Create your Own Festival

Throughout the year, there are many types of festivals in the United States, each celebrating something special, such as a particular person, food, or object. For example, Tupelo, Mississippi, celebrates an Elvis Presley Festival, Barnesville, Minnesota, celebrates a Potato Festival, and Lahaska, Pennsylvania, celebrates a Teddy Bear Festival.
For your Paragraph A Week assignment this week, you will be creating an imaginary festival that you would like to celebrate in your hometown. Your festival can celebrate anything that you choose, such as a famous celebrity, your favorite dessert, or even an important event in history. It can be a serious festival, focusing on an event such as a battle of the Revolutionary War, or it can be a funny festival, focusing on something unusual, such as the kiwi bird.
You will be writing two paragraphs about your festival. You should pretend that these two paragraphs will be published in your hometown newspaper as an advertisement for your festival. In your first paragraph, you will give several reasons why your person, object, or event is important enough to have its own festival. You can tell how it is important to the people who live in your hometown, how it is important to people in the United States, or how it is important to people all over the world.
In your second paragraph, you will write about the different events that will make up your festival. You can choose to either give a detailed description of the most important events or activities that will take place during the festival, or you can describe all of the events of your festival, giving fewer details about each event.
REMEMBER:

1. Did you pretend that your paragraphs were an advertisement for your festival?
2. Does the first paragraph give reasons that the person, object, or event is important and the second paragraph explain the events of your festival?
3. After reading the first paragraph, would a reader truly believe that your person, object, or event is worthy of its own festival?
4. After reading the second paragraph, would a reader be excited about attending your festival?
5. Is there a good topic sentence for each paragraph?
6. Is there a good transition sentence between paragraphs and a good concluding sentence for the second paragraph?
7. Does each paragraph have 5 - 8 sentences?
8. Do your paragraphs focus on the five elements of good writing?
9. Do you have a clearly reworked rough draft, the signature of an adult who proofread your paragraphs, and a final copy, neatly written in ink? submitted by Amanda J.

Return to the Paragraph a Week Index.