This week eighth-grade students are making narrative essays about a snow day.
Students have to write an original essay that has a five paragraph minimum. The stories will also be thoroughly checked for plagiarism.
The essays were due on Wednesday. Originally, the essays were due Friday, but school was canceled because of wide-spread illnesses in Duncan.
English teacher Christy Clark said there will be a narrative essay on the state test, so the assignment is good practice. Clark also said a lot of essays were rushed because a lot of students waited until the last minute.
For the essays, the English teachers want a lot of verbs, adverbs, adjectives, vivid verbs and imaginary.
Thea Juyad, an eighth-grade student, talked about her experience with the narrative essay.
“Students are doing this essay because they want to know what our best snow day ever in our life would be like,” Juyad said. “I think my essay will turn out great, but at the same time not because I really have to pay attention to the details of my essay since it’s supposed to be my best snow day ever.
“It’s also a part of my grade so I can know a lot on how it turns out.”
Juyad was excited about what she was going to get since she put a little bit of personification on hers. She thinks that makes her essay really fun when her teacher read it.
“This was planned sooner, but they didn’t tell us since the teacher was gone and school got cancelled for two days,” she said.
Brenda Hurley, the other eighth-grade English teacher, had similar thoughts to Clark about the essays. Hurley said she wants to essays to allow students’ creative juices to flow so they can write awesome stories.
Clark said the narrative essays are important because they make up a significant part of eighth-grade English standards that will show up on the state writing test. She said the English teachers chose the topic because it serves as an extension to the reading assignment students worked on previously.
