The writing process for the reader-response essay on The Things They Carried, which is outlined here and here, includes this scaffolded assignment on the essential questions for the surrounding unit:
This formative assignment organizes student responses to essential questions by subject:
- Morality and Adversity
- Stories and Identities
- Witnesses and Messengers
- Now and the Future
- Humanity and Inhumanity
Students are then asked to read the documents, discuss their observations, and then write a response. The shape of that response is up to the individual, but the focus must be on analysis and utility — particularly how these observations and insights might help with the reader-response essay.
This is because essential questions link explicitly to the fourth part of reader-response writing:
¶4 concludes by addressing the universality and worldly relevance of the text. This could be a study of essential questions, if you’ve been given those to use. It could be a discussion of why this text is important and should be studied. You might also ask: If the text teaches a moral, why is it crucial for it to be taught? If the concepts raised deserve further study, why is that? Why does this text matter beyond an English classroom?
The rest of this post provides examples of effective student responses to their peers’ work. These examples are all drawn from the work done in 2019.
Model Analysis and Responsive Writing
Start here, with a succinct analysis of one of the batch responses:
What is the relationship between our stories and our identities?
While reading these answers there is a similarity in the way that they both impact our lives. For example, “our stories are the things we have been through and have done. Our stories make up our experiences in life and knowledge on specific aspects where our identities are who we are on the inside. Our morals, feelings, who and how we express ourselves as. The relationship between those in our stories often effect of identities, it could make us more empathetic, ignorant. etc. Depending on our stories.” Another example, “your stories are what make you, you. Past events in your life will have some effect on your current emotions whether it will be happy sad or scare. If you do something good to help other people will remember you for that.” These answers show how they do affect our lives.
This paragraph serves as a precursor to the reader-response essay, and it quotes enough peer work to serve as proof of process, too. Here is another example:
The responses to the Humanity and Inhumanity question seems to be the most varied. Many of us have answered in our own way, some unable to find a real conclusion, others speaking cynically, while others still contemplating the question with a significant amount of depth. The response “No one knows. It’s different from everybody for me? I have lost total faith in humanity” made me really wonder what life this person leads. I consider asking them what made them truly lose all the faith they have, and how they struggled to maintain it in the past. I think the idea that no one knows how to retain their humanity is an untrue statement, especially when surrounded by inhumanity. Many of the other responses suggest being true to oneself, but it’s easy to lose oneself when faced with atrocity or misery. Another suggested faith, distraction, clarity and strength of mind, retaining their composure…what I’ve taken away from reading these responses is that everyone has their own method of keeping their humanity. It isn’t the same for everyone, and it’s harder for some than others. It isn’t just about keeping your faith in humanity, but your own humanity, despite a lack of faith in the humanity in others. The responses to this question brings up an entirely new question to answer: if not you, then whom?
This is obviously helpful, both on its own and during a larger writing process.
The key, as always, is that students who did something gained important feedback on the writing process. Consider this complete set of summaries:
There is not much insight in each paragraph, but it’s enough to garner some feedback. That’s important. Even brief insight can lead to good feedback, like it does here:
The feedback is nearly twice as long as the student’s writing, but the lack of development and depth is obvious; it’s more important that this student did something. There is a good-faith effort to do the work.
In fact, there is even the possible that a student submitting nothing — as in, nothing at all — can, through a small effort, invite some feedback:
This is a misreading of the directions and a circumvention of the work required, but the student wrote a few words to contextualize and explain their choice.