The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them

Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the bulleted outlines below. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. Students in Ms. Gruwell’s class frequently describe the violence they encounter at home and on the streets.

• How does violence affect the students, and what are the strategies used to cope with it? (topic sentence)
• Provide two examples of students who experienced violence and explain how the violence affected their learning environment.
• In your concluding sentences, explain how the students learn to cope with violence to succeed in the classroom.

2. The diary entries in The Freedom Writers are anonymous rather than attributed to any particular student.

• Why do you think the book is structured to maintain anonymity for the students? (topic sentence)
• Explain why the diary entries are anonymous in the book, what affect it has on the reader, and how the book would be different if the entries were not anonymous.