Case Study/Kate*: learning to write stronger topic sentences

This case study focuses on my work with a student beginning with her first year in high school through the present. Names and identifying details have been changed to protect the student’s privacy. 

I began working with Kate* the summer before her freshman year of high school. Kate’s mother initially contacted me to work on summer reading assignments, noting that Kate’s writing in middle school was “not analytical enough.” Kate was enrolled in a Boston-area independent school known for its demanding curriculum and talented students.  

At our first meeting, I found Kate to be outgoing and upbeat, ready to take on any challenge she encountered with good cheer. When she entered high school, she read and wrote papers on a variety of literary works, including The Catcher in the Rye, a Shakespeare play and other classic texts. Early into the school year, I noticed that Kate had the most difficulty writing strong thesis statements and topic sentences. Consequently, we spent much of our time working on identifying specific words that would capture her ideas succinctly. We accomplished these goals by brainstorming words that encapsulated her main ideas, and, later by having Kate draft what we had discussed. Her teacher’s feedback mentioned the importance of “going even deeper” in her analysis. To this end, we spent part of our session time looking closely at her readings and analyzing the authors’ and characters’ complex words and ideas. On her earliest papers, Kate earned grades in the B range, but by the end of the school year, Kate had raised her grades to the B+ range.

 As Kate moved into her sophomore year, she studied and wrote about classic poems by American writers. She wrote critical analyses of classic American novels. Kate wrestled with these increasingly difficult texts and wrote papers responding to complex prompts. She and I continued to develop her ideas and identify the best words to encapsulate them. At times I wrote down her thoughts as she spoke; other times I would ask her to write or revise a specific thesis statement, topic sentence or paragraph in session. By the end of the year, her papers had moved into the B+/A- range.

 This fall, Kate began her junior year. Her first major paper asked students to read a contemporary novel and explain how a specific character’s social, economic and political power affected their morality. We put into place all of the strategies I had been working on with Kate with for more than two years: discussing our ideas together and finding the most precise words to create strong, specific topic sentences. She earned an A- on that paper.

I recently learned that Kate began writing for her school’s newspaper last year. She enjoys writing different types of articles, covering whatever stories need attention: news, features or arts. We talked about her early days working with me. She told me that when she began high school, she thought of herself as a “math and science person” but didn’t enjoy reading and English class. Today, Kate is a successful writer, enjoys studying literature and chooses to write outside of the classroom.

*name has been changed to protect the student’s privacy.