That is the question isn’t it? In our conversations earlier this year and in the student pre-questionaire, this question came up over and over again. How much do I have to write?

To explore that common notion, this article, How long should a paragraph be,carefully picks apart this question by dancing around it. Now this may not fit nicely as an English/Language Arts common core puzzle piece; but it will allow room for students to critically think about the choices they make in their writing including how much they keep and how much they should leave out.

Please share this article with students as a conversation starter and let me know what they say. There is no definite answer even though the historic walls of English/Language Arts would like us to believe so. Students said they want more freedom, so I ask them to read this article and to chew on it, then think carefully how they might give themselves the freedom, the permission in the their writing they are looking for us to give them.

Let me know how it goes.

-Dionne