Page 63 - SpringBoard_Writing_Workshop_Grade6_Flipbook

Writing Workshop 5 (continued)
My Notes
ACTIVITY 4
Independent Writing
WRITING PROMPT: In a multi-paragraph response-to-literature essay, analyze how Myop’s actions in the story “The Flowers” reveal a change in her character. Be sure the essay
• Presents effective introductory and concluding paragraphs
• Develops an interpretation of the text and states it as a thesis
• Provides evidence from the text to demonstrate understanding
• Guides and informs the reader’s understanding of key issues in body
paragraphs
• Includes specific evidence, details, and examples in body paragraphs
• Includes an appropriate organizational structure for the essay
• Uses a variety of sentence structures and transitions to link paragraphs Review the Learning Targets and Scoring Guide to understand the specific requirements of this writing activity.
Sample Text
The Flowers
by Alice Walker
It seemed to Myop as she skipped lightly from hen house to pigpen to smokehouse that the days had never been as beautiful as these. The air held a keenness that made her nose twitch. The harvesting of the corn and cotton, peanuts and squash, made each day a golden surprise that caused excited little tremors to run up her jaws.
Myop carried a short, knobby stick. She struck out at random at chickens she liked, and worked out the beat of a song on the fence around the pigpen. She felt light and good in the warm sun. She was ten, and nothing existed for her but her song, the stick clutched in her dark brown hand, and the tat-de-ta-ta-ta of accompaniment.
Turning her back on the rusty boards of her family’s sharecropper cabin, Myop walked along the fence till it ran into the stream made by the spring. Around the spring, where the family got drinking water, silver ferns and wildflowers grew. Along the shallow banks pigs rooted. Myop watched the tiny white bubbles disrupt the thin black scale of soil and the water that silently rose and slid away down the stream.
She had explored the woods behind the house many times. Often, in late autumn, her mother took her to gather nuts among the fallen leaves. Today she made her own path, bouncing this way and that way, vaguely keeping an eye out for snakes. She found, in addition to various common but pretty ferns and leaves, an armful of strange blue flowers with velvety ridges and a sweet suds bush full of the brown, fragrant buds.
12 SpringBoard® Writing Workshop with Grammar Activities Grade 6
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