Lesson #5:
“If I write, then I am a writer”
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Aim: What does it mean to be a writer? –or-
How am I a writer?

Materials:
Teacher Man Frank McCourt (excerpt)
New Yorker Cartoon
Peer Evaluation Worksheet

Opening:
Freewrite response to the Aim. Students will share their
responses in a whole group discussion.

Shared Reading:
Students will read the excerpt from Teacher Man
(it suggests a wealth of topics that students can write about)
and a New Yorker Cartoon (caption: Pictured is a forlorn
girl writing: Dear Mom & Dad, Thanks for a happy childhood
and ruing my future as a writer).

Small Group Discussion:
In pairs, students will discuss the similarities and differences
between the two readings.

Whole Group Discussion:
Students will share some outcomes of their pair-shares.
Questions: How are we writers? What aspects of our daily lives
make us writers, or even require us to be writers? How do our
self-identity drafts suggest that we are writers?

Culminating Activity:
Students will evaluate the peers’ drafts using the
“Peer Evaluation Worksheet #1.”
The teacher will move between the pairs and assess the students’
discussions, comments, and reactions.

Closing:
Returning to the Aim, students will evaluate themselves as writers
by addressing the question “How am I a writer?” in freewrite format.

Classroom Post-Visit #2:
Objectives: To have a culminating experience tying together all previous
5 lessons. To share the products of the partnership with their peers.
To self-evaluate how their students’ personal writings relate to their
self-portraits.

Description/questions/activity:
The students have worked on final personal writing pieces with Nina
and Mark. They were allowed to use any of the writing pieces we read
and any of the artworks we saw as inspiration, in addition to further
poems and prose pieces that read in class.

We hung the self-portraits and did a read-around of the final pieces.
We asked the students to jot down notes and comments about each
other’s work to share after the read-around. The teachers and I
team-taught the final critique, integrating the following questions into
the discussion:
Has your self-representation evolved or changed since starting this
partnership? How?
How do your writing pieces relate to your self-portraits?
Do they overlap in content? Do they relate stylistically?
For you, which piece—writing or visual—do you feel more fully
expresses your identity? Which piece do you connect to more?
Which piece of yours do you like more? Why?
How about to other viewers – which piece do you feel
communicates your identity more fully to others?
How did your final writing piece evolve? What styles did you
experiment with along the way? Why did you gravitate toward
one writing style over another?

Educator comments/suggestions: (possible alternatives,
future use, adapted use for age groups, etc.) The idea to have
Museum visit, post-visit #1, post-visit #2 format came at Mark
and Nina’s suggestion. Because of the scheduling, they knew
they would not have a chance to begin their personal writing
unit before cycle 2 got underway, so they thought the Museum
visit would be a nice segue from the art studio self-portrait
exploration and a nice kick-start to the personal writing unit.
Although not our traditional format, I think it ended up working well
because the students were able to see a clear connection between
the first semester’s visual arts focus and the second semester’s writing
focus by actively writing at the Museum surrounded by the artworks.