Teaching Illustrative Essay

Teaching Illustrative EssayWhen I am teaching my students to write an illustrative essay, I think about all the varied things they can do to make it interesting. There are all kinds of things that can be illustrated and I tell my students to choose their topic based on their ability to put themselves in another person's shoes and imagine what it would be like to do something. The first step is to get familiar with a list of examples.Since students are often very skeptical about taking instructions, I usually just give them practice exercises to use while writing the essay. One way to go about doing this is to ask the students to try and solve the problem as it applies to them personally. It can be a little tricky for some of them, since they may not know anything about the topic or how it can be addressed in a short essay.One way I use to illustrate an illustrative essay is to use a card. I actually have one in my office at work and I usually instruct my students to use it as a repre sentative example. Then I give each of them a card and I give them some blank papers and a pen and we all take turns writing about the problem that they were trying to solve for themselves. Of course the card is a great example because it allows us to show examples that may help us solve the problem if we had the proper tools.I tell my students to draw out examples and also to draw example scenarios on the cards. This gives them the chance to see different situations from different perspectives and to see what it would be like to solve the problem for ourselves. It is a good exercise.The last thing I like to do when I am teaching an illustrative essay is to ask the students to draw a chart or graph. Here the student is given a hypothetical situation to imagine the solution to and then they are asked to compare the two situations.For example, if the problem was the average home a person owns, then the student might draw the graph showing how many different homes the average person ha s and then draw another graph showing how many different homes the average house. I encourage the students to explain to me what it is that they are drawing to help them illustrate.We then show the students how to find their solutions by setting them up in pairs and having them solve the problems and compare the results. I like to do this in a group setting and there is nothing more satisfying than watching the students succeed at something. When they get to the end of the problem set, I always encourage them to share what they wrote about their solutions with the class.This way they can get feedback from their peers and make sure that they wrote their solutions in the correct way. Another benefit is to have them look at the solutions and think about how they could improve them. I always encourage them to draw some diagrams of their solutions so they will understand how to better solve the problem themselves and compare the results with their classmates and with the graph or chart.