My students are reading the novel Holes and in order to get them to see the relevance of the novel to their own lives, I have created a lot of writing activites that will help them in this area. One writing activity that has worked extremely well is that I have created an assignment where each student writes a letter to the school Principal explaining their views on the school rules and consequences. My grade 10s have had a long history of behaviour problems in school. They have broken many rules and they have suffered the consequences. All of them were thrilled to have the opportunity to express their views in a mature, adult and polite way. We did a lot of pre-writing activities first to get them warmed up (I've posted this on the assignment page) and then they wrote a letter to the Principal. I have never seen the class more quiet and focussed as they completed this assignment. There were no complaints-everyone willingly did the work. I even invited the Principal into the class when they were working on it so he could see their enthusiasm! Today they typed up their good copies and everyone was very proud of their results. I will post some examples of student work to demonstrate what my Grade 10 class is capable of when they are motivated and when they are writing about a topic that they are really interested in.
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