This session will deliver an entire curriculum for helping students write the personal essay and the Common App essay, including sample essays, pre-writing exercises, outlining strategies, and revision workshop steps. The unique aspects to this curriculum are the customized strategies that address the nuances of the personal essay, particularly helping students master the elements of narration, explanation, and scene. The focus of the fifty-minute presentation will feature pre-writing and outlining strategies developed by the presenter to help students create “scenes,” as opposed to the standard “body paragraphs” in an expository essay. Participants will leave the presentation with detailed lessons that they can immediately implement in their classrooms.