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Essay Instructions: Unit Plan for Essay #1: Literacy Narrative

For your first assignment, you will write a Literacy Narrative, a type of autobiographical essay
which discusses some aspect of your relationship with books, writing, and language. Good
writing begins with good questions, so you might begin with this: What does writing (or books,
or language) mean to you?

Summary of Grading Criteria
Because this is an open-form narrative, you’ll use the techniques of literary non-fiction: plot,
characterization, setting, and theme. Full grading criteria appear later in this handout, but
basically, I will be looking for essays which:
• Tell a story by depicting connected events over time
• Include tension or conflict
• Use concrete details to evoke image and emotion
• Disrupt the reader’s desire for direction (surprise us!)
• Use figurative language to help the reader share your experience
• Show—through resolution, recognition, or retrospective interpretation—what the events
mean to you
• Convey an appealing voice
Objectives You’ll Achieve by Doing this Essay
By working on this assignment, you will achieve the following objectives:
• Display genre-appropriate format and structure and stylistic choices, understanding
differences in open and closed form prose
• Produce thoughtful peer reviews of your classmates’ work
• Critically annotate and analyze your readings
• Use professional models to generate ideas for your own writing

CONTENT
• Narrative arc (beginning, middle, and end)
• Connectedness (one thing causally leads to another—as opposed to and then)
• Rising conflict, tension, and crisis
• Vivid and fully developed characters we can “see” and “hear”
• Realistic dialogue which helps us understand the characters
• Concludes with a resolution, recognition, or retrospective interpretation of events
“Essay” Approach
Many of the Literacy Narratives in the Appendix are more anecdotal and observation-based. If
you use this approach, your open-form essay should still include:
• Connectedness (even if you supply the connections)
• Rising conflict, tension, and crisis
• Vivid and fully developed characters we can “see”—even if we don’t hear them speak
• Clear depiction of events though time
• Concludes with a resolution, recognition, or retrospective interpretation of events
ORGANIZATION and PRESENTATION
• Introduction grabs readers and makes them want to read on
• If not, can you suggest an alternate beginning?
• Writer has chosen best approach for the literacy narrative (story or essay)
STYLE
• Each sentence can be understood the first time it is read
• Literary language that evokes feeling (revelatory words and memory-soaked words)
• Concrete words that evoke images and sensations
• Appealing voice
THEME
• Essay has a “so what?” significance which provides insight and/or revelation
• Essay is one or more of the following: powerful, surprising, memorable

Essay Instructions: USE OPEN FORM PROSE !

• Tell a story by depicting connected events over time
• Include tension or conflict
• Use concrete details to evoke image and emotion
• Disrupt the reader’s desire for direction (surprise us!)
• Use figurative language to help the reader share your experience
• Show—through resolution, recognition, or retrospective interpretation—what the events
mean to you
• Convey an appealing voice
• Produce thoughtful peer reviews of your classmates’ work
• Critically annotate and analyze your readings
• Use professional models to generate ideas for your own writing



“Story” Approach.

If your Literacy Narrative employs a story approach (as in the samples in Chapter 7), it should be
“story-like” in the following ways. Stories have:
• Narrative arc (beginning, middle, and end)
• Connectedness (one thing causally leads to another—as opposed to and then)
• Rising conflict, tension, and crisis
• Vivid and fully developed characters we can “see” and “hear”
• Realistic dialogue which helps us understand the characters
• Concludes with a resolution, recognition, or retrospective interpretation of events


“Essay” Approach.

Many of the Literacy Narratives in the Appendix are more anecdotal and observation-based. If
you use this approach, your open-form essay should still include:
• Connectedness (even if you supply the connections)
• Rising conflict, tension, and crisis
• Vivid and fully developed characters we can “see”—even if we don’t hear them speak
• Clear depiction of events though time
• Concludes with a resolution, recognition, or retrospective interpretation of events

ORGANIZATION and PRESENTATION.

• Introduction grabs readers and makes them want to read on
• If not, can you suggest an alternate beginning?
• Writer has chosen best approach for the literacy narrative (story or essay)

STYLE.

• Each sentence can be understood the first time it is read
• Literary language that evokes feeling (revelatory words and memory-soaked words)
• Concrete words that evoke images and sensations
• Appealing voice

THEME.

• Essay has a “so what?” significance which provides insight and/or revelation
• Essay is one or more of the following: powerful, surprising, memorable