by Cate Hunter

I used this when my students were having difficulties (in their drafts) "showing" instead of "telling."

I asked them: What was the event or experience that made you want to write about this particular context?

Then I asked them to write a 2-page anecdote about the event(s)/experience(s) that made this context important to you. DO NOT ANALYZE OR REFLECT. This should be all dialogue, action and description. NO SUMMARIES!

After students have brought in this writing and shared it together, have them take 5 or so minutes to reflect on the experience. This helped my students to "show" me what their contexts were and it helped some of them realize that they had initially chosen the "wrong" context for them.