This unit culminated in a synthesis essay that asked students to pick one of the foundational stereotypes of the unit, and explore either its enforcement or its subversion in literature, tv/film, and current events in 5 paragraphs, with each of these tenets of society making up one body paragraph.
I explicitly assigned projects throughout this unit that related to each of these body paragraphs, so that when the time came to write the essay, students had a large portion of the work already done. They had already done extensive writing on each topic, and had plenty of evidence and analysis to pull from previous assignments into their essays. They were encouraged to use their work from these previous assignments, edit it for quality, and incorporate it into their final essay.
I scaffolded the writing process by giving them guided writing assignments for each body paragraph. As each writing day got by, the scaffolding got slightly lighter as I gradually release greater creative freedom and outlining responsibility to them:
When I introduced this essay in class, I was really proud to hear exclamations of how easy they felt this essay would be. When the due date came, I was very impressed by the high level work the students turned in for this assignment (check out the students samples page to see some of it!)