Formula for Awesomeness

I have made it a point to assign Journal topics to my students that are both interesting and useful. I hate writing on boring topics, so I assume my students do as well.

In keeping with this, last semester I began using the artwork of Ric Stultz as one of ENG 120's journals. Students choose a painting, spend some time thinking about it, its meaning, and its impression on them as viewers, and then write about it. Easy peezy and they love his artwork. ::Pats herself on back::

I assign this journal now (3rd week of the semester) while we are rehashing what it means to write a strong thesis statement. I teach thesis statements with the Formula for Awesomeness (Overall Topic + 3 Main Points), and this is when I remind students that their language (or diction) should indicate the essays' purposes: inform, persuade/argue, or analyze.

The exercise that I use in class involves this photograph:



I tell students they have 5 minutes to look at the image (which I project from the overhead projector) and prewrite. They can prewrite however they would like. Some freewrite, others cluster or brainstorm, and many simply write bullet points. I encourage them to talk to their classmates during this time and I feed them thoughts like, "Is this a real place?" "What could this place be?" "Could it be a Photoshopped image?" "Consider a narrative that would take place here."

ENG 120 students will read a chapter on writing a Narrative for Wednesday, so this gives me a good starting point to introduce both Narrative essay-writing and Description.

I then give the students a few more minutes to create thesis statements based on their scribblings. When asked to share, most melt into their seats and suddenly find themselves unable to meet my eyes, but a few brave souls offer up their attempts at thesis statements and either receive the praise of, "Yes! Exactly!" or "Ok, so that would make a great attention-getter at the beginning of your introduction, but it's not a thesis statement." Eventually, my students learn that when they volunteer their work, they get the benefit of individualized help during class time, so they volunteer more.

Only after we have moved through a few thesis statements do I tell them that this image is a photograph of part of the interior of a Public Library in Stockholm, Sweden, home to over 4 million books and designed and built in the 1920's. ::She swoons--all those books!::