog and that I would get to select the one I wanted. If I didn’t find one I liked, then we would go again another time. But it was around my birthday, and I wanted to get the dog for my birthday. I didn’t know that I’d have to get a used dog, though.

When we arrived at the shelter, all the dogs were barking. It was a pretty noisy place, and it didn’t smell very good, either. With so many dogs to choose from, I couldn’t help but wonder where they came from. I asked my dad, he said that most were strays. Dogs that had run away from home or that had gotten lost. Because they didn’t have tags, there was no way to return them to their owners.

The dogs were kept in cages called kennels. Most of them became really excited when we approached. It was like they were desperate to get out and wanted us to open the cage. They seemed too excited to me. I’m a calm person and didn’t want a dog that would be jumping all

© 2014 Taylor & Francis around all the time the way these dogs were doing. Others seemed drugged or something. They didn’t react to us—they just stared off into space. I didn’t want one of those either.

I had just about given up and was feeling a bit disappointed when we came to a cage that had a smallish Cocker Spaniel that didn’t jump around and bark. She just looked at me with big brown eyes and wagged her tail a bit. It was like we made a connection. I told my parents that I wanted her, even though she was used, and they agreed. We filled out some papers and my mother asked me what I was going to call my dog. I thought for a moment and then said “Lady.”

“I’m going to call her Lady.” That’s the name of the dog in the Disney movie that I liked.

When we got home, I showed Lady all around the house. I already had a dog bed ready for her, and I showed her that. And I also showed her where her food bowl and water bowl was.

She took a drink like she was thirsty.

From that day on, Lady was my best friend. She followed me everywhere. When I left for school, she looked sad, and when I came home from school she acted happy. She didn’t use her bed at night but instead slept on the bed with me. I played with her every afternoon and on weekends. In other words, I loved my dog and she loved me.

Lady and me were growing up together. Then, a year ago, just after my birthday, I took

Lady to the park for some exercise. It is a dog park, so dogs can go off leash and run around. I would throw Lady’s favorite ball and she would run after it as fast as she could, pick it up, and bring it back to me. We were having a great time, but then I threw the ball harder than I should have and it went out into the street. Lady ran after it without looking. The woman driving the car hit Lady and didn’t even slow down much less stop. She just kept on going. I ran to Lady and saw that she was hurt bad. Blood was coming out of her mouth and a her stomack where there was a big cut from the car. I bent down beside her and touch her head but I could tell she was

Mom was home, and she helped me bury Lady in the backyard. I wanted to find the woman who had killed my dog, but I didn’t know where to look. I hated her and wanted to do something to punish her for what she did. Mom talked with me about it, and she told me to think about all the years I got to spend with Lady and to think about the good things. The problem was that I didn’t really get to spend years with Lady at all. It was short, so I din’t know what in the world my mom was talking about. And whenever I thought about Lady and those good things I just felt sad. I wanted my dog back and couldn’t have her. My parents offered to get me another dog, but that didn’t seem right to me. It’s not like a broken cup that you can replace just by buying a new one. When you lose a friend, it’s permanent. It’s hard to say what I learned from this experience. On the one hand, I learned that many people, like the woman who killed my dog, don’t really care about others. I also learned that pain isn’t something that you can make go away just by wanting it to. It has to go away on its own and that sometimes it never does. I also learned that I hate mean people.

Analysis

William has fairly good control over the structure of language, and he seems to have selected an actual, rather than an invented, event. His first draft lacked detail, but the class revision/editing sessions resulted in significant improvement for the final draft. Indeed, William made a number of important changes to the first draft. Perhaps the most significant is the amount of added detail he provided. The narrative flows smoothly because William has fairly good control over the language. Yes, there are some structural errors, but they are not major and could be corrected with additional instruction and help during editing.

Kendra (Grade 9)

The Fight (final; no initial drafts were submitted)

My friends were having a party that I like really wanted to go to so I like asked my parents if I could go and they like said no which really p---ed me off. So that night the night of the party I waited for them to go to sleep and then like I crawled out my bedroom window and went to my friends party. The party was like totally awesome and there were like all these cute guys from another school and like they were funny too so I talked with them alot and like there was this one guy who was realy cute and like we started making out in one of the bedrooms and it was like so cool cuz he was a really good kisser. Well just when things were getting kinda hot and interesting I heard sirens and like the next thing I know is that there are cops everywhere cus

I mean like someone must of have complained about the music which I guess was kina load but so what? It was an f’en party for Christ sake. So the cops are saying that we were all under age and drinking so that round us up and take us to the police station where they like make us tell our parents phone numbers and then they like call our parents. I mean what the f---- was that about?

Like they have to get us in trouble with out f’en parents? No wonder everybody hates cops. So my parents come to pick me up and they are really p---ed. They are yelling and screaming at me nonstop all the way home and then when we get home too. So I’m grounded like, you know, for like life on this. And that was more than I could take so I start yelling back and telling them that they are bad f’en parents in fact like the worst f’en parent in the f’en world. That really set them off and so we are yelling and I call my mom something that rhymes with itch and she is and she slaps me hard across the face. I’m like nearly knocked down and so I kinda lose it if you know what I mean and so I slap her back and that just does it. The next thing I know is I’m in my room and told not to come out. Which is fine with me cuz I don’t want to see those stupid people. So

© 2014 Taylor & Francis the next morning is like a Sunday and I’m thinking I’m just gonna chill or whatever when my dad comes to the door and tells me to like come to the living room. I get up and there’s this strange couple sitting there like you know two statues or something and I ask who the f--- are you? And they like tell me that they are from child services and that my parents are sending me to f’en juvy cuz I’m supposed to be out of f’en control or something when its them that’s out of control. So I say like no way and run out of the house but there’s two cops out there and the grab me. The next thing I know is that I in a f’en police car on my way to juvy. And that’s where I been living for a couple of years now. The let me out to go to school but like every afternoon there’s those same cops waiting for me to take me back to juvy. What I learned from all this is like something I really want to share with the world of young people cuz it’s so important. Don’t ever trust your f’en parents to do the right thing.

Analysis

The numerous structural problems in Kendra’s paper are clear, but the real issue is whether her narrative is authentic. One may assume that it is until that last several sentences.

Children in juvenile detention receive education in the facility, if they receive it at all. They are not released so that they may attend school. On this account alone, we may be inclined to conclude that Kendra’s narrative, at least in part, is a fabrication. This does not mean, of course, that it lacks some truthful elements. The task of the teacher, therefore, is to discover why Kendra chose to adopt a tone for the narrative that is, one might say, “in your face” and to help her isolate and build on the real elements of the events, assuming they exist. If the paper is largely authentic, it illustrates some of the problems associated with this kind of assignment. How, for example, would one grade this paper?